Display of tradition

"All are special to me... most are candid... I wait for the right moment,” stated photo journalist Shantanu Das in conversation with Parsiana on December 10, 2019, about his 47 photographs displayed at Bombay’s Tao Art Gallery between November 29 and December 4, 2019. It was not difficult to reach into the private world of the subjects, he said. Once he built up confidence with them, they "opened their homes” to him, Das revealed. Titled "Parsis — A Timeless Legacy,” the exhibition was curated by art collector and entrepreneur Parvez Damania jointly with educationist and "Parsi food lover” Ratan Luth. The pictures on show were shot in Bombay, Surat, Udvada and Calcutta among other cities "over five or six years.” Eleven of the 47 photos on display were previously shown publicly (including some at the Iranshah Udvada Utsav 2017), Das told Parsiana. The photography project "is still a work in progress. These works are more symbolic of a day in the life of a Parsi. I want the Parsi legacy not to be washed out with time,” Das wrote in an email to us.

"Few artists have dedicated time to documenting Parsi people, and fewer have had the permission to document what are often very private and personal traditions. We wanted to... share the unique Parsi culture, rituals and traditions with a wider population,” noted Damania in an email to Parsiana. To Luth, the exhibition was "an effort to document and preserve the culture of an ethnic community that is rapidly diminishing in number. It is important that the Parsi legacy is remembered and maintained for the current generation and generations to come.”
When a Parsiana representative dropped in at the Gallery on December 1, community member Adi Patel was admiring a photo of a quiet Udvada lane. "Bau saaru laagéch (feels very good) to see all this,” he said. He was on his second consecutive visit to see the photographs. Another group of Asians that fitness guru Mickey Mehta was showing around were admiring a line-up of priests at an Avan Yazad parav and an image of a Parsi man performing the kusti ritual.
"Each frame brings fond memories to Damania and Luth, but the one that has inspired them the most has been that of two Parsi priests and a Parsi boy on a Jawa motorcycle with a side car,” stated Damania’s write-up. They find it particularly fascinating as the Jawa motorcycle "is a rarity, and even more with a side car, thus defining the eternal love of Parsis towards vehicles.” The invitations to the exhibition carried this image. "It was the perfect photo for the invitation,” Das told us.
Luth told The Hindu (TH) (November 29) that "these photos will bring out nostalgia and will make the newer generation of Parsi children take these practices forward.” Damania and Das had met at the navjote of Damania’s son. They worked together in 2013 to "show the world the architecture and cultural practices of the Parsi people,” via photographs of Udvada, noted TH. The businessman commissioned the results of the collaboration in a coffee table book Udvada (photographs by Shantanu Das) "to ensure that the coming generations must not be denied the Udvada we knew as children (see "Uniqueness of Udvada,” Parsiana, July 21, 2014).”