From trauma to triumph

"You name it, I’ve done it!” says Bahram Bastani. Gardening, clean­ing jobs, working in a bakery. It was a long haul to the eventual success of Westside, the well-patronized bakery and snack bar in an upmarket area of London. And an exhausting one. It was not quite the life his doctorate in geology from Baroda’s M. S. University had led the Iranian lad to expect.

He had been working at Bom­bay’s Stadium Restaurant waiting to emigrate to Canada with no thought of marriage when he first spotted Dolly Irani, an Iranian accountant on a holiday in Bombay, at the Iranian Zoroastrian Anjuman. Twenty days later, at the instance of his aunt who owned the celebrated Cafe Naaz at Bom­bay’s Malabar Hill they were wed at the Dadysett Agiary, Bastani recalled.

Dolly, who had a secure job with a big firm in Iran, pre­vailed on Bastani to return to Iran instead of going to Canada. There he found a good job in the oil company but, having been away from the country since 1974 found the social mores con­stricting. He left Iran and returned to his Rs 1,500 job at Stadium Restaurant, working from 4 o’clock in the morning to support himself and his pregnant wife at the Petit Sanatorium. "It was a horrible life,” he shudders.

For a second time Bastani sought Canadian immigration, underwent a medical check-up, faced another interview. "They said they’d let me know” but even after two months there was no news.

Bastani: "now we have every-thing”

So the desperate Bastani "came to the UK as a refugee. They allowed us in because Dolly was pregnant.” Unable to find a job worthy of his education, he says he worked in shops and snack bars. "Because we were homeless we were allotted Council housing. That’s the advantage in this country,” Bastani is grateful for the glimmers of help he and Dolly received in those gruelling months. Like when they went to Zoroastrian House and found Roshan and Rusi Dalal, Shahrokh Shahrokh, Silloo and Kersey Jasavala ready to help. "She was like my mother,” he says of Silloo.

These fellow Zoroastrians loaned him £ 35,000 to purchase a business where he worked long hours, "didn’t go out, didn’t eat proper food because (he) didn’t want to keep people’s money.” A little over a year later he had repaid them, he said. A few years thereafter he got a mortgage on a house. "Now we have got everything — our own house, business, a car. My wife comes to help,” because his four employees tend to be clock-watchers.

Their son Sepand was born in 1990, their daughter Homa in 1992. Both children were navjoted in Iran, but Bastani said he did not go there with them. "I didn’t want to risk my business and all that we’ve built up in London,” he explains.

Small store, hearty snacks

Westside is stacked with sandwiches, samosas and other snacks. Tea, coffee and a variety of soft drinks and juices are available for the asking. "The inspectors say there are too many items for the size of the shop,” he notes.

But Bastani is now exhausted. "I have come to the stage that money is not everything,” he comments, adding that he is toying with the idea of selling the business.

Both husband and wife like London. At one stage he had wanted to go back to Iran. "Now we know people.” Appreciating the "high culture of English people,” Bastani, who takes annual vacations in Bombay, "says they don’t distrust anyone and they don’t disturb. I don’t know if I have a race relations problem. They may not like us having our own car, house, business, more money. But I have no complaint. I’m happy. I don’t want to go to Canada. It’s a lonely life there. This place is similar to India...” Arnavaz S. Mama