Aviary at Doongerwadi

Once again the proposal for an "aviary” at Doongerwadi has surfaced. The only valid justification for disposal of the dead in Towers of Silence is the Zoroastrian principle of respect for nature and non-pollution of the elements. Confining nature’s free-soaring vultures in a glorified cage euphemistically called "aviary” just to compel them to consume our corpses is totally repulsive and anathema to the essential precept of our religion.

Only a warped mind can believe that the Zoroastrian religion requires his or her mortal remains to pass through the alimentary canal of a certain species of bird as a prerequisite for his or her soul to be adequately filtered to be redeemed in after-life. It’s time we differentiate our noble religion from a cult.

Why do we even bother to go round in circles trying to assess the viability — cost-wise or practicality-wise — of a vulture aviary at Doongerwadi, when the very concept is preposterous, unZoro­astrian and eminently condemnable?

PHIROZE B. JAVERI

phiroze.javeri@gmail.com