As you head to Walkeshwar from Chowpatty, a shop on the right with a bright red board and intricate metal work is sure to catch your attention. 'Manav's Marvel' stocks all types of marble, wooden, bronze and cast iron products, vases and paintings. If you're a connoisseur of antique things, you'll simply fall in love with this place, what with the sheer number of choices that are available all under one roof.

Manav's Marvel was opened earlier this year and has managed to make a quite a niche for itself in Bombay. The response has been rather encouraging. Owned by Ebraheem Jetha and Harresh Mehta, the shop stocks only things imported from Italy and Oriental countries. Every item is hand-sculpted and made from original, solid Italian marble. The spacious store has plenty of beautiful sculptures and paintings to keep you occupied for at least a couple of hours!

Italian sculptures from Carrara by artists like Crosianini, Aino Felici and Studio Gaoltieri are available here. You will also find gorgeous Murano glass products made in Venezia by artists like Simone Cenedese and Studio Rosin. The Italian bronze sculptures come all the way from Arterame in Venezia.

The unique point about this store is that it deals only with sculptures of artists who are alive, so that customers are assured of getting only the original work. Ebraheem buys sculptures directly from the artists. "I travel a lot, develop contacts, and visit a lot of museums, that's how I get an idea about all my products. I simply pick up whatever I like, it doesn't have to be too expensive or too cheap," says this shy gentlemen who belongs to a family whose main business is demolition and construction.

In 1989, the Taj Group of Hotels� Ajit Kerkar approached him and asked Noon to become a partner in their frozen foods business in New York. �Kerkar and I went to New York and set up this beautiful frozen foods company in Queens opposite La Guardia Airport. JRD Tata himself came to inspect it. The idea was the frozen food company would supply the Taj Group�s nine satellite restaurants in the US. We called the company Shamiana Foods. But we were ahead of our time, at least by 20 years, and the business flopped. I wrote off my losses in 1983, the Taj struggled for a couple of years more, then sold out. And I came back to UK and began looking for an opportunity in the food business.�

However it was his love for art, history and statues, which made him venture out in a relatively unknown market. He started out by having a wholesale store and opened Manav's Marvel at Walkeshwar, which is a retail store, last January. Loads of albums, containing pictures of a variety of cast iron garden furniture, Oriental porcelain vases, animals, abstract and Buddha statues, clocks, marble and granite sculptures and fountains and paintings by Indian artists are stacked up on Ebraheem's desk for customers to browse through. You can give an order if you want to create your own design, Ebraheem is more than happy to oblige. Expansion to other metros in the country is in the pipeline, he says with a smile.