Punchayet Meet at Dadar Parsi Gym Goes Silent
The Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) meet, which was called at Dadar Parsi Gymkhana last evening to mark one year of existence, was left without a voice, literally.
The loudspeakers were switched off halfway through the function after complaints to the local police station.
This forced the trustees to shout to the 3,000-strong crowd and allege that some people within the community were jealous of the BPP’s achievements.
Even after the mikes were switched off, speaker K Mistree remained defiant, shouting his last words, "This is a work of sabotage, though the voice of honesty and truth cannot be scuttled."
This lead the irate audience to even suggest that they pile into cars and gherao the Dadar police station to find out who was behind the complaint.
A woman said, "Functions have been held here in the past, but loudspeakers were never shut."
And resident S Panthaky said philosophically, "When a community tends to dwindle, it goes into destructive mode. This is what is happening with the fighting here."
Ironically, just before the mayhem started, BPP’s Jimmy Mistry had said to the audience, "Let the fires and fighting in our community stop today."
Original article here.
The Trustees should stop playing on community sentiments to draw misplaced sympathy by portraying themselves as tragic victims of some devious sabotage and truthfully admit the BPP gaffe!
The BPP management which administrates a corpus of crores, is surprisingly ill informed on the law of taking mandatory licenses for holding functions on public grounds and/or overly sanguine about ensuring that needful has been done by the organisers. Allegedly, the celebrations at the Dadar Parsee Gymkhana were interrupted just as the Chairman completed his speech, with concerned authorities enforcing closure and throwing high expectations for a toss, for precisly this inadequacy. Unfortunately, money cant buy the Trustees, everything!
All this leaves a cynic wondering if the evening fiasco was simple overconfidence gone awry or a calculated ruse by BPP to save speakers from answering embarrassing questions from thinking members of the community in attendance.
Touche, the new BPP logo proved of no help in overcoming Trustees’ superstition, for regardless of the two sacred winged bulls in the newly designed emblem, the BPP continues to burn in fires of controversty.
Congratulating the trustees on their innovations and ideas…..
It was really sad that the BPP did make a mistake by not getting the proper paper work which ofcourse is really essential when some people try and take advantage of such loopholes..whilst ofcourse being impotent whilst dandya music, mandap loudpeakers blaring on street corners even in Parsi colonies by our brother communities…
Lastly every facet of society have people who shall always demand their’wants’ be adhered to and find faults with everything else…ahem apart from Brand management strategies, The new logo adds visual strength according to me…
One can start a personal tirade against BPP for having the new brand image and also those who dont see mountains falling due to such…
With regards to the launch of ZYNG, kudos to the young minds, and hope they prosper..though my guess is that people who have been saddened by such youth movements will now file another suit on the BPP since they sometimes use the offices of the BPP..That would really be a laugh…especialy when such organisatons do these under the pseudo banner of alerting and reviving Zooastrianism..
I have never heard of a public meeting being brought to an end at 7.30pm!! This smacks of incompetence or worse, corruption.
The trustees should arrange another meeting to report on their “achievements” during the past year WITHOUT dinner/lunch and see how many show up!! Most people present there on Sunday had only come for the free meal.
Correct Rostam,
Why should there be an incentive for free food?
Moreover, with Parsee poulation of over 40,000. presence of 1000 Parsees can not be claimed to be an Anjumam meet.
Let the Trustees call for questions/clarifications in advance from members of the community and be ready with answers in the next meet.
As for the fiasco, it should not be difficult to ascertain the real mischief-maker.
Quote:”especialy when such organisatons do these under the pseudo banner of alerting and reviving Zooastrianism”
As if the Organisation which stands to Preserve and Protect has not spolit the image of the Community in eyes of sister communities.
Further, the ‘contribution’ of the Ahmedabadi sponsored Organisation in dividing the tiny community can not be under estimated.
A better option would be to call AZA to a public debate with the BPP trustees. All community members should be invited to this open debate. No food should be organized.
It is to be seen whether AZA is prepared to take up such a challenge or prefers to write lenghty good for nothing write ups in the Jame Jamshed, their pet Speaker box !
Questions in advance are very necessary. Firstly, past experience has shown that those answerable will say that due to shortage of time they can not reply ALL QUESTIONS.
Secondly the person responsible for replying will get a fair time to be prepared with facts and figures.A dwindling community is not interested in 10 year plan.
ASKING QUESTIONS WILL NOT BE THE MONOPOLY OF A Z A .
The above comment of Mr. Behram Dhaber dt, 29th October is very interesting and very true. I admire his short comment which speaks volumes!
Aban,
How do you assume that only AZA has monopoly to ask questions to Trustees.? AZA does not represent All Parsees and others too have right to question Trustees.
Such ‘Debating” in the past (5 decades ago) used to degenerate into pelting eggs and rotten tomatoes. Do we want to make a spectacle of our community in eyes of others?
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