Editorial Viewpoint
Live and learn
Ringing in the Parsi New Year should be a time of hopeful and happy anticipation. But as Yazdegirdi l379 dawns the community scene is far from blissful.
A year ago the Joint Charity Commissioner (JtCC) N. V. Deshmukh had requested the trustees of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) to hand over the keys of the vacant flats to allottees who had waited decades, some maybe even a generation, for housing. The lucky recipients shed tears of joy while those whose names were omitted left crestfallen and sullen. The BPP officials said completing the procedures may take more time. The JtCC urged them to try and expedite the assignment. A year later the keys are yet to be given.
Allotments were kept on hold as trusteeship electoral candidates alleged bipartisanship in the assignment of the flats in order to curry favor with voters. When the new batch of trustees took office instead of implementing the allotments made by the previous board and sanctioned by the JtCC, they challenged the selection in the Bombay High Court. As in all legal matters the court’s decision takes its own time. In the meantime all allotments, old and new, are on hold.
So the trustees are now crying foul saying the opposition is tying their hands, not permitting them to fulfill their electoral pledges. All their grandiose plans are stymied, they cry. With little else of substance to do they have expended their energies on raising a ruckus about model/actor Arjun Rampal (who is married to former Miss India, Mehr Jesia) admitting in a magazine interview that he once entered a fire temple. He later apologized and clarified that this incident took place when he was eight years old! But some of the trustees, and at least one of their spouses, continued to demand “a public apology” claiming their religious sentiments have been outraged.
The trustees are presumably unaware that across the length and breadth of India non-Parsis enter fire temples either surreptitiously or by invitation to perform some labor. In some cases it is just to mop and clean; in others it is to attend to some electrical or plumbing fault. Parsi/Irani Zoroastrian electricians, plumbers and cleaners are not available all over the country as and when required. The trustees or managers or panthakies close the kebla door and permit the juddin to perform his tasks. And of course in Iran anyone can enter a fire temple.
A few weeks earlier the trustees barred two priests they termed as “renegades” from performing religious ceremonies at Doongerwadi, the Shapoorji Fakirji Jokhi Agiary at Godrej Baug and the historic Godavra Agiary which barred entry to J. R. D. Tata’s mother, a French lady who had converted to Zoroastrianism.
The WAPIZ Page in The Free Press Journal of August 7, 2009 boasts of the BPP’s accomplishments at Doongerwadi, apparently the orthodox body’s prime area of concern and interest. Under banner headlines, one of which claims “At Doongerwadi the newly elected BPP trustees have achieved in eight months what the earlier trustees failed to do for decades,” 11 items are listed. The first item alleges, “Doongerwadi lands reclaimed.” The write-up states that residents of the adjoining Grand Paradi apartments had “started using part of Doongerwadi as their own personal gardens.” What the report conveniently fails to mention is that the use of the land by a resident was with the consent of the earlier board of trustees. The write-up also neglects to state that the earlier trustees had reclaimed large tracts of land encroached upon by squatters. It was the bold act of the previous board and the personal daring of trustees like Dinshaw Mehta (the present chairman of the BPP) and Rustom Tirandaz (who was reelected to the new board but died tragically three months thereafter) that resulted in the squatters being evacuated.
To make matters worse their allegations of inaction by the earlier board also mean that the substantial contribution of the late trustee Silloo Kavarana in beautifying Doongerwadi was of no consequence. Her son Farrokh had actively supported Mehta, and indirectly WAPIZ’s electoral campaign, as the two groups had formed an alliance.
Many of the other items on the WAPIZ Page are too paltry (disinfesting white ants in the priests’ rest quarters, blocking leakages, cleaning toilets, etc) to merit space in a publication that charges subscribers for copies. For a free publication anything that fills pages is welcome. And speaking of “free” publications, the BPP Review is due out in its new avatar as a monthly. That is assuming the present trustees can take a decision on whom to award the contract. And with little to report besides debugging mattresses at a boys’ hostel or cleaning dakhma pavis with taro (though plans for a swimming pool for the new ownership building at Godrej Baug and a youth wing to be formed with a ten lakh rupee purse from the BPP are also on the anvil), it will be interesting to see how they manage to fill 40 or so pages, month after month at the community’s expense. Whether we know it or not, we are all paying for this reincarnated journal. Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Of course the pages could be filled with fiction: plans to build 3,215 flats or Mehta’s assertion on a television channel that Parsis gave a promise to Jadi Rana not to convert his subjects to Zoroastrianism. No such promise was made and the 16th century text Qissa-i-Sanjan is regarded more as a religious poem than a historic treatise. There is no evidence to show that a king named Jadi Rana even existed. And which king, real or mythical, would extract such a promise from a band of sea tossed, homeless refugees? Perhaps between fighting court cases, sparring with a co-trustee and barring priests, Mehta could spare time to actually read the 433 or so couplets of the classic. It’s never too late to live and learn.
Happy New Year!
A year ago the Joint Charity Commissioner (JtCC) N. V. Deshmukh had requested the trustees of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) to hand over the keys of the vacant flats to allottees who had waited decades, some maybe even a generation, for housing. The lucky recipients shed tears of joy while those whose names were omitted left crestfallen and sullen. The BPP officials said completing the procedures may take more time. The JtCC urged them to try and expedite the assignment. A year later the keys are yet to be given.
Allotments were kept on hold as trusteeship electoral candidates alleged bipartisanship in the assignment of the flats in order to curry favor with voters. When the new batch of trustees took office instead of implementing the allotments made by the previous board and sanctioned by the JtCC, they challenged the selection in the Bombay High Court. As in all legal matters the court’s decision takes its own time. In the meantime all allotments, old and new, are on hold.
So the trustees are now crying foul saying the opposition is tying their hands, not permitting them to fulfill their electoral pledges. All their grandiose plans are stymied, they cry. With little else of substance to do they have expended their energies on raising a ruckus about model/actor Arjun Rampal (who is married to former Miss India, Mehr Jesia) admitting in a magazine interview that he once entered a fire temple. He later apologized and clarified that this incident took place when he was eight years old! But some of the trustees, and at least one of their spouses, continued to demand “a public apology” claiming their religious sentiments have been outraged.
The trustees are presumably unaware that across the length and breadth of India non-Parsis enter fire temples either surreptitiously or by invitation to perform some labor. In some cases it is just to mop and clean; in others it is to attend to some electrical or plumbing fault. Parsi/Irani Zoroastrian electricians, plumbers and cleaners are not available all over the country as and when required. The trustees or managers or panthakies close the kebla door and permit the juddin to perform his tasks. And of course in Iran anyone can enter a fire temple.
A few weeks earlier the trustees barred two priests they termed as “renegades” from performing religious ceremonies at Doongerwadi, the Shapoorji Fakirji Jokhi Agiary at Godrej Baug and the historic Godavra Agiary which barred entry to J. R. D. Tata’s mother, a French lady who had converted to Zoroastrianism.
The WAPIZ Page in The Free Press Journal of August 7, 2009 boasts of the BPP’s accomplishments at Doongerwadi, apparently the orthodox body’s prime area of concern and interest. Under banner headlines, one of which claims “At Doongerwadi the newly elected BPP trustees have achieved in eight months what the earlier trustees failed to do for decades,” 11 items are listed. The first item alleges, “Doongerwadi lands reclaimed.” The write-up states that residents of the adjoining Grand Paradi apartments had “started using part of Doongerwadi as their own personal gardens.” What the report conveniently fails to mention is that the use of the land by a resident was with the consent of the earlier board of trustees. The write-up also neglects to state that the earlier trustees had reclaimed large tracts of land encroached upon by squatters. It was the bold act of the previous board and the personal daring of trustees like Dinshaw Mehta (the present chairman of the BPP) and Rustom Tirandaz (who was reelected to the new board but died tragically three months thereafter) that resulted in the squatters being evacuated.
To make matters worse their allegations of inaction by the earlier board also mean that the substantial contribution of the late trustee Silloo Kavarana in beautifying Doongerwadi was of no consequence. Her son Farrokh had actively supported Mehta, and indirectly WAPIZ’s electoral campaign, as the two groups had formed an alliance.
Many of the other items on the WAPIZ Page are too paltry (disinfesting white ants in the priests’ rest quarters, blocking leakages, cleaning toilets, etc) to merit space in a publication that charges subscribers for copies. For a free publication anything that fills pages is welcome. And speaking of “free” publications, the BPP Review is due out in its new avatar as a monthly. That is assuming the present trustees can take a decision on whom to award the contract. And with little to report besides debugging mattresses at a boys’ hostel or cleaning dakhma pavis with taro (though plans for a swimming pool for the new ownership building at Godrej Baug and a youth wing to be formed with a ten lakh rupee purse from the BPP are also on the anvil), it will be interesting to see how they manage to fill 40 or so pages, month after month at the community’s expense. Whether we know it or not, we are all paying for this reincarnated journal. Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Of course the pages could be filled with fiction: plans to build 3,215 flats or Mehta’s assertion on a television channel that Parsis gave a promise to Jadi Rana not to convert his subjects to Zoroastrianism. No such promise was made and the 16th century text Qissa-i-Sanjan is regarded more as a religious poem than a historic treatise. There is no evidence to show that a king named Jadi Rana even existed. And which king, real or mythical, would extract such a promise from a band of sea tossed, homeless refugees? Perhaps between fighting court cases, sparring with a co-trustee and barring priests, Mehta could spare time to actually read the 433 or so couplets of the classic. It’s never too late to live and learn.
Happy New Year!
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