Prayers or pandemonium?

During the muktad prayers at an agiary in Poona, I was among the nearly 50 persons in the smoke ridden hall where the prayers were being said, with 20 priests participating in them. There were eight afarganius, and in some cases, an afarganiu was used for prayers of three persons. The simultaneous prayers with each one reciting different things, was a discord amounting to a bedlam. When I asked a particular priest, who seemed listless in his dreams, to point out the person who has asked him to pray, he told me that he was not able to do so as the person was not present in the hall, but that he had paid him to pray, and has been doing so for the past 10 years. To my mind this amounts to a person with a stomach ache paying the priest to take medicine on his behalf.

The above is such a contrast to the way other religious denominations, like the Christians, pray to remember their dead in a sober and dignified manner. But then we are an enlightened community! Of course, at the end of the prayers, the priest hands over to you some papri-malido and fruits with a warning that, this may not be given to a parjat (non-Parsi) human being, but may be consumed by a dog or a cow.

Would it not be better, if each individual lights a candle or a divo in his own home and prays before it to his beloved dead? That prayer will be more effective than anything that a priest says to sooth your ‘stomach ache!’

Brig NOSHIR B. GRANT (Retd)

Poona