Readers' Forum
The Zoroastrian odyssey
We pride ourselves in our heritage,
King Cyrus
With his territorial continental
acquisitions,
Garbed in the graces of the Medes,
golden Persepolis
Studded with sculptured horse-chariots.
We gave succor to the Jews, a brief
haven,
And shook time with the legacy of one
god,
One thousand five hundred years
before the babe.
Fleeing conversion’s sword, bereft of
jeweled standard,
Of home and harvest, protecting the
flame, we crossed
Uncharted waters to an uncertain
future,
With nothing to offer but ourselves.
Legends tell of how we blended, sugar
into milk,
Sheltered along Gujarat’s gentle
shores.
Maintaining faith while nurturing
thought, word and deed,
We swelled in numbers, tillers,
merchants, quiet scholars.
In this endless struggle to achieve a
racial identity,
We climbed over widening ripples to
merge, once more,
As British stances steeped into our
psyche.
Cricket and cream, tailored suits, the
scale and not the raga.
Bankers, chandlers, entrepreneurs and
lawyers we, eminent
In societies that looked askance at the
dhoti and the legume,
Merged to a fine bone that forgot the
flesh that had
Filled us with prosperity, respect,
dignity of spirit.
Independent India turned on the
pseudo-British.
We were relics of a discarded myth,
thrown onto
Unfamiliar jagged rocks. The
traditionalists that belonged,
Found a foothold, branched out and
greened.
Others chafed, confined in ancient
ways that stifled
Till once again a deluge began, a
trickle and then a flood.
With nothing to offer but ourselves,
We disburse to Australia, scatter over
North American and English shores.
Will we create a new mythology
All over again?
DEENAZ P. COACHBUILDER
California, USA
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From the archive