Senior Citizens’ Day fun

Residents of the F. S. Parukh Dharam­shalla look forward to Senior Citizens’ Day, October 1, with great anticipation. Every year busloads of children from The Society for Education of the Crippled (SEC) descend on the Dharamshalla to entertain the senior citizens. This year, as October 1 fell on a Saturday which is a holiday for SEC, the children arrived on October 3 to regale the residents with songs and dances, as per an e-mail received from Zarin Havewala.

Residents of Parukh Dharamshalla enjoy interacting with children and committee members

There was fun galore as the birthdays of the residents, staff and SEC children which occurred during September and October were celebrated with the cutting of cakes and a hearty rendering of the Happy birthday song. The SEC children sang and danced to popular numbers, with the residents clapping and singing along. With the then Navratri festivities on, the youngsters played the drums to the rhythms of the dandia and garba and soon had the residents dancing along with them, the e-mail mentions. After nearly three hours of entertainment, everyone was served vada pau, a cold drink and birthday cake.

The program was sponsored by the Inner Wheel Club of Bombay, as they have been doing for the past few years, Havewala acknowledges. Members of the Ladies’ Committee who participated in this celebration included Bombay Parsi Punchayet trustees Arnavaz Mistry (chairperson of the Committee) and Armaity Tirandaz along with Zenobia Adajania, Zarine Chothia, Pervin Shroff and Havewala. The committee arranges entertainment for the residents of the Dharamshalla once every month in the form of music, dance, magic shows, Chinese dinners as also religious discourses and jashans. With Diwali celebrations done, they now look forward to having a good time at Christmas.