Parsi Khabar

You don’t become an award-winning author without having a flair for words, and London-based Ardashir Vakil is certainly a good example of that. His impeccable sentences, tinged with the lilting accent that reveals his Mumbai origins, sound like they are plucked from a book.

Not surprising, as words and sentences are kind of an obsession [...]

A book review of Alice in Bhuleshwar: Navigating A Mumbai Neighbourhood by Kaiwan Mehta
While wandering through the streets of Mumbai’s old town, Kaiwan Mehta comes across a Venetian-style bust of a 19th century Bombay ‘merchant prince’ atop the Swadeshi Market along Kalbadevi Road.
A few streets way, he discovers [...]

Use of the word ‘ghati’ in his book Breathless in Bombay has landed first-time author Murzban Shroff in trouble, with an activist claiming that it “lowers the reputation and image of Maharashtrians in the eyes of non-Maharashtrians”.
While 47-year-old Shroff, a Mumbai-born Parsi, maintains that the term is not aimed against any community, activist Vijay [...]

We are very happy to inform you about the soon to be published Monograph on one of India’s foremost architects Nari Gandhi.
There is a personal connection here for me. The author of the monograph is Prof. H, Masud Taj my professor at Rizvi College of Architecture from 1992 to 1997,  and a dear friend. [...]

Cyrus Mevawalla a.k.a Cyrus Moore is a UK-born Parsi whose first book was recently published in the UK.
City of Thieves abstract:
Nic Lamparelli works for a leading US investment bank in London. Starting at the bottom, he rises rapidly through the ranks to reach the pinnacle of his profession. Even at the top, he [...]

The employees of McLean & Eakin Booksellers are so taken with Thrity Umrigar’s stories that they pooled frequent-flier miles to bring her to a July 9 reading at their Petoskey, Mich., store.
"She’s been a staff favorite for a very long time," says Leighanne Law. "A few of us have had a chance to meet [...]

Recently I came across this old interview that Sooni Taraporewala did on NPR Radio here in the US. This was on the launch of the second edition of her book Parsis: The Zoroastrians of India.
You can listen to the interview here.
All Things Considered, December 12, 2004
You may know the work of Sooni Taraporevala from [...]

The irremovable stains of blood marked on the dead body of an innocent girl compelled her to pen her thoughts and that’s when it all started.
Bapsi Sidhwa, noted writer and Pakistani-based American national, sharing her thoughts with a limited gathering of journalists at the residence of Constance Colding Jones, Cultural Attache, US Embassy, on Saturday, [...]

The remarkable perseverance of Iran’s cultural identity
By David Morgan
Iran is now widely spoken of as a “regional superpower”. That status owes a good deal to the operation of a law that Michael Axworthy mentions in his book, the law of unintended (though in this case, predictable) consequences: the American elimination of its two [...]

Islamic conceptions of heaven and hell began in the seventh century as an early doctrinal innovation, but by the twelfth century, these notions had evolved into
a highly formalized ideal of perfection. In tracking this transformation, Nerina Rustomji reveals the distinct material culture and aesthetic vocabulary Muslims developed to understand heaven and hell and [...]

Poet of the soul
By KEKI N. DARUWALLA
As a poet Kersy Katrak did not get his due, but his poetry had yet to be fully explored and articulated when he died.

Katrak’s poetry blends the serious with the laconic and comic, the spirit with the sexual.

On New Year’s Eve last [...]

Don’t look for cheap thrills in Zubin Mehta’s autobiography
By Rekha DixitI thought it would be hypocritical to write about how good I am, so I’ve been very candid in my autobiography,” said Zubin Mehta before the launch of the English version of his autobiography, The Score of My Life (Roli Books, 201 pages, Rs 395) [...]

The staff of the JN Petit, home to 150,000 titles, do more than just take care of books
If you can’t remember the last time you visited a heritage library, you are not alone. Edged out by modern lending libraries, and threatened by the Internet, Mumbai’s heritage libraries are floundering. Some have been able to get [...]

By ROYA HAKAKIAN
My earliest memories of the Shahnameh, the greatest work ever written in the Persian language, belong to my childhood in Iran. I and other girls in my elementary school recited verses of the epic poem, rounding out our chests and puffing our cheeks in our best effort to strike the pose of peacocks [...]

The Legacy of France in Indian Regional Cuisine
The creation of the famous La Porte des Indes restaurants that sprinkle Europe is as much a love story as it is anything else.
In 1986, Mehernosh Mody hired a young chef, Sherin, as his assistant. They soon were inseparable, and their mutual love for one another and French-Indian [...]