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We know you’re not roaming these old Mahim streets for sweets just before Diwali, but maybe you should. Because apart from mithai, you’ll find a sweet slice of history.
In fact it’s a bit like stepping into a time machine.
Amidst all this chaos lies an even older nondescript shop with a 200 year old history. Okay, this structure is 70 years old but the story goes back to the late 1700s. Joshi Buddhakaka Mahim Halvawala is the oldest sweet shop in Bombay. In fact, the shop got the 8th telephone in the Mahim area with the two digit number, 87. And like any great story, at the heart of it is a rags to riches story based on grit, luck and belief.
Off the Bandra-Mahim Causeway, the business was founded by Maoji Joshi in 1783 who travelled to Bombay from a tiny village near Dwarka on foot, due to the lack of local opportunities. While he started off as a street hawker and cook, he managed to save enough so that subsequent generations could establish a sizable physical presence in the city.
While the first shop and original structure has now given way to the main road, this building and the one opposite it remain. The top floors are the residences of the Joshi family, where the 6th and 7th generations live all together in different apartments.
Ramchandra Joshi, Ghanshaym Joshi and Sunil Joshi run the original shop, Hasmukh Bhai the Tardeo shop, and Harit and Parag manage the swankier Dadar branch. It pays tribute to all the history, shows this letter from Nehru who we hear used to stop by in his roofless car. The Tatas and Godrejs have also been customers.
Ramchandra Joshi, 80, head of the family and business is a PhD in Chemistry himself.
RAMCHANDRA JOSHI: “I did research on five import substitution items and I even isolated the place to set up a business manufacturing pharmaceutical basic ingredients. But all of a sudden, my brother expired, so I have to look after this thing. So I left that project. Then ultimately it didn’t come.”
Visually you can’t tell, but taste it and you’ll know why they guard the recipe so closely. Also, just the aftertaste validates the purity of the ingredients.
This is the building that has their kitchen — an area they don’t let visitors into easily, nor employ non-family members to run. And don’t let the exteriors fool you, they’ve implemented some serious automation too. It’s behind these walls! Their signature product, the Mahim Halwa, derives its name from the halwa fish or pomfret. This wasn’t the founder Maoji or his son Giridhar’s original idea. He had honed down on the Mahim area because it had religious institutions of both the Hindus and Christians. Giridhar Joshi’s first offering was the laddu and sev boondi, mohan thal. It’s only after a Turkish traveller who was visiting the city made him taste the “lakum” that he went into R&D mode.
After nearly 20 years of refining the recipe to make his sweet exactly like lakum, he had a breakthrough by accident one evening when a thin sheet of the milk based sweet separated on the kitchen pan. After a fisherwoman complimented it saying, the sweet was so good, it tasted better than “halwa” (pomfret), Ghirdhar Joshi decided the sweet would be named Mahim Halwa. The “Buddhakaka” bit was an endearing addition of the local kids referring to his grey hair when he came by to distribute sweets to them.
Unfortunately, this real-life story has almost nothing in common with the show Succession. Out of the eight potential heirs in the seventh generation, nobody is very keen to run the oldest shop. The dutiful Harit and Parag run the newer Dadar branch and are grateful and savvy. But Ramchandra Joshi still wants more:
RAMCHANDRA JOSHI: “I could say, I’m disappointed. Because of this business… They now get a very highly educated family, so advocates, architects, engineers, information system auditors, research, journalists. They get a good package. So to sit here tying a packet of 100-200 rupees…they may not. So ultimately they have to find a person who…under their vigilance, they can run.”
The heydays of the business were linked closely with the thriving era of the Bombay mills. The double-year end — or the Gujarati community’s new year celebration around Diwali led to mill owners ordering tonnes of Diwali sweets. Decades later and post COVID, the business isn’t obviously what it used to be.
But they’ve still kept the spirit, love and taste alive.
Director & DOP: Aneesh Arora | Production &Voice Over: Nikita Rana | Editor: Pavel NN
