Biryani and Mischief

You would always hear him before you would see him.

His booming voice, his mischievous laugh, would echo down the stairs of their building and out onto the street to greet you even as you were parking the car. And then we would follow our ears and our noses and we would run up the stairs to their apartment and bound through their always-open door to hugs and love and a big steel drum of spicy, delicious, steaming mutton biryani. And Santosh Dada was always conductor, front and center. Larger than life, at the heart of the action, bringing people together, bursting with expression, full of stories, singing for us all – just like the biryani he served us so merrily.

Santosh Gulwadi – our beloved Santosh Dada – passed away today. July 26^th, 2021. He was one of my favourite people. I want to explain why.

I remember what he and the Gulwadis did for me both as a young boy and as a young man. My family would visit India every year when we were living abroad – usually at Christmas – between 1995 and 2004. Our time in Bombay would be split between my dad’s family in the Bandra suburbs and mum’s side in Town. Bandra was home to my Ajoba and my Dadima and the pace of life was slow, sultry, almost dreamlike. The food was mostly vegetarian. You were lulled into a beautiful trance, an endless loop of afternoon naps and evening chai. The exception to this stupor was our traditional biryani night with the Gulwadis.

We would get into auto-rickshaws and buzz frantically through the streets for 30 mins till we got uptown to Vile Parle. And as we got out of the rickshaws, I would hear that unmistakable voice echoing from the Gulwadis’ 1^st floor apartment. Sometimes he would greet us on the foyer itself, because he would be made to stand outside their house to smoke, which made him seem even more charismatic and made me even more curious. He would smoke outside the door as we’d enter their house and he would pace back and forth, desperately trying to participate in the conversation through the open window.

Santosh Dada was this maverick, this dashing, talented, gregarious rascal. If he was in Star Wars, he would be Han Solo. He would always be joking, serving people food and drinks and repeating the same stories again and again. I liked listening to them anyway, because they seemed to get grander every time. The number of puran polis he and my dad ate as young men would magically increase with each retelling of “the puran poli story”. We indulged him. An evening at the Gulwadis was about indulgence.

I love the Gulwadis so dearly. Theirs is a family with the biggest of hearts. I adored Mhavu, the gentle wisdom amidst all the joyous tumult. I loved Santosh Dada for his swagger and Shital Didi for her tenderness. I loved how they would argue like children about what channel to put on or what speed to run the fan. I idolized their three kids – my impossibly cool cousins. I wanted to grow up to be just like them. Whether I was 5 or 15, I hung on their every word when Shambhavi and I would go to their place for sleepovers. There was just nowhere else like it. If our Bandra home was where we could be children for a week, the Gulwadi home was where we were treated like young adults for a day.

And it was as a young adult that I got closest to Santosh Dada. When I moved back to India from the UK in 2012, age 21, it was a very difficult time in my life. I suddenly found myself in Bombay, without many friends. Those years, between 2012 and 2013 especially, were when Santosh Dada and the Gulwadis – especially Shital Didi and Gopika – would watch over me and guide me. I would take every chance to get in an auto to go to Vile Parle, to have coffee with Santosh Dada and let him tell me about his snooker-playing days or the latest drama at the gymkhana. He would always ask me to do my accents and laugh thunderously every time I’d do a particularly offensive one. He would enter music contests at the gymkhana and we would all go and cheer for him. He had many fans.

I will always be a fan.

I left India for the US in 2015 and so I didn’t spend much time with him towards the end, in these last few years when his illness made things really difficult. I can’t imagine how difficult today must have been for my dear Gulwadis and all of Santosh Dada’s fans. I am still in shock and I dare not face the present. I do not want to be 30 years old, sitting thousands of miles away, saying goodbye to him. I want to be 13, bounding up those stairs to say hello.