Hats off to a young city dentist, Dr Ridhina Nagwekar, who fought a dogged battle in the district consumer forum against Mahim’s ‘Thangabali’ restaurant, which levied a service charge of Rs 75. The amount in itself is small, but what prompted Dr Nagwekar was the patent illegality of it.
The forum held the restaurant guilty and directed it to return the amount with interest. We learned that the dentist feels that the order doesn’t do justice. Hence, she is preparing to appeal before the state forum. The problem is that several other hotels like Banana Leaf, Matunga, Pritam, Dadar, and Fountain Sizzlers opposite the high court continue to levy service charges with impunity
Vijay Gohil |
A Walk Down The Memory Lane
On Sunday, Irfan Engineer, son of late Bohra reformist leader Asghar Ali Engineer, organised an interesting Bhendi Bazar heritage walk. It started at the historic Juma Masjid situated a stone’s throw from the Crawford Market. The mosque with a cool water pond at its centre is an oasis of calm with two large chandeliered and carpeted prayer halls. What is interesting is its library, which has a priceless collection of handwritten Quran and other ancient texts in Urdu, Arabic and Persian.
In most mosques, women are barred from offering namaz, but in this masjid, there is a separate section where women can pray. At Cafe Almas at the JJ Hospital traffic signal, Advocate Zubair Azmi of Urdu Markaz joined the walkers and explained the finer points of Bhendi Bazar. He said there was an Irani joint, Cafe Vazir, at the place which is now occupied by Shalimar Hotel. The cafe was the haunt of several poets like Shakeel Badayuni, Sahir Ludhianwi, Kaifi Azmi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Jan Nisar Akhtar, Javed Akhtar and qawwals like Majid Shola, Jani Babu, Aziz Nazan and Ismail Azad. All of them later went on to become Bollywood legends. He also pointed to the one room tenement where the great singer Mohd Rafi lived in the early days of his career.
Going The Extra Mile For A Musical Prodigy
The other day Avirbhav, the genius singer from Kerala, who is all of seven years old, dropped into the offices of The Free Press Journal after winning a cool Rs 10 lakh at the ‘Super Singer’ contest beamed by Sony TV. Their local host was the couple Lalitha and Paramesh, who live in Bangur Nagar, Goregaon (West).
How the couple became close to Avirbhav and his family is an interesting story. Lalita, a former employee of Central Railway, was watching TV one day when she came across a performance of the boy Wonder who has memorised the lyrics of hundreds of Hindi songs and renders them flawlessly with all ‘harkats’ in place. She and Parmesh, a businessman, traced him to Kochi just to express their appreciation. The two families then became very close.
Tail Piece
A wag recently said that he would open a bakery if only he could raise the dough!
Compiled by S Balakrishnan
