Football stadium in a rain forest

Our colleague in the law firm and a life long Mancherji Joshi Colony [better known as the Dadar Parsi Colony (DPC)] resident, Firoza, is aghast. The proposal to set up a hawker zone (HZ) in DPC is so preposterous that it is making Parsis, not only in Dadar, mad. To many of the thousands of signatories against this proposal, a HZ in DPC is as bad as suddenly permitting non-Parsis into our atash behrams. What irks the community more is that the neighboring Hindu Colony has been excluded from this proposal after its residents protested.
A heritage precinct, DPC, with its quaint lanes shaded with carefully numbered and chronicled trees including the red gulmohar in the summer shedding tears of blood for some lost love is a city asset. Its serenity is disturbed only by the call of the cuckoo from the mango trees. Exotic birds and parrots sit on your window sill. The courts have consistently upheld the sanctity of the Parsi-user covenants for its 100 odd buildings, to preserve the uniqueness of its environs. And all this in the heart of the city. Some town planner has certainly decided to emulate the fate of a short lived ruler of Delhi called Mohammed Bin Tughluq aka the Mad Sultan, who issued a diktat to shift the capital from Delhi to Daulatabad.

Overview of Dadar’s Parsi Colony

Our young and enthusiastic chief minister of Maharashtra has candidly acknowledged that there are serious flaws in the draft development plan (DP) which need to be rectified. The community must immediately make its representations against this proposal with the help of town planning experts. The perpetually warring trustees of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (whose miserable tenure is ending soon) can unite for once for this cause. In the forthcoming September elections to elect five trustees, we must ask each candidate to explain what he/she has done to fight this proposal.
Parsis are grateful to the high priest of Udvada, Dastur Khurshed Dastoor, who used his rapport and friendship with the then Gujarat chief minister and now Prime Minister Narendra Modi to restore and preserve Udvada village. The Prime Minister regards Parsis as an exemplary minority which has never agitated for special status or rights. It is time perhaps to encash that goodwill. The largest concentration of Parsis in the world is in DPC and its uniqueness requires to be preserved. Putting up a HZ in DPC is the equivalent of constructing a football stadium in a rain forest.
The current government in Maharashtra has not begun on a very auspicious note, whether it is justifying before the High Court its ban on possessing beef; or its direction to screen only Marathi films at prime time in multiplexes; or an embarrassingly faulty DP — its approach has been ham-handed (no pun intended).
If Parsis are their usual supine and indifferent selves, hawker cacophony will indeed ruin DPC. However, for once, they should galvanize into action through reasoned representations to the authorities; build public opinion; and if nothing else works, then file a writ petition in the Bombay High Court.
Firoza and the Dadar Parsis must regain their once famed militant spirit. When those who normally remain silent speak, the world shudders. We would want to see the gulmohar shed its red tears for its lost love and not for DPC.