Journalism of Courage
The wood-fired oven comes alive at 5 am every single day at the iconic 90-year-old Husseny Bakery in Pune Camp. But the radiance that slowly builds in the chamber around this time of the year is different — it matches the glow of Christmas, the season of giving.
Indeed, it’s more about giving with love than making pecuniary gains that the bakery believes in around Christmas. The oven gets down to handling innumerable trays of cake mixes piled up on the table outside, brought by customers for whom modern microwave ovens and OTGs hold no fancy. The bakery charges almost next to nothing for its labour and patrons get their cakes baked gratis.
“The oven, which is as old as the bakery itself, first lights up at 5 am each day,” says 34-year-old Dr Yusuf Mirdehghan (Irani), who lives abroad but travels to Pune for Christmas to help his father with the rush of customers. “Our bread here is baked in the heat from the bricks and walls of the oven. The oven attains temperatures as high as 200 degrees Celsius, which gives our cakes the best texture and taste one can imagine,” he says.
Earlier, many of the customers who carried Christmas cake mixes to the bakery were residents of the narrow streets of Pune Camp. Today, with the city expanding, a number of them have shifted their house to Wanowrie, NIBM Road and Kondhwa but still return to the bakery for their Christmas cakes.
“It’s a Christmas tradition linked to our bakery. Just this morning, we had an old customer, Francis, coming all the way from Khadakwasla with his mix. He will collect his baked cake at 9 pm,” says Yusuf.
The likes of late thespian Raj Kapoor and singer Lucky Ali relishing patties and cakes at the bakery are some of the fond memories that Yusuf’s father and grandfather shared with him.
Interestingly, the bakery would probably have faded into oblivion had Yusuf’s father, Dr Mahmood Irani, not stayed back to continue the business while sacrificing a promising career abroad. With his three brothers already in foreign lands, Mahmood too was set to leave for Geneva, armed with a doctorate in management (gained under the guidance of the late Dr P C Shejwalkar). But then his father, Murteza, fell ill and Mahmood decided to give his soul to the business.
Such has been the importance of the bakery in Pune’s grand history that Mahmood has photographs showing customers queuing up for bread and cakes outside the establishment in the 1970s as the country faced a shortage of wheat products during the Bangladesh Liberation War.
The bakery makes sure it feeds its employees too. Mahmood recalls that as a young man, some 50 years ago, he had complained to his father that the workers were eating biscuits and other items at the bakery for free. “‘Who will, if they don’t?’ my father had retorted. He reminded me that most of the employees were migrants and it was incumbent on the bakery to offer them breakfast, lunch and dinner too. We have to think of them. We need to have empathy in us for the welfare of others,” he says.
Mahmood says the bakery has survived and flourished because of the hard work of the owners and the staff. “Quality is never an accident; it is an intelligent effort,” he points out, explaining how he meticulously plans and decides every night on the quantity and production of his items. He makes small tweaks in his products too on certain occasions; for instance, he checks on the Kalnirnay calendar for days of fasting and accordingly alters the ingredients that go into his items.
Mahmood believes in offering his customers a range of products. One can gorge on buns, cream rolls, biscuits, patties with a filling of egg, chicken or vegetables, cookies, muffins and doughnuts and the list is exhaustive.
Augustus Martin (76), who lives in Shastri Apartments near Dorabjee’s departmental store, has been visiting the bakery since he was a boy living on the Dastur Meher Road. For Christmas, he gets his Goan ‘baath’ cake (a mixture of coconut, eggs and semolina) baked from Husseny Bakery.
“My mother, Stella, would make the ‘baath’ mix and take it to the bakery just before Christmas. My wife, Ursula, does that now. We love the bakery for its good service, cleanliness and friendly ambience,” says Martin.
Another customer, Brendon Abnis, remembers his grandmother’s maida-coconut cake mix, with a sprinkling of cashews and almonds, baked at Husseny. “Despite the rush of customers on December 23 and 24, the bakery owners are very accommodating,” says Abnis.
Yusuf says it takes 20-30 minutes for a cake to bake and the oven can handle up to 150 trays at a time. “Still, the flow of customers is overwhelming and we truly have to stretch ourselves,” he adds.
There are only a few other bakeries in the city that continue the tradition of baking Christmas cakes for others.
Afan Kozi, owner of the New Empire Bakery on Sachapir Street, says his outlet still bakes mixes but only for a few long-time customers. “It’s a fast-paced life these days and people simply come to buy readymade cakes,” he adds, pointing out that his bakery has been running since 1959.
Girish Shah of the Vrindavan Stores in Shivaji Market area, an old time provision store which was a go to place for buying baking materials, says love, warmth and passion springs out of every cake slice baked either at home or in the bakery.
“I have had generations coming to our shop to buy raisins, orange peels, cherries, ginger preserve, gelatine, sultanas, currants and margarine cake seeds. Of course, there has been a drop in clientele as people have moved to newer neighbourhoods but the regulars still come here every Christmas. Women came here as young mothers and later as grannies. Now, their daughters are visiting. We still recall the older women scrupulously checking every orange peel to make sure it was right for the mix,” says Shah.
“Christmas is as much about the making of sweets as eating them,” Shah smiles.
