Boman Irani: From Taj Waiter to Wafer-Shop Owner

Boman Irani did not reach the screen until he was 44. Before that came a hotel dining room, a family snack shop and a photography studio. His own interviews, along with his Wikipedia biography, describe a food-and-service apprenticeship that fits a lifestyle magazine's table.

A Mumbai childhood

According to Wikipedia, Irani was born on 2 December 1959 in Mumbai to an Irani Zoroastrian family. His father died six months before he was born. He has three elder sisters, and he grew up with dyslexia, which he eventually overcame. After St. Mary's School he took a two-year waiter course at Mithibai College.

The waiter and the wafer shop

Wikipedia says he worked at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, and that he also managed a bakery and namkeen shop in Mumbai run by his mother, Jerbanoo. In a Times of India interview he said he worked as a waiter for two years at the Taj in Colaba until he was 21, and then joined the family business, a small snack shop where his father used to make potato wafers, to look after it while his mother was unwell. The Hindu describes the shop as a farsan shop called Golden Wafers at Grant Road, and says he ran it for 14 years. The sources describe it differently, as a bakery, a namkeen shop or a wafer shop, so this article calls it a family snack shop.

In a Pioneer interview he said: "I am not a very good cook. But one thing I can say with confidence is that I make fantastic wafers", adding that he knows how thinly they must be sliced and how long fried.

Photography

Wikipedia says that while working at the Taj he photographed school cricket and football matches and sold the prints for Rs 20 to 30. He later became photographer for the Indian Boxing Association, and photographed the Norwegian boxer Ole Klemetsen with his Pentax K1000. In the Times of India interview he said he took up photography about five years after marrying, shot advertising work and Miss India portfolios, and shot portfolios for about five Miss India contests. He also freelanced for the Times of India when its own photographer did not turn up, and trained for two months in Chennai before moving into advertising.

Theatre and film

He trained with the acting coach Hansraj Siddhia from 1981 to 1983 and was mentored by Alyque Padamsee, appearing in plays and in television serials such as Mahatma vs Gandhi, in which he played Gandhi. He moved to screen acting in 2000, after commercials for Fanta, Ambuja Cements and CEAT. His role in Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003) earned a Filmfare nomination, and for 3 Idiots (2009) he won the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor. He has appeared in over 100 films, according to Wikipedia, and has hosted the IIFA Awards.

Behind the camera

He launched the production house Irani Movietone in 2019 and directed his first film, The Mehta Boys (2025), which he co-wrote with Alexander Dinelaris and which is on Amazon Prime Video. In 2020 he began a screenwriting masterclass called Spiral Bound, which Wikipedia says has completed more than 500 sessions.

A note on sourcing

Most of the pre-film story comes from his own interviews, and the figures vary slightly between them, for example for the shop and the age at which he left the Taj. This article uses the points that agree.

Sources

*Cover photo: Laura Lee Dooley, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).*