Pathologist’s poems

Actor Boman Irani released Poems, Potpourri and Parsees at the Oxford Bookstore in Bombay on October 3, 2009, while Farzana Behram Contractor, who wrote the Foreword, read out a few verses from Dr Ruzbeh Keki Mowdawala’s first literary offering. The writer, a consultant in laboratory medicine is also a lecturer in Sophia College, from where she had graduated. The pathologist obtained her postgraduate degree from the US, the blurb reveals.

The book is a collection of poems and thoughts written between November 2008 and April 2009, the author states in her introduction. These offerings which come from the heart are printed in chronological order and are meant more for the lay reader than for a sophisticated literary audience. She has divided the book into three sections, one dealing with her dear family including her beloved dogs, the second is a potpourri of poems on life as she sees it, and the third deals with Parsis, "all done in fun.” Claiming that the book was a catharsis for her, she expresses the desire to write more in the future. However, careless proof-reading jars the reader at times.

(Below, from l): Dr Ruzbeh Mowdawala, Boman Irani and Farzana Contractor

The hardbound 101-page book, priced at Rs 195, has been dedicated to Mow-dawala’s parents, Thrity and Keki, and published by Hemant N. Thakkar, N. M. Thakkar and Company, 140 Princess Street, Bombay 400002. In her Foreword, Contractor writes, "Ruzbeh is a child at heart... For those who know (her) it will be like going through her personal diary. She writes with feeling about everything that is close to her heart; her first dog when she was a three-year-old tot, her mother, a father who she was very close to, grandparents, babies being born in the family, cousins and aunts. And friends... (She) also deals with intangibles like love and life, loneliness and death. Even subjects like ego, jealousy, sunrise, sunset, weddings, happiness, music, school, and food!”

"They are simple poems, some offering a lighthearted look at the Parsi traditions,” Mowdawala told Mid Day in a pre-launch interview published on October 3. "One message I’ve always tried to convey to my community is that we need to move with the times. You’ll see that in my concluding poem, The Persians. The rule about marrying within the community, the vultures consuming the dead at the Towers of Silence... where’s the rationale to all of it? To say that a Parsi who marries a non-Parsi is polluted just doesn’t make sense. The vultures are gone. Let’s accept that and find an alternative,” opines the pragmatic scientist.

According to the Mid Day correspondent, "the highlight of the book, for some of us, is undoubtedly the Parsi glossary in the last few pages, where the secrets of Parsi slang are laid bare. Read it and you can look forward to a hearty chuckle.” S. V.