Saccharine sentimentality

Insinuating increasingly and gratuitously into Parsi e-mail inboxes are reflexively disseminated puff pieces containing ersatz reflections of the purported past glories of Parsis. Deconstructing the conceits in such missives, exposing the recycled tripe is imperative to sanity. The perfidious depths to which Parsi ethnocentricity has plummeted is evident in pronouncements like: "The Parsis have given India more than others have.”

Lauding Parsi industrialists for their putative philanthropy is akin to demonizing the US "one percent” avarice. To perceive philanthropy as merely altruistic is gullible and maudlin — in poor taste. Philanthropy comes easy to the sated, its provenance oftentimes lying beyond altruism. Crasser motivations — accretion of power, tax breaks, noblesse oblige, prestige, etc — abound.And while Parsi-pandering by non-Parsis emanates from low-level sensibilities, producing claptrap, Parsi over-the-net self-congratulating and disseminations of such preachings-to-the-choir are in poor taste, too. The pieces and their carrier pigeons are anachronistic and outright repulsive for their overtly jejune conceits (I’m sorry, but someone’s got to keep it real as regards rah-rah Parsi jingoisms of the "Parsi, you’re great; Parsi, you’re straight; Parsi, you’re pure; Parsi you’re sure” variety).

To euphemize inbreeding induced craziness as eccentricity, avarice as worthy of emulation, mind benumbing religiosity as good, while glossing over the myopia besetting the religio-socio-cultural milieu of the Parsi/Zoroastrian (inadmissibility of "outsiders” into fire temples, racist/xenophobic eschewal of intermarriage, the barring of interfaith produced progeny from a parent’s religion, etc) is to live in what Sartre called mauvaise foi (bad faith).

The bawajis in these ostensibly self-deprecating pieces come out looking good, winning even — but putatively. Sorry, they are not. They seem silly and losers when they swallow, whole, such high-in-empty-calorie puff-pies. Even the vaunted titans of Parsi industry look good and win if, and only if, amassing obscene wealth even while disregarding systemic mass poverty, meting out state-backed injustices to indigenous peoples such as forced removal from ancestral lands, environmental rape, deleteriously precipitating manmade climate change. Their "industriousness,” as well as industry engendered poisoning of the commonweal is considered doing good by their fawning admirers. Even "sagacious” high priests and punchayet plutocrats look the other way when religious rules foisted down the Parsi proletariat are bent or broken (in exceptionally wealthy) cases — intermarriage, induction into the faith of progeny of such, Doongerwadi admissions, and so on.

It would behoove the Parsis to stop writing and mindlessly disseminating such saccharine infused confections.

ZEND LAKDAVALA

Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

zocrateszend@yahoo.com