Zoroastrian or Rastafarian

As a regular reader of your magazine, currently resident in the UK, I have been looking for a good quality short essay on the basic tenets of our religion and a short history of the Parsis and the once powerful Persian empire.

The article should be suitable for any Zoroastrian living abroad (or to a greater extent suitable for people who live outside the Bombay/Gujarat areas) to give to an interested friend or colleague who may not have previously heard about the religion. Rather than re-invent the wheel, I would be grateful if any of your readers could please either let me have a copy of any suitable article or the name of any relevant work/author. My e-mail address is javidcanteenwala@hotmail.com

Perhaps Parsiana could also include a suitable article (as a special pullout) in its next Pateti or Navroz issue. I am sure several corporate advertisers would be willing to sponsor a well written article that can be handed down generations.

A few years ago, a close friend of mine was asked about his origins and religion (at a dinner reception after a medical conference in Europe). He launched into the usual Jadi Rana and the milk and sugar story, mentioned our position as probably the oldest monotheistic religion in the world, our flight from persecution and oppression in Persia, etc. On finishing what he believed was an enlightening précis of the history of the Parsis, a lady asked him if that meant that he believed in the holiness of Emperor Haile Selassie (the last king of Ethiopia). She had wrongly concluded that Zoroastrians and Rasta­farians were synonymous.

I am sure that our several color conscious, ‘we are better than the rest’ aunties (fuis, kakis, masis and mamis) will indignantly rally around and find a suitable essay to dispel any such similarities, albeit in name alone.

JAVID CANTEENWALA

Essex, UK