BY Rakshande Italia If I cherished one special day during the year, besides my birthday, it was the New Year – not Jan. 1, but a day in August when members of my tiny Zoroastrian community in Mumbai, India, celebrated the beginning of their calendar year. Colloquially referred as Parsi New Year, the day was… Continue reading Celebrating Parsi New Year
Category: Culture
Rolling in gold but still poverty-stricken
IN 1865, Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata – a one-time opium trader and scion of a sparkling line of Parsee priests, Zoroastrians who had fled to western India from persecution in Iran – attended a lecture in Manchester given by Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle, a cantankerous Scot, was known for his historical and philosophical essays, but he also… Continue reading Rolling in gold but still poverty-stricken
Numbers down, but not their spirit
Numbers down, but not their spirit Family planning, migration, restrictions on conversion are reasons behind decline in Parsi population. Kolkata, June 21: Some thirty years ago, they were 4,000. Now, the count has dropped to a measly 750. However, that does not discourage the spirited Parsi community in Kolkata. The close-knit Zoroastrian community comprises people… Continue reading Numbers down, but not their spirit
Lose the vultures, and lose the soul
By Bachi Karkaria As an Indian Parsi Zoroastrian, I’m proud to belong to a tiny minority widely admired for its material success and its philanthropy. But I feel a closing sense of siege. The vicissitudes of modern life are threatening our group’s ethnic identity and ancient ways. The vulture, our main accomplice in death for… Continue reading Lose the vultures, and lose the soul
Bringing up the mediums: Parsi Mobeds
Parents make the heartbreaking decision to send their children to residential schools for various material reasons. It’s seldom for a cause. But last year, parents of 30 Parsi children decided that the cause of serving the community was worthy enough. So they packed them off, some of them only about six years old, to the… Continue reading Bringing up the mediums: Parsi Mobeds
Parsis Are Australia’s most diligent workers
AT last the question on everybody’s lips has been answered: The hardest working believers in Australia are are Zoroastrians. With just two religious holidays a year, the followers of the prophet Zoroaster are four times as diligent as Muslims, five times more than Hindus, and put the Jews and Orthodox Christians to shame. While workplace… Continue reading Parsis Are Australia’s most diligent workers
Perin Ferrao: Activist refused to accept a woman’s lot in India
Even as a youngster Perin Ferrao never accepted the conventional view in her native India that women were subordinate to men. Committed all her life to the emancipation of women, the Montreal teacher and former international secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) was 80 when she died at her home in Dollard… Continue reading Perin Ferrao: Activist refused to accept a woman’s lot in India
