Vodka babies?

Those searching for ways to counter the declining Parsi population may wish to consider writer Farrukh Dhondy’s suggestions which appeared in the Daily News and Analysis (DNA) issue of November 14, 2009.

"We have vast pockets of invested wealth. The lands in Bombay which contain the towers from which dead bodies are disposed by feeding them to the vultures, are a very expensive chunk of real estate. The vultures are dying out as they absorb diclofenac through eating cattle carcasses. It’s a medicine for cattle but lethal to the birds and has killed 95 percent of Indian vultures. We should dispose of the dead differently — after all the Zoroastrian Kings, Cyrus and Darius, are buried in tombs. The plan is we sell off the land and hold the proceeds in a Parsi Survival Fund. Then use the fund to import a quarter of a million volunteer women of child-bearing age from countries such as Russia, Romania and places from which adventurous or desperate women volunteer for questionable service in the Gulf and even come to India to join Bollywood dancing choruses and work in the sex trade. These young ladies would be given the status and lifestyle of memsahibs and be required to, with forms of easy social introduction, provide the next generation of Parsis. As Parsi Baby-mothers they would be pampered and pensioned as saviors of the race.

"‘I think I approve,’ says the late great writer’s grandson, Sorabovskhy, Mehtanov or Mercurevich,” Dhondy notes.