Parsi Khabar

By Khushwant Singh / Hindustan Times As I read Fali Nariman’s memoirs Before Memory Fades, an autobiography (Hay House), I kept thinking about Nani Palkiwala who I had the privilege of befriending during my years in Bombay. Both men were Parsis from the middle class families with modest means. Both rose to the top of [...]

Its authors sought to dismiss the June 1975 Emergency as an event of no consequence in four famous words: “not a dog barked”. The bench and the bar, which are regarded as the fair and fearless custodians of the fundamental rights of citizens were ridiculed as spineless. Coincidentally, on the 35th anniversary of the Emergency [...]

Three Zoroastrians (Parsis) have dominated our jurisprudence through the last four decades: Nani Palkhivala, Soli Sorabjee and Fali Nariman. Fali Nariman lets memory strike its own patchwork path, and presents his final case on the Bhopal tragedy By Mani Shankar Aiyar / Outlook India This is of a piece with what this community, given refuge [...]

“Death and time are like two clowns,” Shapur Irani, the patriarch of Dahanu Road, tells his grandson, Zairos. “They play pranks only they find funny.” By Kate Wallace / Telegraph-Journal It’s true. Besides the leavening effect of the antics of Aspi Irani, Shapur’s son and Zairos’ father, there’s not much humour in Anosh Irani’s heavy-hearted [...]

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 a Jain temple, one side [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 identifies [...]

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 year, I telephoned [...]