“Sourcing resources”

Your Editorial Viewpoint "Sourcing resources” (Parsiana, May 7, 2006) chronicled in a sense "the rise and fall” of the several movements in the Parsi community in the last 40 years. A million questions crowd the mind. Why did these movements start? Why did they fail? Should one stop striving if the results are not obtained?

These questions crossed my mind too. I had been marginally involved with a couple of them and had felt intensely about the issue at the time. But the intensity and the movement died. To some extent because the matter had been addressed. Whether the movements had a natural or premature death is hard to say.

But pondering over these, the conclusion that emerges is that a community that throws up these movements – misconceived, misguided or wrongly motivated – is not dead although it may be shrinking. Nor is it ready to die. If one watched anything dying, the obvious and apparent symptom is feeble movement and then stillness. A stagnant pond has an unnatural stillness…, however appealing it may be to poets and artists. A muddy puddle that has life has ripples and ungainly frogs and insects. It may be ugly but it is alive.

And so, let the strife and struggle continue. We must encourage and support any that seems well intentioned and well aimed. If along the way, the initiator of the movement garners some gains, let him. The community will hopefully still benefit. And who knows where the ripple effect will take place? As the poet Arthur Hugh Clough says, "Far back through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in the main.”

KHORSHED JAVERI