At Tunday Kababi in Chowk, Lucknow, tucked away inside the narrow stretch between Gol Darwaza and Akbari Gate, past Rahim’s nihari-kulcha hole-in-the-wall outlet and shops selling sweetmeats, it’s business as usual. The 109-year-old kabab-and-paratha joint, dishing out the best galawati and shammi kababs, and shirmal parathas in the city, shows no sign of slowing down, not even in the face of a ₹50-crore lawsuit on trademark infringement; a family dispute that has quickly reached the chambers of the Lucknow city court.

Mohammad Usman, the current custodian of the Tunday legacy, which includes the closely guarded family recipe, is unfazed by the attention and speculation. That a near relation, “bua ke bete” (aunt’s son) in fact, went to court last month, after decades of squabbling, to demand the right to use the family brand name hasn’t upset him. Usman, who is in his late 50s, is confident of an out-of-court settlement. “Masla khatam ho chuka hai. Family hai, settle ho jayega (The matter has ended. The family will settle it),” he says.

At the heart of the family matter is a 109-year-old inheritance that can be traced to the royal kitchens of the Nawabs of Bhopal. Legend has it that one of the nawabs, having lost all his teeth, decided to hold a cook-off for baawarchis (chefs) and rakabdars (gourmet chefs) to come up with the softest dish. A plausible tale when you consider the excesses of the rulers of that period — Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula of Awadh spent ₹60,000 every month on his kitchens, the later Mughals employed an army of kitchen staff, including one man to just announce the names of the dishes laid out for the feast.

Haji Murad Ali, a rakabdar of repute in Bhopal, won the competition, pleasing the nawab with his kabab creation — silken patties of minced lamb with 160 spices, which included, some say, even sandalwood powder. Half the spices he used were prescribed by the hakim (physician) to aid digestion. Murad Ali, who had lost one arm when he fell off a roof flying a kite, became ‘Tunday Miyan’ (one-armed chef) and his meat patties, Tunday kabab.

Tunday Miyan moved to Lucknow with his young family by the end of the 19th century. A few years later, son Haji Rias Ahmed, Usman’s father, opened the first Tunday Kababi eatery at Chowk. The family grew and business expanded. In 1996, Usman set up a second shop in the city at Aminabad. By the early noughties, dozens of Tunday Kababi joints had sprung up across Lucknow, managed by near-and-distant members of Tunday Miyan’s family. However, Usman insists that the hole-in-the-wall shop at Chowk, now managed by his 86-year-old father, is the original. For him, few memories of his legendary grandfather remain. “I was very young. I never saw him work. But we were told stories about how he would mix the masalas. How he would chop onions with one arm.”

Sixty-eight-year-old Mohammad Muslim too has a few memories of his grand-uncle, Murad Ali. The plaintiff in the ₹50-crore lawsuit, Muslim believes he has an equal right to the Tunday brand name. “The recipe was handed down to all of us. I grew up in his lap. I am living in his (Tunday Miyan’s) ancestral property,” says Muslim, who runs a rival chain called Lucknow Wale Tunday Kababi. In 2009, Usman took the corporate route with the family business. Tunday Kababi Private Limited was launched, franchisee outlets opened up in Lucknow, Delhi and Bangalore. A spanking new food complex sprouted in Kapurthala, offering not just kabab-and-paratha but full-fledged Awadhi fare. Yet, his business is winding down now. “I can’t maintain the quality everywhere. I have shut down operations in most places, except Kapurthala and Lucknow,” he says. Even Muslim’s Lucknow Wale Tunday Kababi grew wings and branched out to Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Delhi and Mumbai. But Usman dismisses his relative’s ventures. “It’s just a cold drink shop in Lucknow that offers kababs. All Tunday outlets in the city are run by our family members. For nine decades we have not faced any problems,” he says. Usman claims that Muslim was influenced by an external party, “some people whose business is to set up fraudulent lawsuits and dupe people.” After the initial bluster, he claims that Muslim has settled down. The matter, however, is slated for hearing in November.

As a legal precedent, the ₹500-crore empire of Haldiram Bhujiawala also saw a long-drawn, bitter court battle among family members over using the family brand name. First petitioned in 1999, the Haldiram trademark case made the rounds of the Delhi and Calcutta High Courts, and then the Supreme Court. Now, after settlement, the famous trademark has been divided geographically among warring family factions — Prabhuji in Kolkata, Rameswar in Delhi and Bikaji in Bikaner. But Usman and Muslim’s battle has not been that bitter. While the former makes light of the lawsuit, assured that his cousin will come around, the latter bristles that “he has every right” before piping down to say, “of course, we speak every day. There is no problem, we are family.”

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