Muscat: Pradip Asher was just one years old when he came to Oman. He came with his mother and kaki (his father’s brother’s wife) by ship from Bombay. But Muscat wasn’t the same then, in 1970, when they made the city their home.
Asher’s father and uncle were working with the Khimji Ramdas Company then. “We stayed inside the Muscat Gate, which is now Muscat Gate Museum, where even the embassy of India used to operate then,” says Asher. “The construction work at the Port Mina Qaboos was going on then, and the place only had workers and staff working in the port project. My mother and kaki, started a tiffin service to cater to those people. Every day, at 12 noon these workers would come to our house to fill their tiffin sets with rotis (Indian flat bread), dal and some subji. I studied till class ten in a school run by Khimji Ramdas, in Wadi Kabir, which is now Indian School Wadi Kabir,” he continues.