NOTES FROM MUMBAI · NO. 002
One more idli.
Mornings next door, Mumbai
If you read my first note, you’ve already met him. The anna at the tawa, the one who makes the first dosa only for the pan, is also our neighbour. He’s from Tamil Nadu, and his small place is just down the road from our house.
It opens at six thirty. Six stools, one tawa, a steamer for the idlis and a picture of a temple on the wall. The menu is short: idli, dosa, medu vada, dal vada and sambar. Nobody ever asks for anything else.
Long before I started sitting at his stools on Sundays, I went there most mornings for a parcel. Sometimes it was breakfast for me, sometimes a bigger order when family came over. I’d tell him what I needed, he’d nod, and a few minutes later a packet wrapped in newspaper would be in my hands, still warm.
It took me a while to notice that the packet was always a little heavier than it should have been.
There’d be two extra idlis. Sometimes a medu vada or a couple of dal vadas I hadn’t ordered. If I asked for one dosa, there’d quietly be a second one folded underneath. An extra pouch of sambar. And when I paid, he only ever charged me for what I’d asked for.
The first time, I thought he’d made a mistake. By the tenth time, I understood. He never mentioned it, so neither did I.
It went both ways, quietly. On Diwali, my mother would set aside a plate of sweets before anyone else was served. “Anna ke liye,” she’d say, and I’d walk it over. On Sundays, if something special was cooked at home, a steel dabba went to his door. He’d smile, take it inside, and the next morning my parcel would be heavier again.
We never talked about any of this. Nobody kept count. It was just how neighbours took care of each other.
I think about him a lot now that I run a perfume brand.
My days are full of decisions: new scents, production batches, customer messages on WhatsApp, ideas for what’s next. There’s always something waiting. But some of the most important lessons I’ve learned about running a business came from a man who made the same few things every single day, and made them well.
He taught me that consistency is harder than novelty. Anyone can make something new once. Making the same thing well every morning, for years, takes a different kind of discipline.
And he taught me about the extra idli.
That’s why every order from Intense Perfume carries a free 10 ml perfume inside. You didn’t ask for it, and we don’t make a show of it. It’s our extra idli.
It’s also why, when someone keeps coming back, we want them to feel it: buy four 50 ml bottles and the fifth is free, buy three 100 ml bottles and the fourth is free. Anna would never have called it a loyalty programme. He’d just say: you’re one of us now, take one more.
Free things are easy to give. What I really hope is that when you open a parcel from us, it feels a little heavier than you expected. Not because of what’s inside, but because the person who packed it was thinking about you.
That’s what Anna has given me, almost every morning, for years.
I’m still trying to give it back.
— JavedIntense Perfume, Mumbai