Thank you, Niloufer Lakdawala, for evoking nostalgic memories of my childhood a long way back when Bombay was balmy and beautiful ("Recalling lost professions,” Parsiana, March 7-20, 2025).
A few more come to mind. Whatever happened to the puffwallas? We children would scramble out of bed at the crack of dawn at being woken up by the street vendor’s cry, "Paawf, Paawfwalla, Paawf” on those wintry holiday mornings (yes, Bombay had a winter then) to spoon down tall glasses of frothy milk puffs.
The ice cart man is no longer to be seen
And then there was the old white-bearded Persian who’d come selling his precious "pashm” (pashmak) secretly guarded in a container, covered by a pristine white cloth and carried in a tokdi (basket) — a sweet, melt-in-the-mouth concoction which we knew as "budhi ka baal (an elderly woman’s white hair, which was basically spun sugar).”
Earliest memory takes me back to the khaki-clad ice cream man who’d come on his bicycle with an icebox attached and, pied-piper like, summon the children of our gated locality with his musical ring-toned bell. We’d swarm around him for those tri-colored pink, white and green slabs of cold, creamy deliciousness, neatly wrapped in butter paper.
Then, at Christmas time each year, singers of the Salvation Army would come in a truck, carrying a portable piano and brass instruments to entertain us with well-loved carols for a donation of a rupee or two, concluding the short performance with the zesty strains of We wish you a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year.
Sweet reminiscences of bygone times!
DINA NAYAR
shireenkmistry@hotmail.com
Reading the article "Recalling lost professions” (Parsiana, March 7-20, 2025) made me so nostalgic.
SUNNU GOLWALLA
Karachi, Pakistan
sunnu.golwalla@gmail.com