By Commodore (retired) Najeeb Anjum for The Dawn, Pakistan

For 36 years now India’s first field marshal has been the icon of heroism.

“ALL QUIET ON THE EASTERN FRONT”, the melodious message continued ringing in the ears across West Pakistan (present-day Pakistan) by the state controlled media even on December 16, 1971 — a date which will live in infamy.

It is a reminder of the failure of leadership at the time as exemplified by Yahya Khan and his coterie in their handling of the worst crisis the country ever faced.

The Indo-Pak war of 1971 culminated in the creation of Bangladesh. Ironically, General Yahha Khan, Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Army (re-designated as COAS in 1972) and President of Pakistan at the time of independence was a staff officer at Military Operations Directorate as a major and General SAM Manekshaw, the COAS of the Indian Army was posted as GSO-I as a Lt-Col. It was ordained that these two erstwhile compatriots would fight a full scale war against each other on 1971. Manekshaw showed uncommon ability to motivate his forces, coupling it with a mature war strategy and the war ended with Pakistan’s unconditional surrender.

Read the rest of this entry »

Shenaz Treasurywala on love and her banjaran life, in conversation with Riya V Anandwala.

There’s been talk that you’re being replaced by Perizaad Kolah on The Great Indian Laughter Challenge.. true?
False. In fact, I’m filling in for Perizaad who’s on maternity leave.

You came back to television after a long hiatus.. with a Hindi show. Was it difficult?
Nahi, meri Hindi kaafi sudhar gayi hai. See, I don’t have a problem with Hindi. Are you asking me this because I’m a Parsi? Well, if Punjabis can have a Punjabi accent and Gujaratis a Gujju one, why can’t I have a Parsi accent?

Read the rest of this entry »

Former Minorities Minister and member National Assembly Minocher Bhandara (popularly known as M.P.Bhandara) passed away here on Sunday. His one leg and a wrist was broken in an accident on April 23 and was admitted to Shifa Hospital on May 7. He was travelling in the car with his Chinese friends, when a bus coming from the opposite direction hit the car.

Minoo was an active representative of the Minority community and a Parsi by faith. In the Assembly of which he was a Member until last year, he was known for stickler for rules. As a Private Members he introduced a Private Members Bill seeking the Quaid Azams speech of August 11, 1947 made in the first Constituent of Assembly to be incorporated in the countrys Constitution. Bhandara wrote a number articles on parliamentary procedure as well as a monograph on how Members should conduct themselves in the Parliament. He also wrote a number of articles for English language newspapers.

Speaker National Assembly Fehmida Mirza and Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi have condoled the sad demise of Bhandara, who they said, was a renowned leader, politician and former Member of the National Assembly. Business Recorder, 2008

A “Tower of Silence” is the place where Zoroastrians laid their dead to rest in the life-giving power of the sun.

Zarathustra is the ancient Persian prophet who founded Zoroastrianism 3500 years ago. The ancient creed which was the dominant religion during the Sassanid era greatly influenced other religions and is still practiced worldwide, especially in Iran and India.

The followers of Zarathustra consider death a temporary triumph of evil over good. They believe a dead body is impure and the evil spirit will therefore enter anything exposed to the corpse.

All creation and natural elements are deemed sacred in Zoroastrianism and followers are prohibited from defiling the sky, earth, water, plants, animals, man, and fire.

Read the rest of this entry »

NCM’s pill for falling Parsi numbers: no family planning

CITHARA PAUL

Posted online: Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 0034 hrs

New Delhi, June 13: Concerned about the dwindling population of the Parsi community in the country, the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) has come up with a religious concoction containing a heavy dose of morality to reverse the trend: timely marriages, joint family life and a big no to family planning.

What has made the NCM sit up and take note is its recent survey which has found that the average number of births per year in the Parsi community has never crossed 200 since 2001. If it was 223 in 2001, it came down to 174 in 2006, said the survey, putting the Parsi population at a mere 60,000.

Those under 14 in the community are only 12% while those above 60 are 30%. “The survey results do not augur well for the Parsi community. Their dwindling numbers are a cause for concern, and the NCM is ready to do everything possible to reverse this trend,” NCM chairperson Mohammad Shafi Qureshi told The Indian Express.

According to the survey, late or no marriages, falling fertility, increasing divorces and migration are the major reasons behind the decline in the Parsi population. The NCM has sent survey copies to community leaders, appealing them to coordinate with the commission in reversing the trend.

“We have asked the community leaders to convince their people, especially the youth, that the community is on the verge of extinction and that the trend has to be reversed at any cost,” said Dr Mehroo D Bengalee, a Parsi member in the NCM.

“If the trend goes on like this, we are finished as a community.”

The root cause of this fall in birth rate, according to Bengalee, is “late and no marriages”. The increasing incidence of separation and divorces is also a reason behind the fall in fertility rate in the Parsi community.”Increasing urbanisation, westernisation, economic independence and emancipation of women are the reasons for this phenomenon,” she said. “Also responsible is the fact that more and more Parsi women are marrying outside the community.”

The commission is planning to organise awareness programmes to make the community members realise the threat they are facing, Said Bengalee, former vice-chancellor of Bombay University: “We are planning to approach community panchayats to convince the people about the immediate need to opt for a different approach towards life.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Shehnaz Treasurywala the new host of The Great Indian Laughter Challenge has her task cutout as she will be seen anchoring a Hindi show for the very first time!! But what exactly motivated her to anchor this rib-tickling comedy show? Well, the answer is right there in the question.

As Shehnaz very neatly puts it, “I love comedy and have always had a secret desire to do stand-up myself. I am not a bathroom singer, but I can be classified as a bathroom comedian… “.

Giving out a big secret, the Parsi beauty says, “When I was abroad, one of my favorite recreation places happened to be the Comedy Clubs. I love stand-up and have watched some of the best comedians of the world on stage in NYC and LA. Laughter Challenge is the show that has brought stand-up in India. So can I ever think of a bigger platform than this?

When asked whether she is taking any steps to polish her Hindi accent, Shehnaz states, “I speak decent Hindi. Though I wanted to prepare myself better for the big task ahead, I have not got time at all after I returned to India from LA.. Let’s see how things go about!!”.

Well, you never know, as Shehnaz, the bathroom comedian might just turn out to be the trump card of this season’s Laughter Challenge!!

The ancient Persian capital of Persepolis, in a vast and arid plain 40 miles from Shiraz in southern Iran, is the greatest ancient site between the Holy Land and India. This is a rare place that actually exceeded my high expectations. My main regret in traveling through Iran on my first visit (back in 1978) was not trekking south to Persepolis. Now, visiting with my public television film crew 30 years later, I’ve finally experienced it.

We arrived after a long day of driving — just in time for that “magic hour” before the sun sets. The light was glorious, the stones glowed rosy, and all the visitors seemed to be enjoying a special “sightseeing high.” Iranians were savoring this reminder that their nation was a huge and mighty empire 2,500 years ago.

Iranians visit this grand ceremonial headquarters of the Persian Empire with a great sense of pride. For an American, it would be like having Monticello, Cape Canaveral, and Mount Rushmore all rolled into one magnificent sight. The soul of Iran is Persia, which predates the introduction of Islam here by a thousand years.

Persepolis was the capital of the Persian Empire back when it reached from Greece to India. For nearly 200 years, from 518 B.C. to 333 B.C., this was the dazzling home of the “King of Kings.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Despite a 2006 ban on veterinary diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory drug for cattle, vultures are fast vanishing from India. So quick is the decline in numbers that experts say three species could be extinct in less than 10 years.

The oriental white-backed vulture, once thought to be the commonest bird of prey in the world, has lost 99.9% of its population since 1992, according to a study by the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). This makes it the fastest declining wild bird in history, a demise more rapid than that of the dodo. Numbers of long-billed and slender-billed vultures have together fallen by almost 97% in the same period.

Scientists say this is because diclofenac, which causes kidney failure in these birds, is still in use in the country.

“It’s been over two years since the ban but there is still a lot of old stock. Also, a version of diclofenac developed for human use is being utilised by farmers to treat livestock. Because it’s an effective drug, vets and farmers are just buying it from pharmacies for use. When vultures feed on dead cattle that have been administered this drug, they die,” says Vibhu Prakash of BNHS who led the study with colleagues from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

Read the rest of this entry »

Remembering Russy Karanjia, who died yesterday, exactly 67 years after he founded Blitz, India’s greatest tabloid weekly

The story of the life of Russy Karanjia is intimately tied up with the story of Indian journalism. He displayed a penchant for writing from his college days, when he took keen interest in contributing to, and editing, college magazines. It was, therefore, quite natural for him to choose journalism over careers his family pressed him to enter — civil service, engineering and teaching.

His entry into the profession speaks volumes for the daring and initiative he brought to bear on everything he did. After college, he wrote letters to The Times of India’s Readers’ Column. He would send replies to those letters, which, were also published, sparking controversies. The letters were sent in different names.

When he narrated this to Ivor Jehu, then Assistant Editor at the Times, at a dinner party, Jehu promptly offered him a job in the paper.

At the Times, he was known for the dashing style and daring nature of his reports. One of his biggest scoops was the proceedings at a top-secret meeting of Indian maharajas at the Chamber of Princess in the Taj Mahal Hotel, Bombay. He attended the meeting by managing to look every inch a prince himself and fooling all potentates present. He got Rs 1,000 for the story, a princely sum in those days.

Read the rest of this entry »

Community treasures

The more popular spot off Hughes Road might be a city bookstore but a rewarding experience awaits the curious at the Khareghat Memorial Hall, in the Khareghat Colony a few metres away.

A lonely, uniformed caretaker sits like a weary guardian at the entrance of the Framji Dadabhoy Alpaiwalla Museum–a capsule-like gateway into the past of one of the city’s foremost communities, the Parsis.

Inside, Persian antiquities, Chinese porcelain, European glassware, iconographic material, coins, stamps and old picture postcards line up like ignored concubines of the past.

You’d think the man outside is as old as the museum itself. Not so. Inaugurated in 1952 after the death of its founder Framji Dadabhoy Alpaiwalla, whose persistent efforts persuaded the Parsi Panchayat to fund and administer a Parsi museum, the collection today includes contributions from various prominent Parsi families, the archaeological finds and additions made by Nivedita Mehta, curator of the present-day museum.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ruins of a Zoroastrian fire temple in western Iran.

A joint Iranian-Polish team has started excavations at the site of the Azar Barzin Mehr fire temple in Sabzevar, northeastern Iran.

Iran’s Archeology Research Center and a team from Warsaw University are studying the temple, a quadric-arch.

Archeologists will work to figure out the plan and elevations of the building as well as the cultural elements of the area.

Early studies led to the discovery of a dual-purpose space built in the heights near the temple and used as an ablution room.

The group is also studying the firebox and the main hall, in which worshippers circumambulated the sacred fire.

Azar-Barzin Mehr is one of the three important Zoroastrian fire temples belonging to the Sassanid era and was used by farmers and villagers.

Zoroastrianism is the religion ascribed to the ancient Persian prophet, Zarathushtra (Zoroaster), who lived 3500 years ago.

The road to Parsi priesthood is arduous indeed. So while their pals indulge in games of cricket, football and other boyish pastimes…

The road to Parsi priesthood is arduous indeed. So while their pals indulge in games of cricket, football and other boyish pastimes, our lads spend time with senior priests learning prayers and rituals.

After the navjote (initiation) ceremony is performed, a child born to priestly families is taken under the wing of elderly priests of an agiary (fire temple) to be ordained navar. This title however does not permit all ceremonies to be performed. For that there is a higher step called martab.

Twenty-four days are required to achieve the first milestone. Initially nine days are spent at the agiary in a state of semi-isolation. Families are allowed to visit but not allowed to touch them as they have had ritual purification baths called bareshnuum given by two priests on the first day itself. This bathing routine has a gap of a couple of days when there is no bath at all and then, on the fourth day, another bath with a short ceremony is given. Brushing of teeth is not allowed and only salt water gargles are permitted.

Read the rest of this entry »

That’s what Parsis will do on Pateti today, a day before celebrating Navruz.

If you plan to wish your Parsi neighbours “Happy Pateti” on Saturday, don’t. That is, unless, you believe that penitence is a joyful event. Wait till Sunday (August 20) instead, and wish them a “Happy Navruz”.

Many non-Parsis recognise Pateti as the Parsi New Year. But, in fact, Pateti is New Year’s Eve, the last Gatha (day of ‘shraddh’) spent in remembrance of one’s ancestors. Pateti is also a day of thanksgiving for the joys and sorrows of life. It is a time to offer “patet” (repentance), to atone for what is not in consonance with good thoughts, good words and good deeds.

Parsis atone in style — with new clothes and flowers but also prayers and charity. They reward their patet with some delicious pilaf dal, sali boti, and custard feast at the end of the day. Fravashis (souls), goes the Parsi belief, rejoice in delectable scents and pretty surroundings.

In the five days that precede Navruz, fire and incense burn day and night in the prayer room. Fresh flowers in consecrated silver vases, one for each ancestor remembered, are placed on white-marble-topped tables. Flowers conjoined with light, oil lamps, sandalwood fire and burning of incense creates a virtual paradise to welcome visiting fravashis. The more orthodox Parsis resign from worldly affairs and engage in lengthy prayers. Staunch adherence to precepts enjoins one to abstain from cutting hair, shaving and paring nails for these five days.

Nails and hair are doctrinally seen as nasu (impure creation). Navruz is New Year’s Day, a time for expansive rejoicing. For most Zoroastrians in India, Navruz falls in August.

original article here

Bapsi Sidhwa has become well-known as the author of the novel Cracking India, which was made into the 1998 movie ‘Earth’, directed by Deepa Mehta. She, however, has been around for a lot longer than that. As more than one reviewer has pointed out, her first book The Crow Eaters was first published in 1978, a full year before Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. She was born in 1938 in Karachi, Pakistan, into the Parsi Zoroastrian community but later moved to Lahore and grew up there. All her subsequent work, which includes nonfiction (with the City of Sin and Splendour : Writings on Lahore, 2006, being the latest) reflect her identity and experience as a Parsi, a woman and as somebody who witnessed the 1947 Partition of India at close quarters. Ahmede Husain recently talked with her via emails

hmede: Does your background as a Parsi Zoroastrian influence your identity as a writer?

Sidhwa: It certainly does: it has formed my habits, my thoughts, my values, and I have fun portraying my community, as in Crow Eaters. No matter where they are the Parsis are a minority, and the tension this creates compells one to express feelings, ideas, politics etc. Being a Parsi also can also make a writer a more objective observer perhaps.

Read the rest of this entry »

Saturday was a big day for actress Perizaad Zorabian as the actress got married with her longtime boyfriend Boman Irani. No not the actor Boman but an estate developer based in Mumbai. The couple got married in a typical Parsi way.

The wedding reception which happened at Taj Lands End was a very private affair. The guest includes Amitabh Bachchan, actor Boman Irani, Shabana Azmi, Poonam Dhillon, Suchitra Pillai, Jugal Hansraj and Ashish Chaudhary with wife Shamita Bangargi. Hubby Boman’s special guests included the Hiranandanis, Kishore Bajaj and the Rahejas.

Original article here

I’m not Semi Girebaal because I’m a Bawa!

Cyrus Sahukar’s second season of spoof has begun, but he has his serious moments as well … despite being a Parsi, he says!

With all due respect to Simi Garewal, we think the spoof on her show ‘Semi Girebaal’ is more entertaining than Simi’s original ‘Rendezvous’. And Semi aka Cyrus Sahukar should feel proud about achieving what Simi never could. Making your sides split till you can laugh no more. Simi, that gracious lady, of course can evoke a smile out of you. But we’re not talking about Simi Garewal over here. This is about Cyrus Sahukar, the other funny man on MTV, who you must’ve seen a hundred times on your television screens, dressed in hilarious costumes when he’s not doing something crazier with the other Bawa on the channel, Cyrus Broacha.

Read the rest of this entry »

MONTHS after Lakshmi Mittal took over European steel giant Arcelor in the face of stiff competition and a hostile campaign that bordered on racism, another Indian is bracing to deliver a steely punch.

The differences between the two are many. Mittal is India-born, but has his global headquarters in Amsterdam, the proverbial prodigal returning home. But Tata is a very Indian venture, steeped in Indian corporate traditions.

And while Mittal was an acknowledged steel giant long before it got Arcelor, Tata, despite nine decades of steel-making, remains a David out to take on Corus, Europe’s Goliath.

Tata pioneered steel production in British India, emerging as a major supplier during the two world wars and after. But its steel base is modest, an annual seven million tonnes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Starting over a century ago and against considerable odds, the Tatas virtually single-handedly built Indian industry.

Theirs was the country’s first Indian-owned textile mill, India’s national airline and its first integrated steel plant.

Ratan Tata: Chairman Tata and Sons

Today, Tata Group bestrides the Indian corporate scene with billion dollar divisions in software services, cars, hotels and, of course, steel.

With revenues of $21bn last year and profits of more than $2bn it is at the forefront of an aggressive buying spree by corporate India.

Article continues

In the last six years Tata Group has spent more than $5bn buying a score of companies across the globe, taking on competitors and beating them by transforming its operations at home and plugging it into the world economy.

Buying Corus would be the biggest takeover of a foreign company by an Indian corporate.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tenaz Dubash, a documentary film maker has launched her latest project “Zoroastrians Today”

Her website informs

This hour-long documentary will focus on the assimilation of the Zoroastrian community into North America. The film will highlight the challenges faced by members of this ancient Persian religion today. By documenting the personal stories of individual Zoroastrians, we will shed light on this little known but highly successful community, enabling others to appreciate the religion’s rich history and heritage. These personal, character-driven, stories will underscore the challenges facing many immigrant groups in the 21st century and will follow the assimilation process of a small group into a wider social setting. What beliefs have the Zoroastrians doggedly held on to? What have they been forced to discard? Will the followers of the world’s oldest monotheistic religion be able to hold on to this claim 50 years from now - as their numbers rapidly decline?

These are some of the central questions that this film will attempt to answer.

Having watched her earlier documentary, “In the footsteps of our forefathers, I am looking forward to seeing this documentary. Parsi Khabar will be present at a press screening of the same this Friday.

We will reserve our judgement till we see the film

You can see a preview of the film by clicking on the image below

click to see preview

New things are happening here at Parsi Khabar. First and foremost we have our own domain. Parsi Khabar now resides at www.ParsiKhabar.net

The establishment of its own domain was something that was on the backburner for a long time, but somehow was forced onto the front burner this week. All links and trackbacks will work from the old wadias.in address. So will all google searches etc. Readers can be assured that even though dwellings have changed, you will get the same high quality of reporting and news about Parsis, as before.

The second big announcement is the morphosis of Parsi Khabar into a collaborative blog. We welcome our two new resident bloggers Shirrin and Mehernaaz. They will accompany Arzan in churning out more updates, stories, and analysis.

Shirin Kumaana-Wadia, is an architect practising and residing in New York City. Mehernaaz Sam Wadia is a practising lawyer in Bombay and calls the city home. Parsi Khabar welcomes them with much fanfare, and looks forward to a plethora of posts from them.

There are also some collaborative opportunities in the very near future, and a few guest bloggers joining the ranks from time to time. We will make the announcement on that, as they materialize. So keep on antennae tuned out and read on.

If you like what you read, and don’t want to miss out on anything, there is a new nifty way to do so.

On the top of the page you will see a link that says “Subscribe”.

Or click here to go to the page directly.

Go to that page and follow instructions. Once you fill in the text box, you will be sent an email for confirmation.

And from then on, you shall be subscribed to all articles on the blog.

The procedure is similar if you get sick and tired of what you read here, and that day may never come…and so if you want to un-subscribe, do the same thing.

Of course it goes without saying that these email addresses shall never be used for any other purposes.

30 per cent of Parsi community single, ditto above 60 years of age

Three marriages in three years.

N.F. Tankariwala, the lone Parsi marriage registrar in the city, has little work. Had registration of marriages been his sole vocation, he would have been reduced to penury long ago. Thankfully, the man in his 40s has a business to run, besides issuing a rare marriage certificate.

The Parsis had settled in Calcutta in the mid-18th Century. As recently as the early-1980s, there were about 1,600 of them. The number has now dwindled to just 700. The total Parsi population in India is 65,000.

Tankariwala, who made Calcutta his home about 20 years ago, is also a member of the West Bengal Minorities Commission. He took charge as the Parsi marriage registrar just over three years ago and cooled his heels for a year.

In the next two years, however, three couples came his way to register their marriages. The registrar issues a certificate after a priest solemnises the union of two Parsis. No certificate is issued if either partner is non-Parsi.

Read the rest of this entry »

Namibian -
Windhoek,Namibia

… Followers of the minority Parsi
faith depend on vultures for disposal of their corpses, considering the burial
or burning of human remains to defile the …
 

The idea of Dimple’s
character is to annoy the audience and she …
IndiaFM - Bombay,India
… The
backdrop of this movie seems Parsi. Is it a Parsi movie? It’s not
at all a parsi movie. I mean the context is of the parsi family.
…
 

nlnews@archant.co.uk

15 March 2006

THE boss of an Archway curry house is helping spice up a new campaign to save India’s vultures from extinction.

Cyrus
Todiwala, who owns The Parsee, in Highgate Hill, is helping promote the
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) initiative - which
aims to persuade the Indian government to ban the use of diclofenac.

Zoroastrians use Internet dating to rescue religion

MUMBAI, India — After trying for four years to have a baby, Khorshed Bulsara called on her fellow Zoroastrians for help. She tapped into a new fertility clinic whose mission is to save one of the world’s oldest religions.

Her doctor waved off concerns that Parsis, as Zoroastrians are known in India, may suffer fertility problems linked to generations of inbreeding within a tiny and highly insular community. She put Ms. Bulsara through a battery of tests, prescribed fertility drugs and began an expensive program of in vitro fertilization.

To defray costs, a local Parsi organization and anonymous Parsi donors gave the couple about $2,500.

The investment paid off. In September, Ms. Bulsara delivered Parsi triplets. “There is a way to fulfill one’s dream of having a beautiful family through the wonders of technology and the undoubted power of prayers,” said her husband, Khushro Bulsara.

There are fewer than 200,000 Zoroastrians in the world, experts say. Most are in India and Iran, the religion’s birthplace. The numbers are clearly dwindling in India. According to the 2001 census — the latest figures available — India’s Parsi population had fallen to 69,601 from 76,382 a decade earlier.

Read the rest of this entry »

One wonders how many intelligent people in Iran, or among the Iranians in intelligent exile, wish that Islam had never arrived, that “gift” from far more primitive people, the gift that for the Iranians keeps on giving — giving trouble, pain, anguish, mental desarroi. How many secretly would wish they could tow their own country out to sea somewhere, away from the Arabs and the other Muslims, adopt Zoroastrianism or Christianity or nothing at all but the cult of poesy (Sa’adi, Hafiz, Firdowsi, Omar Khayyam) and let Persians, as they see it, be Persians?

Read entire article here

Residents of Kakad Estate at Worli, where 73-year-old Adi Kurshetji was murdered in May 2003, on Friday recalled the stormy years when the old Parsi gent and the woman held guilty of his murder lived in their midst.

Many residents had gathered in the building’s compound adjoining a busy street after hearing of Geeta Soni’s suicide in the sessions court following the judgment which convicted and sentenced her to life imprisonment.

Some remembered her as a passionate animal lover who often clashed with other residents in the building on the issue.

“She had made her house a mini-zoo. She kept around 40 cats, dogs, parrots, etc. Keeping so many animals in a residential building is against the rules of the animal welfare board. She would feed them in the corridors and all the places where children played,” a resident said. Soni lived alone with her mother Sharda in flat B/6.

Entire article here

Geeta Soni, who conspired to kill her 72-year-old foster father Adi Kurshedji along with her husband and mother, broke down on hearing the verdict. When she was being taken to jail from the court, she suddenly jumped from the third floor of the court and died on the spot, police said. Soon after the incident, police cordoned off the area and were engaged in making a panchnama at the site.

Entire article here

Sooni Taraporewala, prolific screen writer and photographer, writes about the time SALAAM BOMBAY was nominated for the Oscars.

This was in the days before the media explosion in India, so nobody was heralding us, betting on our chances, praying for us to win. Except for family and friends, I don’t think anybody even knew or cared.

April 29, 1989. We are stuck in an endless traffic jam of stretch limos. Our white chariot with the Indian flag flying crawls towards the Shine Civic Auditorium in the blazing Los Angeles afternoon sun.

The Salaam Bombay contingent is a motley gang - Mira, the producers, Mira’s parents and others from the crew - the men in tuxedos and bow ties. This was also in the days before the Indian designer boom.. so Mira is in a sari worn Gujarati style and I am in a put-together ensemble ­ Banjara/Bombay raasta chic.

Read entire article here

Related post: The Oscars 17 years ago.

Surat, February 14: A huge piece of land measuring 2.06 lakh square metres sold for just Rs 3 crore when its market value is Rs 147 crore? The issue has become a bone of contention among Parsis in the city, with one group alleging that the huge difference in the value of the land could have been utilised for the community’s welfare.

The land in question is at Vanta village in Chhoryasi taluka and belongs to Surat Parsi Panchayat. According to Parsee Zoroastrian Men’s Assembly of Surat (PZMAS), the group that has raised the issue, the land was sold to builders of Ambaji Corporation two years back.

Read the rest of this entry »