On a hill in Mumbai surrounded by banyan trees lies the Doongerwadi grounds. It is home to the city’s ancient Towers...
arZan Articles
Mira Mehta named to Bloomberg New Economy’s 2025 “Catalyst” class
Mira Mehta, co-founder and CEO of Tomato Jos in Nigeria, has been named to Bloomberg New Economy’s 2025 “Catalyst”...
Singapore university confers honorary degree on Ratan Tata
India’s leading industrialist Ratan Tata was today conferred with a honorary degree of Doctor of Business by a Singaporean university for his achievements as a visionary entrepreneur and a...
How Salli Became An Integral Part Of Parsi Cuisine
Most of the city’s Parsi food-serving Irani restaurants are around Fort, and fried foods and sweets shop Camy Wafers has a sound and solid reputation among them for the quality of their salli, the...
Rusi Dinshaw: Pakistan’s lone Parsi Test Cricketer Dies In Penury
Rusi Dinshaw, the only Parsi to have ever been selected in a Pakistan Test squad, passed away on Monday, and his death has brought into focus the failure of the PCB to look after its former players....
XVII North American Zoroastrian Congress 2014 in Los Angeles USA
Come December 29, 2014 and hundreds of Zarathushtis from North America and other parts of the world will gather in Los Angeles for the XVII North American Zarathushti Congress 2014. “Faith and...
Ashmick Snack Shack: Pali naka’s Parsi pride
Karan Johar’s mom, Hiroo digs the dhansak. But that’s not why you need to make a call to Ashmick. By Roxanne Bamboat | Mumbai Mirror For burb residents who whine about Parsi cuisine...
Eminent Economist Rustom Cavasjee Cooper: The One That Got Away
The news of R C Cooper‘s passing last June, which I heard only recently, recalled an episode from the Shah Commission. Indira Gandhi was giving evidence or, rather, refusing to give evidence...
Frene Ginwala: African National Congress & Parsi connection
Dr. Frene Noshir Ginwala (born 25 April 1932)[1] is a South African journalist and politician who was the first Speaker of the National Assembly of South Africa from 1994 to 2004.[2] She is an...
Zoroastrian text that pre-empted science’s latest discovery
As was recently reported in the news There’s no way for us to know exactly what happened some 13.8 billion years ago, when our universe burst onto the scene. But scientists announced Monday a...
Jamshedi Navroze 2014
On the occasion of Jamshedi Navroze 2014, we would like to wish all our readers Navroze Mubarak !! The Haftseen table below is laid out at Mehernaaz, Shovir and Ava Irani’s home in Mumbai, India...
Adi Dastur: Obituary
Ardeshir Rustom Dastur passed away on Friday January 17 after a valiant struggle following complications of strokes. Leaving his loving wife Renate, his sister Nergez Mehta Mumbai and niece and...
Decoding Religion: Zoroastrianism
Ancient Persian faith perseveres today despite declining populations, limited presence on campus In an effort to further understand UTD’s diverse popluation, what follows is part one in a four-part...
Navroze Around The World
For most people across the world, March 20th signifies little more than early morning rush hours, household chores and office deadlines to meet. They go about their business as per usual which — if...
Zara maska laga ke! Iranian Cafes in Pune have the best bun maska & Chai
For decades, Iranian cafes have been a popular haunt for youngsters looking out for their daily quota of bun-maska and chai. Standing strong since 1964, Café Yezdan has seen modernization,...
Rare, raw & exhilarating: Shiamak Davar’s Selcouth is a visual treat
Selcouth, according to Shiamak Davar, means ‘rare,’ and the performance his group put on under that name is certainly that. Rare, as in rarely has something as ambitious and accomplished been seen...
Cooking with Perzen Patel
The blogger and entrepreneur who runs Bawibride.com cooks her grandmother’s prawn curry recipe just in time for Navroze Mamaiji’s secret Perzen Patel is exactly the kind of woman I never want to...
Burjorji Jamaspji Padshah: The Man Behind the Formation of the Tata Group
Burjorji Jamaspji Padshah was born in Bombay on May 7, 1864 in a high talented family, hailing from Navsari. He was the fourth son of Jamaspji Padshah who died prematurely in 1880, leaving him at...
Sarosh Zaiwalla: He Fired Tony Blair and…
His clients include everyone from Saddam Hussein to the Gandhis… He’s saved millionaire tycoons Robert and Vincent Tchenguiz from going to jail, sued the UK government and won, and fired Tony...
Dhun Bugli: Portrait of a life less known
At the cusp of Old and New Delhi stands Delhi Parsi Anjuman, complete with North India’s only fire temple, a canteen that offers Parsi food by Dhun Bugli, one of the 750 Parsis in the city, writes...
Zubin Mehta talks about his ‘lasting marriage’ to the Israel Philharmonic
In this day of peripatetic music directors who juggle multiple appointments in various corners of the globe, most conductors are unable, or unwilling, to forge permanent relationships such as were...
The Power of Cultural Influences and Inspirations for Success: ZAGNY
In celebration of 40 years, ZAGNY has invited an elite group of prominent Zoroastrians who are innovators, leaders and trail-blazers in their respective field of Music, Academics, Social Change,...
Threads of partnership
Friends and collaborators Bina Rao and Villoo Mirza are bound by their passion for handlooms Bina Rao of Hyderabad-based Creative Bee foundation and Villoo Mirza of SEWA (Self Employed Women’s...
Chemould Prescott Road: Moulding modern art for decades
India was still taking its first steps as an independent nation when a young Maqbool Fida Hussain was struggling to find avenues to display his art in the city. He met by chance a young Parsi couple...
We cannot allow ourselves to be broken: Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal
A woman stood at the heavenly gates, Her face was scarred and old. She stood before the man of fate for admission to the fold. “What have you done,” St Peter asked, “To gain admission here?” “I’ve...
“Flex, Feroze !”
A Parsi tradition is back in the spotlight Alittle-known fact about the Parsi community is that they are also great connoisseurs of the body. One winter’s evening every year, hundreds of them throng...
Akuri with thespians: The Kotwals
What could be better than to start Monday morning with Akuri (just one more of the great contributions that the Parsis have bequeathed to India) with friends and noted theatre veterans — Mahabanoo...
Mr and Mrs Racer: In a first, female drives in Cholistan rally
It started out with Tushna Patel being her husband’s navigator. But Roni Patel’s passion for car racing proved infectious and rubbed off on her too, eventually. This year, Tushna was the...
The Godrej Game-Plan
Ace industrialist Adi Godrej, Chairman of the 117-yearold Godrej Group and one of India’s leading business icons, has led the company’s shift from being a family enterprise to a modern...
BMC allots land in Worli for Parsis who opt for cremation
With conservatives allegedly barring reformists from prayer halls in the Malabar Hill Doongerwadi, the civic body has allotted space to them in the Worli crematorium. By Jyoti Shelar | Mumbai Mirror...
A Burning Question
Mumbai’s Parsis find themselves divided over a crematorium for those who’d rather not opt for the traditional Towers of Silence. By Lhendup G Bhutia |OPEN Magazine When Dinshaw Tamboly was about...
The grace and movement of ‘Gara’
It is fashionable amongst engineers and systemic solution experts to talk about India’s last mile problem. It applies to roads, power plants, and pretty much any type of construction, they will say....
Afterglow: National Award Winning Film
Written and Directed by Kaushal Oza, “Afterglow” is a tragi-comic piece about a Parsi widow who has just lost her husband and the condolence visitors who come in to offer their mock...
Canadian Parsi body decries its leader’s speech
The Zoroastrian Society of Ontario (ZSO) has denounced a controversial public speech made by its president Sarosh Bharucha, suggesting that Mumbai Parsis should migrate to Canada if they object to...
FIR against Bombay Parsi punchayet head in cheating case
The MRA Marg police have registered a case against the head of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet on a three-month old complaint of misappropriation of funds. By Ashutosh Shukla | DNA India A first...
Perin Pudumjee Coyaji And Avestan Calligraphy
With every Avestan letter I mastered, I felt like I was securing a piece of Zoroastrian culture’ Perin Pudumjee Coyaji is the only person in the world to have written a book of Kusti prayers in...
The Dreamers: Gallery Chemould Celebrates 50 Years on the Art Scene
UNTIL THE 1940S, art in Bombay was an occasional pleasure for the city’s European and Indian elite, displayed most prominently at an annual exhibition sponsored by the Bombay Arts Society that was...
A comedy of errors finds favour with audience: Dinyar Tirandaz
When Parsi actors get together to stage a comedy, you can be sure of a laugh riot. Harish Chandra Bijo, staged at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival on day one on Saturday, sent audiences back home with...
Sooni Taraporevala and Keki Daruwalla Bestowed Padma Shri in 2014
Good friend of Parsi Khabar, and amazing script writer, film maker and photographer Sooni Taraporevala was one of the two Parsis bestowed with the Padma Shri on the occassion of the 65th Republic...
Cyrus Mistry wins DSC Prize for 2014
Reticent author Cyrus Mistry on Saturday beat off stiff competition from five other writers to become the fourth winner of the $50,000 DSC prize for South Asian literature on Saturday for his book...
Death and bawdiness from the Parsi tongue
Parsis don’t have the reverence for the dead that other Indians do and their irreverence is extreme, as shown by numerous Parsi sayings By Aakar Patel | Livemint The Parsis are my favourite Indian...
Mehr Fardoonji: A greenie with gusto
Die-hard nature lover and ecologist Mehr Fardoonji talks to P. Sujatha Varma about reversing the bio-diversity crisis We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever; the goal is to create something that...
Parsis walk from outside to take my story forward: Cyrus Mistry
Reclusive writer Cyrus Mistry, whose book Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer has been nominated for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, prefers the classics to the contemporary — books as well as...
How Bombay’s Parsis cracked the opium trade
In the opening chapter of Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke, Bahram Modi of Navsari, recently married into the Mistrie family of Bombay, is trying to persuade his wealthy fatherin-law to let him...
How the Bombay cupcake survived
As yet another Irani café announces its closure, we revisit the history of the Irani’s popular staple, the humble ‘mawa’ cake By Pooja Vir | Livemint The year 1981 saw the release of Manmohan...
B. Merwan and the Irani Cafe: A Fading Icon
Recently the news about B. Merwan the iconic Irani cafe with the best Mava cakes in the world, shutting down; has brought a sense of gloom over all those who love the restaurant and in fact the...
Zoroastrianism: The Way Forward by Darius J. Khambata
ZOROASTRIANISM : THE WAY FORWARD 10TH WORLD ZOROASTRIAN CONGRESS – KEYNOTE ADDRESS 28TH DECEMBER 2013 Darius J.Khambata Senior Advocate, LLM (Harvard) [NOTE : This is the written version of the...
Sam Bulsara: Retrospective on 10th World Zoroastrian Congress 2013
10th World Zoroastrian Congress, Mumbai, December, 2013 WRAPPING UP 38 hours of speeches and discussions, 45 sessions, 121 speakers, and I have just 20 minutes to wrap-it-up. So, at best what I can...
Day 04 at the 10th World Zoroastrian Congress 2013
The last day of the Congress started bright and early at the NSCI Complex in Worli, Mumbai. Entering the arena I did feel a tinge of sadness that it was indeed the very last day of the event. This...
Day 03 at the 10th World Zorostrian Congress 2013
Day 03 of the 10th World Zoroastrian started bright and early at the NSCI Complex in Worli, Mumbai. The attendance at the first session at 9:30 AM was about 30% when the session started but had...
Day 02 at the 10th World Zoroastrian Congress 2013
Day 02 of the 10th World Zoroastrian Congress started bright and early at the NSCI complex in Worli, Mumbai. About half of the 1250 delegates were at their seats when the first panel sat down to...
Day 01 at the 10th World Zoroastrian Congress 2013
Finally after weeks of yes and no, the 10th World Congress took off today, 27th December 2013 at the NSCI Complex in Worli, Mumbai India. Over 1200 (not official) delegates gathered from 8:00 AM...