My first memory of B. Merwan & Co. begins with a white paper parcel tied with a thin cotton thread my mother would bring home from Grant Road. Its wrapping was stained with butter and oil seeping through from the cakes inside. As a child, unwrapping the cake was as much a part of the experience as eating it. I would carefully peel away the baking paper that clung stubbornly to its slightly burnt crust, making sure not a single crumb was left behind. Several bites later, I'd discover a small piece of paper beneath the cake. By then, the paper, the cake and my own saliva had fused into a soggy mess. Determined not to waste any of it, I'd scrape off what I could and swallow the rest without a second thought.

In my late teens, after staying awake all night with friends in our colony at Bombay Central, we'd often walk B. Merwan for an early morning chai. We were usually among the first in line, waiting for the doors to open at exactly 5:30 a.m. Within minutes, commuters arriving from Grant Road station filled the bakery. Taxi drivers, dock workers and vegetable vendors shared tables as conversations blended with the clatter of cups and saucers, the scrape of chairs across the floor and waiters calling out bill amounts across the bakery.

Most people came to the bakery out of habit. It felt less like a place you chose to visit and more like a ritual woven into everyday life. If they happened to be passing by, they rarely missed the opportunity to stop in. You could tell from the ease with which they settled into their tables that many had been returning there for years. There was a shared understanding among the people who came to Merwan. Even when the bakery was crowded, people seemed to grant one another a certain privacy. Solitary regulars would linger over a cup of chai and a bun maska or a pudding for a few minutes before carrying on with their lives. It was one of the few places where you could still sit quietly and watch the city pass through a single room. 

I was no different. Over the years, I passed it countless times. Whenever I could, I'd stop for a cup of chai and a mawa cake, yet I rarely took a photograph. I began making photographs of the bakery during the two years leading up to its centenary in 2014.  B. Merwan & Co shut down at the start of 2026. Looking back, what disappoints me most is not that the bakery is gone, but that I never photographed it more. To me, the place always felt permanent, I kept believing there would always be another visit. After nearly thirty years of returning there, I don't even have a photograph of the cake.