It was only after I left Bombay that I began to understand some of the people I had grown up around.

I remember learning in America that Zubin Mehta was a Parsi. I had known him as the famous conductor from Bombay, but I had never thought of him as belonging to a particular community. He was simply Zubin Mehta.

Much later, I learned that Freddie Mercury of Queen had been born Farrokh Bulsara and had grown up in a Parsi family. Here was another person whose name I had known for years, now connected to a part of Bombay life that had always been around me.

It made me look back at my childhood differently.

I had grown up in Colaba, at 5 Sheila Mahal, surrounded by people whose names and backgrounds I rarely thought about. One of my closest school friends was Sheriar Irani. There were many Parsi students at Scholar High School. A family friend of my cousins was named Farad. Cusrow Baug, a Parsi residential colony, was not far from my home. There was a fire temple there. Since I was not Parsi, I never went inside.

The Parsis were Zoroastrians whose ancestors had left Persia centuries earlier and eventually established themselves in western India. By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Bombay had become the great center of Parsi life. Parsis were deeply involved in the development of the city — as merchants, shipbuilders, industrialists, professionals, philanthropists and civic leaders.

The Iranis were also Zoroastrians, but their story was different. They came to India in later waves from Iran and became another part of Bombay's Zoroastrian population. Some became especially associated with the tea shops and restaurants that eventually became such a distinctive feature of Bombay life.

I learned about dishes such as dhansak and akuri, and about bun maska and the Irani cafés that had become part of Bombay's everyday landscape.

There was a restaurant called Paradise directly across Shahid Bhagat Singh Road from Sheila Mahal.

Paradise was run by Jimmy and Mehroo, whom I knew as Iranis. I didn't know much about the history of their community. My father sometimes sent me there to bring home two particular dishes: Temptation and Cold Chicken Salad.

For me, this was a small errand. But I remember it vividly.

I would walk across the road to Paradise and give Jimmy the order. Then I would step outside and wait on the sidewalk while they prepared the food.

There was traffic on Shahid Bhagat Singh Road, and I knew I had to be careful when I crossed back. When the food was ready, I would carry the packages across the road, enter Sheila Mahal and take the elevator up to the fifth floor.

The two items from Paradise would supplement the family dinner.

My neighbor Himanshu Roy Dasondi, who lived on the fourth floor, was also fond of the Temptation. I remember the Cold Chicken Salad more clearly. It was topped with a sweet dressing that, to my childhood eyes, seemed almost gelatinous. I had no idea what went into it. I only knew that I loved it.

Years later, after Paradise had closed, I came across material online about the restaurant and about Mehroo. I learned that she had spoken about stirring mayonnaise for hours to create the distinctive flavors that had made Paradise one of the well-known restaurants of South Bombay.

That discovery affected me more than I expected.

The restaurant I remembered simply as the place across the road had a history of its own.

And perhaps that was true of much of the Bombay I grew up in. The people around me, the buildings, the cafés, the communities and the streets all had histories that I was too young to see. They were simply part of my everyday world.

Only after I left did I begin to realize that I had grown up in a kind of paradise—not because everything around me was extraordinary, but because so much of it was there, familiar and unquestioned, waiting for me to discover what it meant.