But, after more than a century, the Lodge itself bears no outward signs of anticipation or fervour. Occasionally, a library member walks in and browses through the old volumes on the shelves. Ganpat, the Lodge’s faithful caretaker keeps a keen eye and lets no one wander around “without proper business.” On most evenings, he says he maintains “a safe distance from the Hall” because schoolgirls come for ballet lessons and male members of the Lodge aren’t allowed to mooch around. Ganpat goes home on Sundays and, though he knows little about theosophy, guards the Lodge devotedly.

The Theosophical Society, a worldwide organisation, was founded in 1875 in New York by Madame HP Blavatsky, a clairvoyant from Russia and Colonel HS Olcott, a retired US Army officer. The Society believes in the brotherhood of man, irrespective of religion and sex, and strives to seek ‘the Truth’ by studying religions, philosophy and science. It came to Mumbai in 1879 and today, the city has seven lodges. The two-storeyed Blavatsky Lodge is home to the Theosophical Library that has over 7,000 books, a hall, a meeting room, a private section for advanced studies, and a co-Freemasonic temple, where the initiation ceremonies are performed.

The Society mainly holds interactive seminars on theosophy.  Book readings and lectures are also devoted to studying its principles. Last month saw excerpts from the book Letters from the Masters being read and a seminar on spirituality and the occult was conducted. The Society also includes the Theosophical Order of Service wing that involves itself in charity, education for the destitute and service to the aged. Most members of the Society are Parsis, which was not always the case earlier. Gujaratis and Maharashtrians were active members till a few decades ago and the number of members was higher. Today, smaller cities have more members than Mumbai’s 400.
Palkhiwala isn’t blind to the changes. “Us old hands have been chugging along and haven’t quite managed to attract new members. But I live in hope. I tell people to attend a seminar here some day — the quality of teachings has not suffered over the years.”

Palkhiwala is joined by eighty-year-old Jal Sanjana,  one of the oldest theosophists in Mumbai. Sanjana fetches a writing pad and hands it over to the Society’s president, DP Sabnis. Sanjana is partially deaf so questions and snatches from the conversation have to be written down on the pad for his perusal. Sabnis scribbles excerpts from the just concluded conversation with Palkhiwala and hands it to Sanjana who reads solemnly, then clears his throat. “Are you worrying about what the future holds for the Society?

Not once have I had sleepless nights fretting about membership — ideas like theosophy, clairvoyance and reincarnation are not meant to attract the majority,” he clarifies. Sanjana adds that the Society is all about ethics — “it cannot be a part of popular culture that will be sought by many.”

Which is why it is not such a huge hit with the youth,  feels Bachu Bharucha, a member since 2000. “The young like a vibe that stimulates. Theosophy isn’t for the impatient,” says Bharucha. This perhaps explains why the Society has not been able to enlist too many members under 40. “Youngsters will invest their time in something that gives them tangible returns, not in something that teaches them how to die and move beyond.”

There are some exceptions though. Sixteen-year-old Kaizad Billimoria, a student at Christ Church School, joined the Society one-and-a-half-years ago. He is bewildered by the fact that the Society is perceived as youth unfriendly. “Theosophy is anything but serious, profound or boring, I have been able to stretch my mind beyond the ordinary,” he explains. “A layperson, for instance, will describe a lotus by citing its scientific name, its shape and colour. Theosophy urges you to look beyond and if you are willing, you will see different stages of our life in the lotus, too. “The Society should be free of misconceptions and publicise itself positively,” he adds.

It isn’t just the number of members that worries the members. The Lodge, a heritage structure, has needed repairs for a long time. Two years ago, minimum repairs were done. Though the hall finds many takers, Sanjana and Palkhiwala are stringent about who rents it — they are clear that only those activities that are supported by the Society’s principles must be encouraged. So no businessmen promoting sales products, no contemporary Hatha Yoga since the Society believes only in Raj Yoga. The hall is only rented out for the ballet classes and for condolence meetings that fetch them Rs1,800 each.

Another ‘battle’ is the one on the family front. Navaz Dhalla, 44, says he often gets snide remarks from people who do not understand theosophy — for them, it is just another place where “people kill time”. It hurts her when she is accused of shirking responsibilities on the home front. “Over time, one learns to take it in stride. After all, theosophy also teaches patience,” she smiles. Palkhiwala overhears this and says that it is all a matter of karma. He talks of a time when members often found partners within the Society and “lived happily ever after.” “And now,” he winks, “there just aren’t enough members to choose from!” he chuckles.

Original article here.

The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) on Thursday celebrated Dr Homi Bhabha’s 99th birth anniversary amidst its Founder’s Day festivities and also marked the beginning of the Homi Bhabha Birth Centenary Year, which will be celebrated till October 30 next year.

The highlight of the function was a live telecast by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from New Delhi, which was beamed to all Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) institutions. The PM also inaugurated six new BARC facilities through video conferencing. These include the multi-stage flash desalination plant and the barge-mounted desalination plant — both in Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu; a new training school at Anushakti Nagar in Mumbai; the Critical Facility for Water Reactors and New Hot Cells Facility— both in Trombay and an Electron Radiation Facility in Khargar, Navi Mumbai.

“It gives me great pleasure to begin these celebrations to enter the centenary year celebrations of Homi Bhabha’s 99th birth anniversary,” said the Prime Minister. “These two sons (Jawaharlal Nehru and Homi Bhabha) were the fathers of our nuclear energy programme,” he added.

The PM also gave away four Lifetime Achievement awards in the national capital to Govind Swarup of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), S R Paranjpe of the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), S L Kati of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) and H S Kamath of the Nuclear Fuel Group. “I congratulate the four distinguished scientists who have been honoured with the Lifetime Achievement awards and wish them more success in the coming years,” said the PM, adding that the nation had come a long way since the inception of TIFR in 1945. “Our scientists and engineers have shown that they can compete with the best in the world,” he said.

The centenary celebrations are expected to continue throughout the year with the different institutions of the DAE holding various events in the year up to the 100th birth anniversary and the year that follows. “We have an apex committee which has a different convener every year to see to the Founder’s Day celebration itself,” said R S Bhalerao, who is the convener this year. “We plan to have a drawing competition for the entire DAE family at some time in January, as Homi Bhabha himself was an artist,” said J N Kayarkar, registrar, TIFR.

A peek into the Parsi bastion in Colaba, which is out of bounds for most Mumbaikars

On Colaba Causeway, there is a place that intrigues the non-Parsis a lot. For over six years, we’ve have gone up and down the Causeway a million times, each time thinking about what goes on within the fortress called Cusrow Baug. A lovely residential sanctuary, the Baug situated across the road from Café Churchill is also a gateway to traditional Parsi ways of life and culture.

Cusrow Baug was built in 1934 after two years of construction. In present day Mumbai, it may seem totally unbelievable, but the Baug covers an area of 84,000 square yards and is home to over 500 families. The houses are all on a rental basis and cannot be sold.

There is a designated trust looking after maintenance of the place. This ensures that the place remains exclusive to the community.

A dedicated website called cusrowbaug.org tells us that self-contained as it is, the Baug has an Agiary named The Seth Nusserwanji Hirji Karani Agiary. It also has a social activities cell which carries out educational initiatives, including religion classes and some scholarships. The Religious Class in the baug is one of the most valuable and dedicated service of the colony to the Parsi community. This is credited to a few dedicated people who have carried out social service for the past 22 years. There is also a full-fledged sports centre called Cusrow Baug United Sports and Welfare League. They have a computer centre and a gymnasium too. However, this website hasn’t been updated since 2004.

For the Parsis, the dwindling numbers of the community is quite a huge concern. Even at Cusrow Baug there aren’t many young people around. No wonder then that it is no less than a festival for them when neighbours fall in love and get married to stay in the Baug forever.

Cusrow Baug remains a place surrounded by mysterious charm. For its residents, it is the best place on earth. For most of us, this haven is out of bounds.

As we all witnessed when it looked like the controversy about Singur, where the Tata Nano was to be manufactured, looked like escalating instead of dying down.

The 70-year-old roared,

“If people say that that we will protect our investments irrespective of anything then they are wrong. I will not bring in my employees to Singur if there is threat of them being beaten up. Tata will do whatever necessary to protect its employees.”

It was a statement, not a threat — a statement that Ratan Tata will not hesitate to execute.

Here are some more inspirational words of wisdom from a titan of India’s business world.

On courage: I am, unfortunately, a person who has often said: You put a gun to my head and pull the trigger or take the gun away, I won’t move my head.

On successful people: I admire people who are very successful. But if that success has been achieved through too much ruthlessness, then I may admire that person, but I can’t respect him.

On leadership: It is easy to become a number one player, but it is difficult to remain number one. So, we will have to fight with a view to remain number one.

On Nano: This project (the Nano) has proven to everyone that if you really set yourself to doing something, you actually can do it.

On the need to think big: We have been. . . thinking small. And if we look around us, countries like China have grown so much by thinking big. I would urge that we all, in the coming years, think big, think of doing things not in small increments, not in small deltas, but seemingly impossible things. But nothing is impossible if you really set out to do so. And we act boldly. Because it is this thinking big and acting boldly that will move India up in a manner different from where it is today.

On risk: Risk is a necessary part of business philosophy. You can be risk-averse and take no risks, in which case you will have a certain trajectory in terms of your growth. Or you can, while being prudent, take greater risk in order to grow faster.

On risk: I view risk as an ability to be where no one has been before. I view risk to be an issue of thinking big, something we did not do previously. We did everything in small increments so we always lagged behind. But the crucial question is: can we venture putting a man on the moon or risk billions of rupees on a really way-out, advanced project in, say, superconductors? Do you restrict your risk to something close to your heart?

On today’s environment: I think it’s a tougher environment from what it was about 15 years ago. The demands are far greater, many of the sectors are moving faster, and technology change is quicker. The luxury of having time to make decisions no longer exists. Decisions need to be taken faster and, unlike in the past, they have to be based on more on information and less on intuition. The impact of wrong decisions is greater today. Furthermore, people today are, if I might say so, more opportunistic, materialistic and rebellious. So you are managing a different type of environment: less protected, less feudal, and more demanding in terms of speed, in terms of technology.

On employees: The way to hold employees today is to make their work and their day-to-day activities in the company exciting enough for them to stay. Not everyone will stay, but I think if we can empower more people and are willing to pass on the responsibility for that, and if people are satisfied and motivated, there’s less chance of them wanting to leave and go to a competitor.

On low-cost products: It should not be, cannot be, that low-cost products come to mean inferior or sub-standard products and services; definitely not. The aim is to create products for that larger segment — good and robust products that we are able to produce innovatively and get to the marketplace at lower costs.

On customers: We should be treating the customer in the same way that we would want to be treated as customers.

On feedback: Market feedback is very important, but it has to be stripped of its colour. You have to be able to strip away the vested interest or the bias that sometimes comes in. You have to view it objectively, not defensively.

On business:Business, as I have seen it, places one great demand on you: it needs you to self-impose a framework of ethics, values, fairness and objectivity on yourself at all times. It is easy not to do this; you cannot impose it on yourself forcibly because it has to become an integral part of you.

On innovation:Barriers to innovation are usually in the mind.

On customers:There was a need to re-focus and look at how your customer sees you, and to pay more attention to what the customer wants rather than what you think she wants. Are you really the most cost effective producer? Are you aggressive enough to grab marketshare? Will you endeavour to dip your toe in the water and do something that you haven’t done before?

On innovation:If you are a little innovative or a little bit of a gambler, and you make a product which is either ahead of its time or has an evolutionary design, or has features that work into a person’s perception, then you have an acceptable product.

On questioning:I kept saying, please question the unquestionable. I tried to tell our younger managers just don’t accept something that was done in the past, don’t accept something as a holy cow. . . go question it. That was less of a problem than getting our senior managers not to tell the younger managers, ‘Look young man, don’t question me.’

On speed:Today, the world does not afford you to luxury of being a slow mover. Nor are there any holy cows. We have to be aggressive, be far-sighted enough to look into the future and we also have to be pragmatic enough to say that if we really are not in a leadership position in a particular business, we should look at exiting that business.

On retirement: I do not want to go out on a wheelchair. You achieved something, it is successful, it’s a nice time to leave because you may not have the luxury of being able to do that (later). And you don’t want ever to have a situation when somebody sort of whispers, when is he going to leave?. . . You don’t want to fade away by hanging in there too long. You would love to go on the back of something that is exciting or a great achievement.

On icons:The kind of company one would want to emulate is one where products and technology are at the leading edge, dealings with customers are very fair, services are of a high order, and business ethics are transparent and straightforward. A less tangible issue involves the work environment, which should not be one where you are stressed and driven to the point of being drugged.

On introspection:All companies need to keep looking at their business definition and, possibly from time to time, to see if that definition needs to be redefined. If you take the example of Tata Steel, they could say that they are a steel company and find themselves in a shrinking market where steel is under threat of being replaced by some other material. The question is: what do we call ourselves? One view was that steel is a material, so can we be a materials company? We don’t have to be in all materials, but can we be in composites, can we be in plastics, laminates, etc? The automotive business needs to think similarly, and so does the chemicals business. We have to keep looking at ourselves and asking: what is our business?

On customer retention:Very often it is said about several companies that they take a lot of pains to make a sale. However, once they get the order, customers cannot even get anyone to answer their calls. I would like the customer to say that the next product he buys will also be a Tata product because of everything that he experienced. That is really what customer retention is about.

On innovation: My outlook on R&D is that it is an absolutely necessary thing for us to do. And I don’t think we are doing enough. The point is not just spending money; it’s how many patents you file, your innovation rate and your product development. . . If today you were to give everybody a mandate that they can spend 3 per cent of their revenue on R&D, assuming they can spare the money, I don’t think many companies would know the what, where and how of spending that kind of money, other than to put up an R&D place and buy lots of equipment.

On customer relationship: Where we have direct dealings with our customers, it is important that, at the middle-management levels, they are shown courtesy, dealt with fairly, and made to feel that they are receiving the attention they deserve. The interface with the customer should be a seamless one.

On risk: There have been occasions where I have been a risk-taker. Perhaps more than some, and less so than certain others. It is a question of where you view that from. I have never been a real gambler in the sense, that some successful businessmen have been. . .

On ethics: What worries me is that the threshold of acceptability or the line between acceptability and non-acceptability in terms of values, business ethics, etc, is blurring.

On success: I would not consider myself to have been tremendously successful or as having failed tremendously. I would say I have been moderately successful because there have been changes.

On survival: The strong live and the weak die. There is some bloodshed, and out of it emerges a much leaner industry, which tends to survive.

On Tata Group: At Tatas, we believe that if we are not among the top three in an industry, we should look seriously at what it would take to become one of the top three players — or think about exiting the industry.

On Tata Group: We were a group that would not work in a particular way for many years and we weren’t fully sensitive to the changing environment around us. So anything that was new, we felt it was better to be where we were, tested and tried, I think, that’s changed.

On Tata Group: Without being critical, it is true that many of our companies had their heads in the sand and were resting on past glories. In the course of time, the view gained ground that we were less nimble than others, more resistant to change and more set in our ways. What we needed to do, of course, was benchmark ourselves against the best, get away from doing things the way we were, and put certain processes in place.

On Tata Group: We should ease out of certain sectors, but do it in a dignified way that protects our employees and all our stakeholders. We should dispassionately look at exiting certain sectors, businesses or companies and embrace new opportunities when they come. It is possible that this strategy may result in a drop in earnings, because when you get into an industry that is still in its gestation period your enterprise is going to suck out cash.

On innovation: Like many of our counterparts and businesses we are not too innovative. That’s fine in the Indian context, but we need to move a lot faster and expend more funds on innovation and technology upgrading in our companies than we are doing.

On new industries: Leapfrogging into new areas did not seem a bad idea because those are areas which nine out of ten people would tend to ignore. And, in all likelihood the government might even encourage such a step. So I decided to explore the frontier industries.

On challenges: If there are challenges thrown across and those challenges are difficult then some interesting, innovative solutions will come. If you don’t have those challenges then, I think, the tendency is go on to say that whatever will happen, will take place in small deltas.

On planning: We never really plan big. We are not in keeping with what is happening around us. When you go to other countries around us you see it visibly that we are just back in time. And yet we have so much to offer.

On commitment: We have to clamp down on deviations from commitments. For ensuring greater commitment to performance, we also need to have a system which rewards performers and punishes those who don’t perform.

On risk: We have is to be less risk-averse. We have been a very conservative house and we have been applauded for our conservatism but today we need to take more risk. We don’t need to be flamboyant or cavalier but we need to be less conservative than we have been.

On the future: One hundred years from now, I expect the Tatas to be much bigger than it is now. More importantly, I hope the Group comes to be regarded as being the best in India. . . best in the manner in which we operate, best in the products we deliver, and best in our value systems and ethics. Having said that, I hope that a hundred years from now we will spread our wings far beyond India.

On resistance: You will probably find the resistance (to change) more from those who haven’t been doing well.

On change: Change is seen to be needed, and fast, so long as it does not affect me. We want to see change but if you suddenly tell me that I am the company that has to go, or has to be cut in half, or three of my businesses have to be hived off, then all of a sudden, the very person who made the noise about change is now saying, ‘You don’t have to do this.’

On resistance: We do have resistance to some of the changes, it is easier not to do, but we have to change in order to be in keeping with the changing times. Our inability to do that effectively will be one major threat.

On globalisation: Global companies are differentiated by their strong global position, global assets, capabilities, brands and their relative resilience to shocks and even to the business cycle.

On globalisation: A company does not become global by simply participating in a certain number of geographic markets. In that sense, it is not a sum of parts. It is its ability to become globally competitive, leverage global opportunities and have the required global capabilities that make it global.

On globalisation: The objective of globalisation is to move towards becoming globally competitive and to expand your market. The globalisation strategy itself could be asset-based, capability-based or opportunity-based. It also includes global employment. It implies an organisation which employs people with no national barriers.

On CEOs: The CEO has to be compassionate, fair, self-critical and humble, and yet have the tremendous drive it takes to make his company the best there is.

On CEOs: It gets a bit dangerous when the CEO has no system and his personality drives the organisation, which he runs like his personal fiefdom. In these circumstances its actually the CEO who is the role model and not the company.

On the ideal CEO: An ideal CEO is not found everywhere. One way to do this is to benchmark him against his targets and against the best performers in his industry, and hope that this does not demoralise him, but, rather, that it makes him strive to do better.

On CEOs: There are many competent professionals in the country who have not been given the chance to operate at CEO levels. If you look around, you see companies run professionally by people who 15 years ago were virtually unknown. Therefore, though there are a lot of managers around, the question is whether you are willing to take a chance with someone you don’t know well.

On CEOs: When I came on to the scene, I was very young in comparison to other CEOs in the group, a number of whom were in their 70s and a couple even in their 80s. I saw ageing CEOs who didn’t leave their offices, seldom interacted with people, never visited the plants and certainly didn’t visit the market place. I felt that it was a very great weakness that we had. So, despite some turbulence, we reintroduced our retirement age and put that into force.

On competition: Foreign investment adds a sense of competition; we should see this as a wake-up call to modernise and upgrade. Companies that don’t will undoubtedly die.

On competition: This fear of competition is something that one needs to break, because it is the single largest element that stands between the true potential of what India can give to the world and where it is today. It’s a mistaken feeling that competition will kill Indian industry. In fact it will make Indian industry much more successful and much more innovative in terms of how it deals with its problems.

On competition: It’s only when you are in a competitive field that you realise competition is the greatest and most exhilarating force you can face as you move forward. If you succeed, there is nothing that pleases you more when you go home at night than to know that you have succeeded against your competitor in a fair and just manner, rather than through devious and underhand means.

On protectionism: We need to move away from the era of protectionism to an era of competitiveness — and by that I mean global competitiveness, not just competitiveness within the country.

On responsibility: Industry needs to be concerned with stopping the flow of citizens to the urban areas and creating livelihoods in the rural areas for them. They need to understand that they have a responsibility that goes beyond just making their products and producing a good bottom line. They have a responsibility that covers the 60-odd per cent of the population that is not industrialised and that is in the rural community.

On corporate duty: In a country like India, in which the government perhaps has done less in the area of creating infrastructure and is now in the process of catching up, I think industry has to take a key role in moving in this direction as we progress.

On India: I am proud of my country. But we need to unite to make a unified India, free of communalism and casteism. We need to build India into a land of equal opportunity for all. We can be a truly great nation if we set our sights high and deliver to the people the fruits of continued growth, prosperity and equal opportunity.

On trust: We do very little amongst ourselves. We trust each other little. Unless we become India Incorporated we may not succeed in becoming a global entity.

On change: My feeling is that in a developing country such as India we should, perhaps, be more active in shedding some of the old baggage and embracing new opportunities. That’s easier said than done, because of people, emotions and an unwillingness to change, or be confronted with the question: why me?

On the vision for India: The vision I have for India in the next decade is of a nation with vastly improved connectivity in communications providing education, personal interaction, e-commerce, and telephony contact for the overwhelming mass of its people. I see our country being connected through major highway networks, thus shrinking the time required to move goods to the marketplace. I see our consumers exercising an unprecedented degree of choice, with the Indian marketplace becoming a vibrantly competitive arena, fully integrated with the world. Equally, I foresee that the ambitions of the Indian entrepreneur will not be confined to domestic boundaries and our immensely valuable human capital will leave its mark in the global marketplace.

On employment: We have to create more jobs, we have to create levels of education, provide basic necessities, drinking water etc. These are the tasks ahead of us. I think that there should be a commitment that this needs to be done, not just statements; but we need to be on the ground and make this happen. Otherwise, we are a tremendous country, with great talent, great raw materials and natural resources; we can be a very successful country.

On India: The country is now universally recognised as a nation on the move and takes its place amongst the successful economies in the region. The future potential is enormous but the country’s destiny is in our hands. The time has come to move from small increments to bold, large initiatives. The time has come to stretch the envelope and set goals which were earlier not seen to be possible. The time has come for performance to be measured and for allocated funds of the government to reach the people for whom they were intended.

On problems: There are solutions for most problems. The barriers and roadblocks that we face are usually of our own making and these can only be demolished by having the determination to find a solution, even contrary to the conventional wisdom that prevails around us, by breaking tradition.

To students: I would hope that you would go in to the world — whichever area you are in — first and foremost, driven by a sense of integrity. . . I would hope that you also have a sense of social responsibility, so that you give back to the people and build the country on the basis of your skills.

On leadership: I would hope that most of you will in fact strive for leadership in a principled manner with values, because that would be the foundation that this country needs to have if it is to take its place in the world.

To management graduates: Most of you I imagine will be deeply engrossed in your careers and I hope that each of you will have a tremendously exhilarating and rewarding life in the business community, but it is not business alone, I would feel that a class like yours would go into the world in India or elsewhere. That you would leave your mark not only amongst your colleagues in industry, but for future generations who would look back on you and look to you at the contribution you have made that lives on after you.

To graduates: I would hope that each of you would lead by example and that each of you would live by the principles that you espouse. . .That you will have a sense of vision, because one of the things that this country has had has been an inability to look into the future, our business leaders have sometimes been followers rather than leaders.

On humility: I would hope that as people who might take an elite position, would be considered amongst the elite in the country, you will always display humility in the manner in which you deal with your fellowmen, both in your company and in the country and you will continue to have passion in the areas in which you will work.

On doubt: On many, many occasions you would have doubts on whether what you are pursuing is the right thing. But if you do believe in what you are trying to do and you pursue it and stay with it in a determined manner, I am quite sure you will succeed.

Complied from rediff.com

Aslaji Bhikhaji Agiary’s trustees are embroiled in a legal battle over control of the temple management and funds

One of the most frequented Parsi agiaries in the city is embroiled in a conflict among its trustees over control of the temple management and funds.

Aslaji Bhikhaji Agiary, which was consecrated on September 7, 1865, is located near Congress House in a lane off Grant Road Station, has an estimated income of over Rs1 crore per year.

The agiary is dedicated to Mithra, and the city’s Parsi community swears by its power to mitigate their problems and fulfil their wishes. However, two sets of agiary’s trustees are fighting over its management before the Bombay City Civil Court.

The litigation has been going around in the courts, the Charity Commissioner’s Office
(CCO) to the Bombay High Court and back to the CCO, from where it has been sent to the civil court.

City judge KP Joshi has an application filed by trustee Erach Master and three trustees, Cyrus Malesar, Adil Shroff and Rusi Kelawala, appointed by him. The CCO had rejected their appointment against the Charity Commissioner, who appointed three new trustees — Katy Baam (ex-Justice of the Bombay High Court), Burjorji Antia (solicitor) and one Hoshang Mehta — on March 27, 2008.

The application has asked the city court to restrain Baam, Antia and Mehta from acting as trustees until the court decides on which set of trustees is legally in charge and entitled to manage the trust properties.

The civil court litigation stems from the CCO rejecting the co-option of Malesar, Shroff and Kelawala on the Agiary Trust Board (ATB) on October 14, 2005, by Master who allegedly posed as the sole remaining trustee.

Master explained his sole trustee position to the CCO saying that of the five original trustees one died (Vakil) and two resigned- Engineer and Mehlii Menesse. In 2001, Master and one Gustad Patel were the remaining trustees according to Master. After Patel also resigned on February 21, 2004 and his resignation was accepted by CCO, Master claimed that he alone remained on the ATB.

CCO held that Mehlii Menesse, one of the original trustees and a member of the Settlor’s family, had not resigned May 12, 1998, as alleged by Master. There were two trustees on board in 2004. CCO’s order stated that the appointment of Malesar, Shroff and Kelawala was made without following due procedure, and was therefore illegal.

Original article here.

But it is fast losing out to ghastly constructions all over the Mcleodganj square, besides competition from the many rival shops.

The last man standing at the Nowrojee mansion is 82-year-old Jimmy Nowrojee. A former banker from Dehradun town, Jimmy is putting up a fight to retain the past glory of the shop.

“I know that I am quite old. My nephews (who are settled in the US) want to close down the shop. But I will not let that happen - at least not during my lifetime,” Jimmy, who lives alone, told IANS here.

One way of keeping up with times is that all daily newspapers and magazines coming to this town are routed through this shop. It is from there that vendors and readers pick them up.

Jimmy took over the reins of the Nowrojee business and property - the property is valued at over Rs.60 million and commercially-minded businessmen have been eyeing it to set up hotels and commercial space - after his brother Nauzer Nowrojee, a institution in himself and a personal friend of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, died in 2000.

In fact, Nauzer was a famous name in his own right, thanks partly to his social work - second only to the Dalai Lama.

“We as a family had the best time of our life here. Besides our house below the shop, we had orchards around this place. Now this place - and we are going through the worst phase,” Jimmy points out in a sad tone as he sits reading a newspaper at the shop counter.

Much of the commercial activity around the location is a result of people cashing in on the tourism boom in this hill town. Thousands of foreigners and Indian tourists visit it annually as it is the abode of the Dalai Lama.

The shop was re-built after a devastating earthquake in Kangra Valley in 1905. Five generations of the Parsi family have lived and done business here after the original Nowrojee and Son general store was set up in 1860.

Much of its business has been taken away by shops in the Mcleodganj market that sell everything from mineral water and pastries and traditional Tibetan crafts to ‘Made in China’ goods. Not many buyers, other than those coming to pick up newspapers and magazines, come to shop here any longer.

But Jimmy is trying to keep the Nowrojee flag flying high.

The inside of the shop is nothing less than an antique museum. The counters, jar containers and some unsold products tell the tale of a bygone era when the shop used to do roaring business.

Among the priceless things still in the possession of the family are newspapers announcing the conquering of Mount Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzin Norgay May 29, 1953. Even the advertising posters of decades-old products are still prominently displayed in the all-wood shop.

The family once used to deal in wines, selling famous brands, but it no longer does so. The ‘wine’ sign on the shop board “Wine and General Merchants” has been covered clumsily by paint.

“At one time, we also used to sell arms and ammunition under licence,” Jimmy says.

Jimmy may be holding fort at the shop for now but behind his bespectacled eyes, the worry about the future of the landmark shows quite clearly.

Original article here.

When my mother phoned on Friday to tell me that Russy Karanjia had died, I was both sad and worried. I was saddened by his passing: I had, after all, grown up before his eyes, and after my father died, in 1971, he was always kind and helpful to my mother and myself.

But the personal relationship does not cloud my perspective on Russy’s role as a transitional figure in the transformation of the Indian media. Born into a prosperous Parsi family, he was the star reporter at The Times of India when it was British-owned. He left when the paper chose Frank Moraes to be its first Indian editor (Russy wanted the job) and started Blitz during World War II as a pro-war effort weekly tabloid. But I was worried about whether in death he would get the recognition and respect that he deserved. For most of this century, Russy had been out of action, felled by a stroke from which his mind never quite recovered. Blitz, the publication he founded, died many years ago. And a whole new generation of journalists had no idea who he was.

I needn’t have worried. On Saturday, I was pleased to note that nearly every newspaper front-paged his passing and there were generous and well-written obituaries with tributes from the likes of Sudheendra Kulkarni and V Gangadhar (both of whom wrote for Blitz).

Even so, it’s hard to explain to a new generation why Russy Karanjia was such an epochal figure in Indian journalism. I do not claim to be objective about him. My father wrote for Blitz for over a decade from the mid-50s (after he was expelled from the CPI) to the late 1960s. Russy was a close family friend. And till the end, I called him ‘Uncle Russy’.

But the personal relationship does not cloud my perspective on Russy’s role as a transitional figure in the transformation of the Indian media. Born into a prosperous Parsi family, he was the star reporter at The Times of India when it was British-owned. He left when the paper chose Frank Moraes to be its first Indian editor (Russy wanted the job) and started Blitz during World War II as a pro-war effort weekly tabloid. As the war wound down, Blitz changed track, identifying itself closely with the Freedom Movement, much to the annoyance of the Brits who had regarded Russy as their man.

Most great Indian newspapers (including this one) are proudest of their roles during the Independence struggle, but Blitz’s moment of glory came later. In an era when the national press was controlled by British companies and jute barons (Jawaharlal Nehru called it the jhoot press), Blitz represented an alternative view of India.

Despite his own rather pucca persona (like a good Parsi, Russy only spoke English, though I suspect he may have known a few words of Gujarati), Karanjia identified Blitz with a Nehruvian vision of development. In today’s context, we may regard such a stance as pro-Congress, but in the 1950s and 1960s, Indian politics was much more complicated.

In Russy’s worldview, the Congress was a slothful, corrupt party, dominated by crooks and ‘reactionaries’ (a popular word in that era), such as Morarji Desai (referred to by Blitz as Morar-‘gin’ because of his love of Prohibition or simply as Morar-‘zeher’), Atulya Ghosh, SK Patil, and Sanjeeva Reddy.

According to Blitz, Nehru was a brilliant idealist, struggling to help the poor and to restore Indian pride despite the opposition of these sleazeballs (if Blitz did not coin the term ‘Syndicate’, it certainly popularised it). Russy was, therefore, anti-Congress and pro-Nehru — as bizarre as it may sound today. According to Blitz, Nehru was a brilliant idealist, struggling to help the poor and to restore Indian pride despite the opposition of these sleazeballs (if Blitz did not coin the term ‘Syndicate’, it certainly popularised it). Russy was, therefore, anti-Congress and pro-Nehru — as bizarre as it may sound today.

He identified himself completely with Nehru’s view of non-alignment and Panchsheel, flying off to interview Egypt’s GA Nasser, Yugoslavia’s Marshall Tito and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. In an era when Indian journalists were content to reproduce press releases, he was the one high-flyer, the only editor who could sit down and talk to world leaders on an equal basis. (If you look at pictures of Russy with world leaders in the 1960s, it’s often difficult to tell which one is the interviewer and which the interviewee, such was Karanjia’s confidence.)

Obviously, there was a logical inconsistency in his position: how could you love Nehru and hate the Congress? And Russy made his situation worse by throwing the full weight of Blitz behind Krishna Menon, hailing him as a great statesman. Like Russy, my father was a Krishna Menon fan in the 60s. And I have many memories of Menon coming home, drinking endless cups of tea and playing with me. (Well, “playing” is an exaggeration: he would wrap the crook of his walking stick around my young neck, pull me towards him and attempt to be friendly — I was both bewildered and terrified.)

But there’s no doubt that all of them — Russy, my father, Dilip Kumar, KA Abbas, Rajni Patel and the other Menon groupies — got it badly wrong. I can understand why Menon appealed to them. They were smarting from a post-colonial hangover, and because many of them were former communists, they admired someone like Menon who could tell the ‘imperialist’ West where to get off. But they were too charitable about Menon’s foolishness at the UN (his 11-hour-long speeches on Kashmir, for instance) and much too forgiving of his failures as defence minister.

Nevertheless, they remained loyal. Even when the Congress sidelined Menon, they helped with his 1967 election campaign (Menon lost from Bombay) and pitched the poll as a battle between the forces of reaction (for instance, SK Patil, who lost to George Fernandes, a great Blitz hero in the 60s) and those who wanted to preserve Nehru’s legacy.

By the time Indira Gandhi split the Congress in 1969, Russy’s position had acquired a certain post-facto legitimacy. Like Blitz, Mrs Gandhi also took the line that the Nehruvian Congress was wonderful but that the Syndicate consisted of corrupt reactionaries. Naturally, Russy became Mrs Gandhi’s favourite journalist (though, because he had been a friend of her father’s, he never had to suck up to Sanjay as the likes of Khushwant Singh later did), and Blitz became India’s largest-selling weekly (3 lakh copies and later, a Hindi edition that outsold the English version even though Russy himself was unable to read it).

And, of course, he was a classy guy: witty, sophisticated, charming and able to laugh at himself. He also had a heart of gold. His biggest rival DF Karaka of Current found himself out of a job after selling his weekly. Others would have gloated. Russy gave him a column. My own sense of Blitz is that it epitomised a certain Nehruvian view of the world. Its heyday came in the 1960s, when it struggled to fight for that view in the post-Nehru era. By the 70s, with Mrs Gandhi in power, it was pretty much the voice of the establishment. And in the 80s, with Rajiv in office, Russy continued to be South Block’s favourite journalist.

By the 90s, it was all over. As the Indian media transformed themselves, as the newspapers got slicker, and as television arrived, Blitz began to seem like an anachronism. The issues that had so exercised Russy two decades ago, became irrelevances. He struggled to find a new identity, new writers — for a couple of years I wrote a weekly column for Blitz out of some sentimental desire to keep a family association alive — and groped for new causes.

Eventually, I think he lost it completely, even embracing the BJP (when it was out of power, to be fair) in his search for a new raison d’etre. Nothing worked. It was not that Russy was not a great editor. It was that he was an editor for his times. And those times had gone.

It’s difficult now to comprehend quite why Blitz was so important in its heyday. While other newspapers were dull and boring, Blitz was bright and energetic. While the press was uniformly respectful of the rich and powerful, Blitz was deliberately iconoclastic and irreverent (“Patnaik, get out!” about Biju Patnaik was a typical headline). Blitz had no respect for world leaders.

I still remember a column by my father attacking Britain for supporting Pakistan in the 1965 war. A picture of Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister, was captioned matter-of-factly, “Wilson: hypocrite and humbug”.

It went out of its way to expose scams (often at great cost; in the 1960s, it paid the then enormous sum of Rs 3 lakh as compensation for defaming the Thakersey industrial family). While Indian newspaper prose was somnambulistic in its dullness, Blitz captured the energy of the best British tabloid writing.

None of this would have been possible without Russy. Till the end of his career, he was gutsy, daring, driven by passion and entirely supportive of his journalists. Because he owned the paper, he had no bosses. Because Blitz’s economics were subscription-driven, he didn’t give a damn about advertisers.

And, of course, he was a classy guy: witty, sophisticated, charming and able to laugh at himself. He also had a heart of gold. His biggest rival DF Karaka of Current found himself out of a job after selling his weekly. Others would have gloated. Russy gave him a column.

At a personal level, I will miss him enormously. As far as Indian journalism is concerned, an important part of its history died on Friday. And we’re all poorer for the loss.

The eatery still maintains its worth with a menu card right out of Iran.

You’ll never know what the fuss is about until you actually eat here. This 83-year-old Parsi-Irani eatery is worth its wait in barberry berries. Why them? Because they are the imported ingredients that go into making what Britannia is most revered for… its zesty Persian berry pulav (Zereshk polow).

Most people come to Britannia to consume one of three things — the mutton Sali boti, the dhansak and the berry pulav.

“The menu is courtesy my late wife Bachan who on her travels to Iran (courtesy being legal advisor to Iran Airways) mastered these recipes, says 85-year-old Boman Kohinoor, the second-generation owner, and to regulars, the eatery’s greatest appeal.

Britannia is one of the dying breed of the city’s Irani cafes that is bravely sticking out through hard times. It once served “bland” European fare to the unadventurous palates of the British before being turned into a military office during World War II for a brief period.

Today, queues of hungry corporate types from Ballard Estate fill a humble room with peeling pistachio walls, dated New Year paraphernalia, Madras-checked table cloths and a troop of dusty ceiling fans, and are served with an efficiency that’s unbeatable.

The signboard outside that reads ‘High-Class restaurant’ may seem misplaced, but as junior Kohinoor chips in, there were once Italian marble-top tables and Japanese-built cabinetry. The imported Polish bentwood chairs are all that remain of the time.

Repairs are always imminent but long-standing family courtroom drama ensures postponement. “When customers raise their eyebrows at the damp walls and peeling ceilings, I tell them its MF Husain’s work,” smiles Kohinoor.

Kohinoor Sr still personally takes orders. He will admonish you if you don’t eat a stomach full and lapses into poetry of the Romantics if he is so inclined.

He worries for the restaurant’s perpetuity amid mounting costs and the looming expiration of its lease. And that makes it imperative that you visit soon.

Sip away at a Pallonji Rasberry drink and give in to the temptation of the velvety caramel custard; Britannia is a bite-sized piece of the city’s history.

The Godrej business group recently commissioned a London marketing agency to redesign its brand image. The aim was to dust down the dowdy Godrej of Almira cupboards to something smarter befitting New India.

Though the sprawling Godrej empire is vast (sales last year totalled an estimated Rs246.57 billion), the group seemed to lack the sparkling edge of New India as represented by financial services, mass retail, telecoms, even foreign acquisitions. Godrej only went down that path recently, and modest it was too. That has now changed with the revaluation of the group’s huge and historically most passive asset — property.

With the repeal of the Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act, long regarded as a drag on property-driven economic growth in Mumbai, Adi Godrej, chairman, is expected to gain control over nearly 3,000 acres of land in and around Mumbai. That will make him a significant player in Mumbai’s real estate market.

The traditional landed elite of Mumbai — many, such as Godrej, from the Parsi community–has watched as its unproductive land assets have in recent years been lifted, first, by a low interest regime and a revolution in financial products such as mortgages, and, more recently, by the ditching of a law that most analysts believe will be transformational for such businesses. Godrej stands at the head of this queue.

The self-effacing and gentlemanly Godrej remains calm as his historic business is changed beyond the rewording of his evidently redundant branding agency. Market estimates suggest that the group is in various stages of developing 20m sq ft of property and that the Godrej property unit, growing by a fifth annually, will be the group’s fastest-growing business in a couple of years.

But for all the fundamental change within his business, Godrej is simple at heart. Citing an early morning drive to his corporate office at Vikhroli, he is more likely to excuse himself from one of his wife Parmesh’s glamorous parties.

Catch him on an average weekend and he’ll be wind surfing, jet skiing or racing a couple of his kids and their friends around on a speed boat. Adi’s ruggedness and adventurous streak have given Parmesh sleepless nights. Once when he eschewed the car and chose to sail back from Madh Island he was even given up for dead - until search parties rescued him.

His office at Vikhroli is modest, he adheres to strict protocol and his matronly Parsi and Goan secretariat add a homely fuddy-duddy air. He talks with pride of his strong mother who was a keen Gandhian, a freedom fighter and a passionate philanthropist.

His unstinting support of his wife Parmesh’s legendary flamboyance speaks of a genuine liberal attitude. He is as committed in promoting his daughters’ careers in the Godrej company as he is of his son’s.

original article here

Technorati tags: Godrej, real estate, mumbai, bombay

After celebrating his 70th birthday on Friday, Ratan Tata would in the normal course of affairs be facing mandatory retirement from the Tata Group.

Two years ago, however, India’s most respected and acquisitive conglomerate extended to 75 the age until which non-executive directors could serve, giving the man who has transformed it over the past 16 years a new lease at its helm.

Although corporate governance purists at the time criticised the change as retrograde, it is a decision that few investors now regret.

Mr Tata will be one of the most visible faces of the new India in 2008. He was waiting to hear whether Tata Motors, a truckmaker that has diversified into passenger cars, had been successful in its offer for Jaguar and Land Rover, luxury brands put up for sale by Ford.

In the wake of this year’s audacious $13bn (Euro8.4bn, ?6.5bn) purchase of Corus by Tata Steel, the Indian company’s bid for these two prestige marques has again highlighted the risk-taking verve of one of India’s most ambitious corporate empire builders.

The news will come as Mr Tata prepares to unveil the most keenly awaited car ever to roll off an Indian assembly line. Tata’s small car, which the Cornell-trained architect helped design, is slated to appear at the Delhi Auto Show on January 10.

It will sell for Rs100,000 ($2,550, Euro1,730, ?1,275) — a rupee figure known in India as one lakh — and bring motoring to a mass market. With a new plant in West Bengal able to make 250,000 a year, the “one-lakh car” will more than double Tata’s car capacity. “Mr Tata encourages us to take big, calculated risks,” says Ravi Kant, Tata Motors’ managing director.

In 1991, when he succeeded his uncle, J.R.D. Tata, a man who was to India what Fiat’s Giovanni Agnelli was to postwar Italy, few expected the group to survive the onslaught of liberalisation. It earned most of its money in stodgy domestic industries dependent on the centrally planned “licence raj”.

The government told companies how much they could produce and protected them from foreign competitors. The family held only small stakes in many of the 300-odd group companies. Powerful barons ran the main businesses as rival fiefs.

Mr Tata was forced to earn rather than command respect. A shy man, he rarely features in the society glossies, drives himself to work in a Tata car and has lived for years in a book-crammed, dog-filled bachelor flat in Mumbai’s Colaba district.

His gentle, kind manner engenders loyalty. Tata remains unfocused — he is arguably the glue that binds a sprawling assortment of stakes in 98 companies — but it is professionally man­aged and globally competitive: more than 60 per cent of its forecast $50bn sales this year are overseas.

Some have reservations about his bid for Jaguar and Land Rover and the one-lakh car. Although Tata’s offer for the British brands has received an endorsement from union shop stewards in the UK, some analysts worry about the strategic logic.

Dealers in the US have warned of “image” issues. “My concern is perception and perception is reality,” Ken Gorin, chairman of the Jaguar Business Operations Council, told a US newspaper. “I don’t believe the US public is ready for ownership out of India for a luxury car brand such as Jaguar.”

While the one-lakh car will help Tata Motors to renew an ageing passenger car product line, many fear it will be a mixed blessing for India. At a time when the country’s infrastructure can barely cope with existing traffic, a new era of mass motoring will bring with it worsening urban congestion and pollution.

Mr Tata stresses the benefits of safer transport for tens of thousands of families that currently move around on single motorbikes.

Osamu Suzuki, chairman of Suzuki Motor, which owns Maruti Suzuki, India’s largest passenger carmaker, recently said that anyone selling a car that cheaply would have to scrimp on safety and emission standards, compromising their responsibilities as a manufacturer. Mr Tata disagrees.

“We’re producing a car that will be no more polluting than a motorcycle,” he says. “As we’re not going to produce millions and millions of them, inundating the country, we will not be adding to the carbon footprint on a per-passenger basis.”

Between the cost of the average two-wheeler and entry-level cars such as the Maruti 800, which retails for about $5,000, there is still a big gap and Mr Tata plans to fill it. New roads will follow, the company argues, and so too, in time, might a more environmentally friendly small car, although not for the bottom of the pyramid. “The only reason we didn’t make the one-lakh car a hybrid, for example, is that it could not have been priced at one lakh,” Mr Tata says.

Snubs have tended to spur the Tatas to greatness. When Jamsetji Tata, the group’s founder, proposed making steel girders for the Indian railways in 1907, Sir Frederick Upcott, a colonial administrator, famously offered to eat every rail it made.

A hundred years later, with Tata snapping up the remains of the British steel industry, westerners scoff at their peril, risking the wrath of a government and business community that sees the group, two-thirds of whose shares are held by charitable trusts, as a role model for corporate India.

Orient-Express, a New York-listed hotels-to-trains group, learnt this too late this month after it rejected a tie-up with Tata’s Taj hotel chain, saying a link with the Indian group would tarnish its premium brand image. Kamal Nath, India’s commerce minister, railed against “discrimination”, Indian media spoke of “quasi-racism” and Venugopal Dhoot, president of the business lobby, Assocham, accused Orient-Express of “arrogance”. Mr Tata, ever dignified, describes the Orient-Express response as “unfortunate”.

Suhel Seth, a brand consultant, says US targets are playing a race card: “They can’t fault Indian managements, because Indians are running global corporations. They can’t fault our valuations and they can’t fault the size of our consumer market. So instead they’re raising a cultural bogey to defeat a decent business proposition.”

Does Mr Tata have the fire in his belly for a further five years of this? “Not really,” he answers. “In an ideal world, after the small car has been launched and is successful, that would be a nice time for me to exit.”

URL for this article:

http://www.rediff.com///money/2008/jan/02tata.htm

Technorati tags: Tata, Ratan Tata

Among Asia’s business titans, Ratan N. Tata stands out for his modesty. The chairman of the Tata Group - India’s biggest conglomerate, with businesses ranging from software, cars, and steel to phone service, tea bags, and wristwatches - usually drives himself to the office in his $12,500 Tata Indigo Marina wagon.

He prefers to spend weekends in solitude with his two dogs at a beachfront home he designed himself. And disdainful of pretense, he travels alone even on long business trips, eschewing the retinues of aides who typically coddle corporate chieftains.

But Tata also has a daredevil streak. An avid aviator, he often flies his own Falcon 2000 business jet around India. And in February he caused a sensation at the Aero India 2007 air show by co-piloting Lockheed F-16 and Boeing F-18 fighter jets.

Tata’s business dealings reflect the bolder side of his personality. In the past four years he has embarked on an investment binge that is building his group from a once-stodgy regional player into a global heavyweight. Since 2003, Tata has bought the truck unit of South Korea’s Daewoo [Get Quote] Motors, a stake in one of Indonesia’s biggest coal mines, and steel mills in Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

It has taken over a slew of tony hotels including New York’s Pierre, the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, and San Francisco’s Camden Place. The 2004 purchase of Tyco International’s undersea telecom cables for $130 million, a price that in hindsight looks like a steal, turned Tata into the world’s biggest carrier of international phone calls.

With its $91 million buyout of British engineering firm Incat International, Tata Technologies now is a major supplier of outsourced industrial design for American auto and aerospace companies, with 3,300 engineers in India, the US, and Europe.

The crowning deal to date has been Tata Steel’s [Get Quote] $13 billion takeover in April of Dutch-British steel giant Corus Group, a target that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. In one swoop, the move greatly expands Tata Steel’s range of finished products, secures access to automakers across the US and Europe, and boosts its capacity fivefold, with mills added in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Now, a new gambit may catapult Tata into the big leagues of global auto manufacturing: The company is said to be weighing a bid for Jaguar Cars and Land Rover, which Ford Motor Co wants to sell. On top of all this, the group plans $28 billion in capital investments at home over the next five years in steel, autos, telecom, power, chemicals, and more.

“We rescaled our thinking in terms of growth,” Tata says over tea at Bombay House, the group’s headquarters since 1926, a tranquil oasis with well-worn marble floors, a vast collection of modern Indian art, and staffers who circulate with bowls of vanilla ice cream every day at 3 p.m. “We just forced and cajoled our businesses to make this happen.”

Spiritual cement

The forcing and cajoling has worked brilliantly. The market value of the 18 listed Tata companies has swelled to $62 billion, from $12 billion, since 2003. Group sales and profits have doubled, to $29 billion and $2.8 billion, respectively.

The three big companies that account for 75 per cent of sales - Tata Steel, Tata Motors [Get Quote], and Tata Consultancy Services [Get Quote] - are enjoying some of their best years ever. And in May, Tata Tea [Get Quote] netted $523 million in profit when Coca-Cola Co paid $1.2 billion for its 30 per cent stake in Energy Brands Inc, the maker of Glaceau Vitamin Water. Not bad for a purchase made just nine months earlier.

“This is a transformed Tata,” says Rajeev Gupta, managing director of private equity shop Carlyle Advisory Partners.

* Rise of the rupee
* Bangalore wannabes

The global push began four years ago. After a rocky first decade as chairman, Tata commissioned a sweeping review to plot strategy, including a study comparing India with China. He was struck by the sheer audacity of Chinese projects.

“Whether they built a port or a highway, they did it big, the kind of scale that caused skeptics to say, My God, this is over the top,’” he says. “But China always grew into it.” India, he concluded, should also think big - and so should Tata Group. By leveraging India’s vast potential, he thought, the company could shift into turbocharged expansion to become a global heavyweight.

Tata is arguably the most important among a new pack of multinationals charging out of big developing nations such as China, Brazil, and Russia. These emerging giants can tap into abundant low-cost labor, tech talent, and mineral resources, while cutting their teeth in the world’s biggest growth markets. Brimming with cash and confidence, they also are starting to export innovative business models honed in some of the planet’s most challenging places to operate.

Building an organization with a coherent vision and capable of succeeding in so many industries and so many markets, though, is a daunting task. Asia has witnessed the rise of many soup-to-nuts behemoths that thrived when economic tides were high, such as Korea’s Daewoo, Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand, and Indonesia’s Salim Group. Most eventually fell apart.

The real test for Tata, too, is likely to come when India’s boom abates and battles for talent and market share involving both aggressive Indian rivals and deep-pocketed multinationals intensify. But unlike most other Asian groups, “Tata already has proved it can survive turmoil and constantly reinvent itself,” says Harvard Business School professor Tarun Khanna, who has closely studied the group for a decade.

At the centre of the empire is Tata himself. An architecture graduate from Cornell University in 1962, he serves as the group’s chief dealmaker, visionary, and spiritual cement. He joined the company after college, then steadily rose through the ranks.

He took over 16 years ago - after the death of his gregarious uncle, J R D Tata - just as India began dismantling decades of socialist-style business controls. Tata has overseen sharp downsizing, risky plunges into auto manufacturing and telecom, and a transformation of the conglomerate’s insular and lethargic management culture.

Now he wants to prove Tata companies can compete in the rich West as well as in the unpredictable but hugely promising markets of the developing world. What’s more, Tata wants to set the group solidly on a path to achieving all this before he retires.

The barrel-chested tycoon hasn’t named a successor or said when he plans to step down. He’ll turn 70 in December, but he still has a vice-like handshake, and associates are amazed at his command of numbers and technical details of the various Tata companies. That makes his failure to designate a successor all the more disconcerting.

Some even question whether his departure might spur the group’s breakup. “Who will be the glue?” worries one veteran insider. “Will there even be a central leader?”

Ratan could even be the last Tata to oversee the group. The Tata family tree, on display at a company museum, stretches back 800 years through generations of Parsi priests, an Indian minority descended from Persians. It ends with Ratan - single and childless - and his siblings.

* Top countries for outsourcing

Younger brother Jimmy and three half-sisters aren’t involved in Tata businesses. His reclusive half-brother, Noel, runs a Tata-owned retail chain, but it’s unclear whether he’s tycoon timber. Succession “is a problem,” Ratan acknowledges. “I am involved in more issues than I think I should be.”

When he does step down, Ratan Tata will leave a big void. Even though he and other family members own just 3% of shares in Tata Sons, the private holding company with controlling stakes in its businesses, Tata himself chairs key units including Tata Motors and Tata Steel.

He is intimately involved in all major deals and pushed for acquisitions such as Corus. The ventures into passenger cars and telecom are his babies. And Tata is instrumental in hatching new businesses, bouncing ideas gleaned from his travels to managers for follow-up.

Ratan Tata serves another vital function: While at ease with lawyers and investment bankers, he remains firmly planted in the developing world.

He is a passionate promoter of corporate social responsibility, a mission that dates to the group’s founding in the 1870s by Tata’s great-grandfather, Jamsetji Tata. The founder was a pioneering industrialist, philanthropist, and fervent nationalist who traveled to the U.S. with a swami, meeting the tycoons of the day. He opened India’s first textile mill, in large part to wean Indians from their industrial dependence on Britain, which until then had

milled much of the subcontinent’s cotton and then shipped the high-cost cloth back to the colonies. Tata offered worker benefits such as child care and pensions long before most companies in the West, and later one of Jamsetji’s sons helped bankroll a young Mahatma Gandhi while he agitated in South Africa for the rights of immigrant Indians.

To this day, the Tata Group remains devoted to good works: Charitable trusts own 66% of the shares in parent Tata Sons, and many of its companies fund grassroots anti-poverty projects that seem far removed from their core businesses. Ask the chairman to name the group’s biggest challenges and he quickly cites two: “Talent, and retaining our value system as we get bigger and more diverse. We have to increase the management bandwidth, and with the same ethical standards.”

He also concedes that the group is much less focused than he envisioned back in 1991, when he pledged to pare it from scores of companies to just a dozen or so. Tata did dump marginal businesses — cosmetics, paints, and cement — but entered retail, telecom, biotech, and others. Today, Tata Group comprises nearly 100 companies with 300 subsidiaries in 40 businesses. Slimming the group down “is one area where I have not succeeded in what I set out to do,” he admits.

‘I’M NOT MOVING’

His hope is that Tata’s unorthodox structure will give individual companies the agility to respond to new opportunities and threats. “The organization is a lot lighter than a Western conglomerate,” says Alan Rosling, a Briton who spearheads international expansion for Tata. “There is no central strategy. We don’t even have consolidated financial statements.” The group is bound together by the small staffs of Tata Sons and another holding company, Tata Industries.

These two, chaired by Ratan, provide strategic vision, control the Tata brand, and lend a hand on big deals. And Tata Sons can raise cash to launch new businesses or help fund purchases such as Corus. In 2004 it pulled in $1.3 billion by floating a 10% share in Tata Consultancy Services.

Bombay House also exerts influence through the Group Corporate Office, another Ratan invention. The nine senior executives in this unit sit on the boards of Tata companies and act as “stewards,” mentoring managers and promoting corporate responsibility values.

For example, former Tata Tea and Indian Hotels chief R. K. Krishna Kumar helped incubate Ginger Hotels, a new chain of budget inns offering free Internet and cable TV for about $25 in India’s most expensive business hubs — one-tenth of what most business hotels charge. R.Gopalakrishnan, who retired from Unilever’s Indian affiliate in 1998, is chairman of a new Tata drug-research company and has advised fertilizer maker Tata Chemicals [Get Quote] on an ambitious new strategy to market everything from seeds to low-cost insurance by setting up a network of stores and working with poor farmers to improve crop yields.

Bombay House “offers guidance and sets perspective,” says Satish Pradhan, who heads the Tata Group’s sprawling management training center in Pune. “We hand-hold the businesses in a nonintrusive manner.”

The chief steward, though, clearly is Ratan Tata. He negotiates major deals and steeps himself in the details of automaking, telecom, or steel. “He has a tremendous technological brain,” says Tata Steel Managing Director B. Muthuraman. He’s also not afraid of a fight. During a strike at Tata Motors’ Pune plant, militant unionists assaulted Tata managers and occupied a section of the city.

“If you put a gun to my head,” Tata declared, “you had better take the gun away or pull the trigger, because I’m not moving.” Tata signed a deal with a rival union and broke the strike after a confrontation between police and the militants. “While he doesn’t look it,” says Muthuraman, “he’s one of the toughest people I’ve ever known.”

The transformation of Tata Steel illustrates his impact. In the early ’90s, when India started opening to global competition, the 100-year-old company was saddled with antiquated plants, a bloated payroll, and “no market orientation. . . we were a good study in demise,” recalls Muthuraman.

Over the years, Tata cut the workforce from 78,000 to 38,000 and spent $2.5 billion on modernization. A decade later, Tata Steel had become one of the world’s most efficient and profitable producers and began to acquire rivals. “Ratan was the chief architect” of the Corus deal, says Muthuraman. “I was worried about the magnitude and the amount of money.

But he instilled confidence.” The strategy: Because Tata is one of the few big steelmakers with its own abundant coal and iron ore reserves, it can produce raw steel at low cost in India, then ship it to Corus’ first-rate mills in the West to make finished products.

But Tata Steel highlights the challenges of balancing Old World ways with New Economy realities. Jamshedpur, the company’s home base in northern India, resembles a time capsule of a more paternalistic industrial age, a leafy city of genteel colonial-era structures and wide boulevards hacked from the jungle in 1908.

Tata spends some $40 million a year supplying all civic services and schools, even though it employs just 20,000 of Jamshedpur’s 700,000 residents. And in its downsizing program, workers who agreed to early retirement got full pay until age 60 and lifelong health care.

Tata Steel also spends millions annually on education, health, and agricultural development projects in 800 nearby villages. In Sidhma Kudhar, for instance, a dusty outpost of whitewashed stone houses with thatched roofs, the 32 families until two years ago subsisted on a single crop of low-grade rice and the $1 a day they could earn by stripping branches from nearby hills.

Thanks to funds from Tata, they now have irrigation systems that allow them to grow rice crops and a variety of vegetables. The hillsides are now covered with thousands of mahogany and teak seedlings for future income, as well as jatropha bushes, whose seeds can be used for biofuel. Most children now attend classes in the refurbished school, and the village has three televisions, powered by Tata solar units that also supply enough juice for electric lights and clocks.

Such generosity will be put to the test now that Tata owns struggling Corus. The deal loads the Indian steelmaker with $7.4 billion in debt, and absorbing Corus’ higher-cost operations will weaken margins. One key question is what to do with Corus mills such as the one at Port Talbot in Wales, which employs 3,000 workers.

Tata says it will proceed with Corus’ plans for the mill. But the union representing most Corus workers wants Tata Steel to invest an additional $600 million in Port Talbot to assure it will remain competitive so it won’t have to cut jobs. A delegation of 20 Corus labor reps visited Jamshedpur in April to meet the mill’s new owners, but Tata executives declined to give guarantees.

“We were extremely impressed by their workforce and commitment to social responsibility,” says labor leader Michael Leahy. “But how will they be able to translate those principles into the British and European context? They couldn’t answer that.”

A bid for Jaguar and Land Rover might present an even more daunting challenge. The Ford assets would give Tata a luxury brand and a big boost in SUVs, but it would be an uphill climb to restore Jaguar’s luxury cachet, which was damaged by sharing basic designs with Ford.

Tata executives, who won’t confirm their interest in Jaguar and Land Rover, have downplayed auto ambitions in the U.S., citing the high cost of entry and their commitments in emerging markets. And an attempt to sell small cars under the Rover name in Britain lasted just two years amid complaints about quality. Tata Motors, which once made only trucks, surprised skeptics with the success of the Indica, an affordable passenger car developed from scratch and rolled out in the 1990s.

The Indica is now India’s No. 2 car and is selling well in South Africa, Spain, and Italy. Tata also will soon start exporting cars and trucks through a venture with Fiat and is eyeing a similar project in South America. The company had another big hit in 2006 with the Ace, a bare-bones truck for less than $6,000. Tata already is boosting its output from 75,000 minitrucks to 250,000.

INEVITABLE STUMBLES

Ratan’s big passion, though, is the “one lakh” car. (One lakh is 100,000. And that many rupees equals about $2,500.) Since the mid-’90s, he has wanted to develop reliable but supercheap vehicles, a project he believes could ultimately revolutionize the auto industry and make India a major economic power. Tata personally supervised the project and traveled frequently to Tata Motors’ development center in Pune to check on progress.

Originally he envisioned a fundamentally new kind of vehicle — one made of plastics, for example, that didn’t even resemble what we think of today as a car. He concedes that the spartan, oval-shaped model to be launched in early 2008 doesn’t meet his lofty aims. It’s made of steel. And it looks like, well, a car. To get the price to $2,500, engineers shrunk the size and stripped out frills such as reclining seats and a radio. “There is not a lot of innovation,” he says. “We didn’t reinvent the business.”

Tata has similar ambitions to reinvent solar energy. Tata BP Solar Ltd., a $260 million venture with British energy giant BP, supplies buildings in Germany with rooftop solar-electric systems. But in developing nations, the company sees a vast market in bringing affordable power to villages that are off the power grid.

The company has introduced low-cost, solar-powered water pumps, refrigerators, and $30 lanterns that burn for two hours on a day’s charge. And it has fitted 50,000 homes with $300 systems that can power two lights, a hot plate, a fan, and a 14-inch TV. “But this is a drop in the ocean,” says Tata BP Solar CEO K. Subramanya. “We ought to be touching millions.”

There is little question that the opportunities for Tata in India and abroad are staggering. But can the group succeed on all these fronts simultaneously? The interesting dilemmas will come when the Indian economy slows and some Tata affiliates inevitably stumble.

Future managers could look at expensive burdens such as Jamshedpur and rural-development projects as tempting targets for cuts when times get tight. Tata companies could lose interest in low-cost goods for the masses without a passionate promoter as group chairman. And the group could take a tougher look at businesses to spin off.

For the foreseeable future, though, these are nonissues. Though Tata vows that he “won’t carry this on endlessly,” he says he will stay on at least two years beyond when he chooses a successor. So he seems likely to fulfill the last big item on his agenda: building a network of companies capable of thriving in 21st century global competition while still adhering to traditional values long after the departure of Ratan Tata.

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

Fire (Atar), together with clean water (Aban), are considered agents of ritual purity in the Zoroastrian religion.

Despite the Zoroastrian respect for any form of fire, they do not worship it, rather it is used as a medium to communicate with God, whom they call Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Wisdom, the source of order and precision in the universe.

Standing before a sacred fire, Zoroastrians pay homage to a creation that represents life and the power of Ahura Mazda.

There are three kinds of sacred fires in Zoroastrianism, each standing for one sector of ancient society: Atash Dadgah, Adur Aduran, and Atash Behram.

Atash Dadgah is associated with the householder class and burns in houses and during celebrations such as weddings.

Adur Aduran is connected with the warrior class and burns constantly in fire temples. It is called the ‘Fire of Fires’ because it is made up of embers gathered from different fires belonging to different social classes, to symbolize social unity.

The highly revered Atash Behram is related to kings and the royal family. It must initially originate from lightning and is composed of embers gathered from the hearth of a thousand and one different occupations in society.

Atash Behran is called the ‘Fire of Victory’ and is kept in an undecorated temple, visible only to the worshippers.

Although there have been numerous fire temples in Iran, three are believed to have existed since the beginning of creation: Adur Burzen-Mihr, Adur Farnbag, and Adur Gushnasp, known as the ‘Royal Fires’.

The ‘Royal Fires’ were also associated with social classes: Adur Farnbag with the highest class of priesthood, Adur Gushnasp with the warrior class, and Adur Burzen-Mihr with the lowest class of herdsmen and farmers.

In the olden days, fire temples were not only places of worship but also courts, treatment and learning centers.

Zoroastrians, as they wound up their 14th North American Congress in Toronto this week, emphasized mentorship and the need for unity among the scattered faithful.

“We are moving the identity issue forward,” said prominent Toronto Zoroastrian Daraius Bharucha, “empowering our youth, showcasing the community, while saying, `We are a diaspora that has now arrived.’”

For the first time at a congress, youth activities, such as mentoring and entrepreneurship programs, ran alongside sessions on history, heritage and religious matters.

Bharucha represents the Zoroastrian Society of Ontario, which hosted the congress that ran from June 30 to July 2 at the Sheraton Parkway North Hotel.

More than 600 Zoroastrians from around the world attended, out of the 150,000 members of the faith worldwide. The religion was founded in 1500 BCE by the prophet Zarathustra.

Many Zoroastrians - 69,000 of them - live in India, where they are also called Parsis. Toronto has the third largest population, preceded only by the Indian cities of Mumbai and Pune.

In fact, Zoroastrians in India participated in the conference via teleconferencing. Two of India’s top Parsi industrialists - Ratan Tata, chair of the $60 billion Tata Enterprise; and Nadir Godrej, managing director of Godrej Industries - stressed youth mentorship.

“We must have people who are more privileged (in North America) and who have risen in their fields to mentor these young people in India,” Tata said.

Minoo Shroff, who flew to Toronto from Mumbai for the event, is chair of the Bombay Parsi Panchayet, the central body of the community.

“Our past has been great, but it is in our hands to make the future, and the youth really hold the key to our future,” he said in his inaugural address.

Zarine Chenoy tried to put that idea into action. “We want an open dialogue of ideas between the elderly and the youth,” she said, signing up young and old for a mentor-mentee program. “The mentor isn’t necessarily the older person here,” she pointed out. “I have a young mentor in the U.S. who teaches me to blog or how to WiFi.”

Like many ethnic communities, Zoroastrians find it a big task to maintain their identity. Religion teacher Mona Antia attributes the problem to young people trying to fit into the Canadian mainstream.

“It’s so easy to totally lose your roots, if you don’t bring them (youth) to the Darbe mehr (community centre),” she said.

Chenoy said an initiative to encourage youth to stand for office in the upcoming elections will send a direct message that Zoroastrians are serious about young people’s participation.

But Arash Zohoor, a young participant who was raised in Toronto, said the real problem is a disconnect with older members.

“We’ve formed our own communities here and have grown up with them,” said Zohoor.

He said it’s a tough choice between attending Sunday activities at the Darbe mehr or hanging out with his friends.

Original article here

Apart from being an infirmary, the Parsi general hospital also serves as a home for old-aged. Located in Saddar, the hospital is one of the oldest forms of institutional living in Karachi providing facilities to the elderly who have been left behind after their children migrated abroad.

“Most of the elderly living at the institution have children who are settled abroad. It becomes difficult to cope alone especially in the case of infirmity or some disability. Understanding this need, we established this institution which serves more like their home,” says Vispi Cabraji, a member of the management who has been working here for the past 30 years.

But the existence of this infirmary does not indicate that the old-age support structures in the form of family have eroded from the Parsi community. In most cases, it is not rejection that brought the elderly here but their children’s busy work lives.

Dolly Kalapesi is one such 80-year-old who has been staying at the old-age home for the past five years and misses her children. “She wants to go home but her children are too busy with their work lives. They occasionally visit her,” discloses her attendant.

On the ground floor of the hospital is a separate section for the elderly who have been shifted here permanently, while the top floor consists of patients receiving temporary treatment. There are currently about 28 patients at the hospital.

The Parsi infirmary, however, is more than “just a hospital”. It serves as a home for most providing them the much needed comfort, solace and companionship of age-mates to freely pursue their own activities without constraints.

While most of the women spend time knitting or discussing their past with other patients, the men engage themselves in reading. “The institute also encourages various activities among the elderly and students of different schools to keep them busy,” adds Cabraji. Yet the old women appear relatively more morbid than the men, who have adapted well to the institution.

Their emotional state can be assessed from the content look on their faces. A former cricketer, Boman Rustam Irani, was shifted to the hospital after his wife and two children passed away. “I like staying here, we are all like one family,” he says. He takes great pride in sharing the fact that he had the opportunity to play with Lala Amarnath, the first Indian captain to score a century during which he scored 132 runs.

Most of the Parsis have lived in Karachi all their lives and due to the high literacy rate that prevails in their community, they are also one of the most well-informed and politically aware people who have interesting stories to tell about the country’s political past.

Eighty-year-old Dhanjishae H. Munderji, however, adds that education did not mean “good money” in pre-partition India. He was a lecturer at S.M. Law College before he retired but was barely able to earn enough money to support a family and chose to remain unmarried. “The living standards were quite high then and I only earned 300 rupees. I could not even contribute enough in the family income, how could I think of marriage?” he says. He also clarified that the myth that all the Parsis are rich and affluent was not quite true because there are several examples of people in their community who chose to remain unmarried for similar reasons.

Eighty-five-year-old Minoo Kapadia at the institution is also unmarried and an avid reader of news magazines. “I have no close family to live with so coming here was good for me. This place makes me feel less lonely.”

With meagre savings of the elderly and due to the fact that most of them are unmarried, the relatives provide financial assistance. In the absence of family, if a patient expires due to ill health, the last rites are performed by the institute.

There is no available governmental support for the infirmary and the management is dependent on donations from their community members or other individuals.

Those who are admitted here due to chronic illness, miss their children and feel that the institute has isolated them from social life. The strong familial bond that these elderly miss is natural and it is sad that expectations of most of the elderly for care and comfort from their children remain unfulfilled in the last stage of their lives. But the Parsi infirmary has eliminated this ill-feeling to a great extent, that the community rightly takes pride in.

Original article here

The community, which gathered to celebrate the second anniversary of the World Association of the Parsi Irani Zarthostis (WAPIZ), thanked ‘this earth, this land of India’, which has given them succour for fourteen hundred years.

WAPIZ committee member Jamshed Mota said, “No other country in the world would have given us this sammaan (honour), izzat (respect) and liberty .”

The gathering, including 300 clergymen and four high priests, discussed issues that plagued the community and their solutions.

Khojeste Mistri, chairman of WAPIZ said, “The solution to dwindling numbers lies not in conversion (a concept which is unknown to a ‘classic’ religion as opposed to a ‘romantic ‘ religion), but in increasing numbers by procreation.” So far, 85 couples received help and thirty babies, including eight sets of twins and a set of triplets, were born through a fertility programme introduced by the Parsi Panchayat two years ago.

A speaker explained how crossing-overs into the after-life through the Dokhmanishini route were still feasible, and that Parsis need not resort to routes forbidden by Zoroastrianism.

Mistri also announced that Vibhu Prakash an avian expert from Pinjore in Rajasthan, had promises to increase the number of carrion-feeders in six months by providing fledglings - a ‘feasible’ scheme which the Panchayat had shelved without explanation. He also regretted that some Parsis had published ‘doctored’ photographs of the Dokhma - the Tower of Silence.

Homi Ranina, a WAPIZ member, who is also on the Executive Committee of the Reserve Bank of India, gave legal reasons why the Trust Deed, 1884, must be honoured. The Deed says the lands for disposal of the dead were settled to the benefit of the community. According to Ranina, donors who were aware of the existing system of cremation, had settled lands for dokhmas. The Panchayat was formed and entrusted with the care of the property (on behalf of the community), and did not own it.

“The settelors’ wills must be obeyed,” advised Ranina.

WAPIZ felicitated the ‘unsung heroes of the community’, men who devoted their lives to keeping the sacred fires burning since they were fourteen. They are all octogenarians now, the oldest of whom is 90.

Group vice-president, Areez Khambatta gave Rs1 lakh to each of these nine priests, for their yeoman service to the community. These priests have no gratuity, pension, provident funds or other old age benefits to fall back on in the twilight years of lives they devoted to the religion and community .

Incidentally, Hong Kong can boast of the oldest active Parsi priest. Ervad Jalajer entered his 101 year this year, and has kept the Fire alive for 87 years. However, Jalajer was not one of those who were felicitated this year.

And once the programme was over, it was time for chaton-pani and bhonu drinks and dinner.

These three words belong to a four thousand year old language. When the sun finally sinks into the sea and its last rays disappear from the horizon, these pale faced men in white gowns turn towards the east three times, three times towards the south and three times towards the west. This they follow by dipping their hands in the sea again, touching their foreheads as they recite sacred texts under their breath. After the completion of the ritual, they disappear into the streets of the throbbing city, which is Bombay.

These men are the descendants of Parsis who originated from Iran four thousand years ago when Iran was called Paras. They were known as fire worshippers because the fire that burns in their temples is never allowed to go out because they beleive fire to be sacred. The Parsis also believe that the earth and water are sacred. That is why they do not burn their dead because that would amount to soiling the purity of fire. Nor do they dispose of them by consigning them to water because that would degrade its sacred character. They do not bury their dead either because that, they believe, would introduce impurity into the earth. Consequently, they place their dead either on top of a hill where their flesh is consumed by birds of prey or they place them in what are called towers of silence.

At some point in history, the Parsis moved from Iran to India, but they do not appear to have made any effort to spread their faith. It is said that since the Parsis were not idolaters, they might have been afraid that if Hindus converted to their religion, they might bring with them idolatrous practices. Parsis rarely marry outside their community, preferring to keep their race pure. Most of the Parsis of India lived in Bombay and were among the most prosperous of the city’s residents. The first multinational Indian company was Parsi-owned. They were also into banking, manufacturing, aviation and shipping. The Parsis were the first in India to start playing cricket. They used to enter a Parsi team in the famous Bombay Pentangular tournament. Greatly respectful of their religion and their traditions, older members of the community would generally dress in the traditional way: a round black cap, a long coat and pyjamas of a certain cut. Parsi women wore their saris in their own distinct way, quite different from the way the garment is generally worn.

At the time of independence, there were a quite a few Parsi families living in Lahore, one I knew of, in Laxmi Mansion, where Saadat Hasan Manto came from Bombay to spend his last days. It was and is a small residential enclave just off the Mall between Hall Road and Beadon Road. Members of this particular Parsi family I often saw when on the Mall on their evening walk. I am talking of the early days of Pakistan when the roads of Lahore were quiet and placid and free of the noise and pollution of traffic that is their hallmark today. The young men of this family were always immaculately dressed and there was an amazing similarity in their looks. The Parsi ladies would keep their heads covered with the loose end of their saris. What I always noticed about them, in both men and women, was their dignity. You never heard them talking or laughing loudly. They had great poise and they would take their evening walk with measured steps, smiling shyly and talking to one another but in voices so low that even if you were walking right behind them, you did not hear a thing.

Ozir Zuby, the painter and sculptor, married a Parsi lady who was a very good artist. That was the only instance, at least in Lahore, of a Parsi marrying a non-Parsi. The liquor business in Lahore was a Parsi monopoly. On McLeod Road stood the Gandhi Wine Shop, owned by a Parsi gentleman, who was a man of principal and would absolutely refuse to sell liquor to anyone unless the person had a government permit. I remember trying all kinds of tricks to make him change his mind or make an exception, but it was just like running into a wall. There were other liquor shops in the city, all Parsi-owned. There was Edulji in Commercial Building. Then there was the English Wine Shop in Regal and the French Wine Shop next to the Shah Din Building. There was also a Parsi-owned wine shop in Temple Road towards its Mall end. There was another such outlet in Lahore Cantonment not far from Globe Cinema.

They are all gone - as is the Globe Cinema - but no one who drinks can go dry in the city of Lahore. The business has gone underground, like so much else in Pakistan. There also used to be a doctor on McLeod Road by the name of Dr Barucha. He was a child specialist and if there is such a thing as a healing touch, then he had it because a dose or two of one of his mixtures and the child would be up and running. There was also a wonderful Parsi laundry near Lahore Hotel run by an old gentleman who would sit behind his wooden counter and keep scribbling in an old register. Next to his laundry was a bookshop that only sold English books. All those shops have vanished and all those people are gone.

The Plaza Cinema, where we would go to watch Hollywood movies, had a Parsi gatekeeper who supervised the entry to the second class. He was a quiet man of sixty or sixty-five in strict Parsi attire who wore thick glasses and who always kept smiling. I would sometimes see him walking on the footpath that runs along the Lahore Zoo. In Nila Gumbad there used to be a Parsi Bank in an old two-storey building. The sign outside showed an evenly balanced pair of scales held by a woman who resembled a figure from mythology. I have not been in that area for some time but I am sure the bank no longer exists. The Parsis of Lahore, like its Anglo-Indians, were like an ornament that the city wore. Their disappearance has left it poorer in more ways than one.

A Hamid, the distinguished Urdu novelist and short story writer, writes a column every week based on his memories of old Lahore. Translated from the Urdu by Khalid Hasan

Original article here