If I wanted to cheat you, I’d smile,” Amir Khaon Koolarzade tells customers at his cafe that sits at Matunga Circle when they admit they have rarely seen him smile. He may be the poster child of the grumpy Irani man at the galla (billing counter), but his eyes well up easily several times during our conversation.

His father, Mandoh Hussain, came from Taft village in Yazd province to Mumbai as a nine-year-old with his three brothers. “Their father had died and there was a great famine [in Iran]. My mother said that  villagers were subsisting on the grass in their orchards, and their skin had turned green. His father had died and my grandmother was a woman of such pride that she would keep a pot of water boiling on the stove [the smoke rose out the chimney], so that no one would suspect they were out of food and offer charity.”