reliance tailoring house
1. Joe Goes doesn’t know if it’s a baba or baby, at the end of the month his daughter is due for delivery.
2. So Joe is making napkins, V shaped, to wrap and tie, around his first grandchild.
3. And letting the cats be for another week, then he will put them outside.
4. First, there were two cloth merchants next to Reliance Tailoring House. Customers would buy the cloth and come to Reliance for the stitching. Then, there was a full line of goldsmith fellows, from whom all the Catholics would buy ornaments for their weddings.
5. Turn left at Chandanwadi and in one block 30-40 Catholic families were staying.
6. They would all come to Reliance Tailoring House in Joe’s daddy’s time.
7. At the turn of Chandanwadi is Joe’s friend, B. T. Parmar Jewellers. Every Diwali he gives Joe a gift, like a calendar, some novelties, a bag, the clock under Joe’s daddy’s photograph. Whoever Catholic comes I always refer to him.
8. Now, the cloth merchants next to Reliance have been replaced by two goldsmith fellows, who make only for Parsis. They don’t do Catholics. And the cold storage shop on the other side has become The Zorastrian Homeopathic Pharmacy.
9. One Dastur from the Parsi colony, all good families, comes to Reliance for stitching. Joe also has Muslims customers, who come mostly during Eid time and Maharashtrians from Chandanwadi; unlike the Catholics, they haven’t left the locality and gone to the suburbs.
reliance tailoring house
596 Girgaum Road, Cheera Bazar.
19th July, 2023.
Supported by:
Photographs by Sunhil Sippy.
MEET JOE
