Straits of God? Of a ‘Parsi peg’ & whisky brand called ‘Hor­muz’!

“The sun is sink­ing in the West,

Din­ner dishes go down in the sink —

Sauvignon Blanc is undoubtedly best —

It’s time for a writer to drink!

Orange skies — a radi­ant sun­set

Which calm the emo­tions to see —

Those ones I saw and won’t for­get

Look­ing at skies — just her and me?”

— From The Songs of Rose Leyti, by Bachchoo

Article by Farrukh Dhondy

Regime change looms ahead in the UK, and so, gentle reader, it’s reas­on­able to expect my spec­u­la­tion about the dir­ec­tion Andy Burnham’s premi­er­ship will take. But no. I’ll wait till he’s actu­ally in 10 Down­ing Street and chooses a Cab­inet. Instead, today, I will turn to a strange intru­sion that’s come my way.

This column’s name, as you per­haps know, comes from Lewis Car­oll’s rhyme in Alice in Won­der­land:

“The time has come, the Wal­rus said…/ To talk of many things/Of shoes — and ships — and seal­ing wax/ Of cab­bages and kings…”

I have very little to say about seal­ing wax, and, des­pite the fact that every com­ment­ator makes pre­dic­tions about tomor­row’s UK, the time hasn’t come, for me, to talk about it.

Instead, here’s a strange, per­haps sur­real­istic and pro­voc­at­ive off­shoot of another inter­na­tional tangle of our times — the US-Israeli war with Iran.

The world has been hit by fin­an­cial crises owing to the clos­ure of the water­way adja­cent to Iran known as the Strait of Hor­muz. Iran has mined this stretch of water to blow up any ship­ping and espe­cially tankers car­ry­ing sup­plies of Middle East­ern oil to its buy­ers across the world.

Apart from a break in the bomb­ing of Lebanon, and the sur­render of nuc­lear cap­ab­il­ity by Iran, open­ing of the Strait of Hor­muz to ship­ping has been one of the chief aims of the hes­it­ant or nonex­ist­ent “cease­fire nego­ti­ations” of this war. It has, so far, come to noth­ing. Hor­muz remains closed.

And this fact has inspired an AI-con­struc­ted joke on the Inter­net which has, I believe, “gone viral”. A friend sent it to me. It’s the pic­ture of a bottle of whisky called “Hor­muz”. The label says it’s a “single malt”, the cat­egory which is more expens­ive than “blen­ded” whisky.

My friend’s cap­tion to the pho­to­graph, or AI-gen­er­ated pic­ture (is it called a “meme”?) was something to the effect of “open up Hor­muz”, pre­sum­ably with a swig, to calm the anxi­ety caused by this mur­der­ing, destruct­ive war.

If the actions of the United States had, as Oran­gee­boob ori­gin­ally inten­ded, led to the rapid elim­in­a­tion of the cruel Ira­nian regime, it would have been wel­comed by the civ­il­ised world. Don­ald Deranged Duck didn’t know what he was doing, or how to do what he wanted, and so it didn’t hap­pen.

I respect­fully assume, gentle reader, that none of this is news to you and that my com­ments are unne­ces­sary! But what per­haps some of you don’t know is that Hor­muz is the short form of “Ahura Mazda”, the “God of wis­dom” or the supreme intel­li­gence and light or energy of the uni­verse — the name for the mono­the­istic god of the Zoroastrian reli­gion — that of my fam­ily and my birth.

One of my ancest­ors and very many Parsis (Zoroastri­ans) are named “Hor­muzd”, shortened in many instances to “Homi”.

I have, throughout my short and happy life, wondered why any com­munity would call a boy child by the name of God. There are Chris­tian boys in Por­tugal called Jesus, but there aren’t Jew­ish lads called Jehovah and call­ing a Muslim boy Muhammad is accept­able, but humans can’t be called Allah.

I sup­pose call­ing a stretch of the sea the Straits of God might be okay, but call­ing a mor­tal man Hor­muzd — Ahura Mazda — is surely wrong? I came to the con­clu­sion that over the years there had been an uncon­scious lit­eral slip – that the ori­ginal name was “Hor­muzdyar”, which means the “friend of Ahura Mazda”, rather than God him­self. That had slipped in usage to become Hor­muz or Hor­muzd and then “Homi”.

I am, as a born Zoroastrian, grate­ful to Ahura Mazda for keep­ing the reli­gion devoid of ayatol­lahs.

Yes, we’ve always had Dasturs, head priests and people who vainly regarded them­selves as super­Dasturs, but noth­ing like the “supreme” ayatol­lahs, whose pro­nounce­ments become not “opin­ions”, as the trans­la­tion of the word “fatwa” means, but com­mand­ments — not per­haps carved in stone, but pro­voc­at­ively whispered into the steel of dag­gers and the bar­rels of guns?

There was never in Zoroastri­an­ism, as there is in some other reli­gions, an injunc­tion against alco­hol. Quite the con­trary. The cul­ture of, or indul­gence in, a “chhaanto-pani” (“a splash with water”) is pre­val­ent amongst us Parsis. And then there’s the joke of the two-fingered meas­ure of a “Parsi peg” — involving the dis­tance between the fore­finger and little fin­ger held against the glass — the breadth of a hand? Full meas­ure.

Free­dom to con­sume alco­hol may not make it per­miss­ible to name a single malt (or for that mat­ter a blend) by the name of God. Stretches of ocean? Yes! But brands of whisky???

My guess, gentle reader, is that even if there were Zoroastrian ayatol­lahs with severe dis­pos­i­tions, the nat­ural tol­er­ance within the ten­ets, tra­di­tions and cul­ture of the reli­gion would not lead to a “fatwa” to visit harm on the inventor of the Hor­muz whisky meme. Cheers!

Or, as my grand­father would say when rais­ing a glass, invok­ing ser­vice to God: “Sahebji!”