“Significant at 60?”

Once again, an excellent editorial: "Significant at 60?” (Parsiana, November 7-20, 2023). But I have a grievance; the question mark is misplaced. It should have been an exclamation mark!

Frankly, I have often contemplated the prospect of the fast vanishing Parsi community but take solace in writer Jonathan Swift’s doggerel:

"We are God’s chosen few,

All others will be damned.

There is no place in heaven for you:

We can’t have heaven crammed.”

Berjis Desai’s brilliant piece, "How Ahura Mazda’s competitors were downgraded,” in the same issue is most instructive. This is the first time I have come to learn that there were three Ahuras — not just (as I always believed) the one and only Ahura Mazda. But it is some consolation to know that the two other Ahuras were merely "downgraded.” In early Christian theology a far worse fate was meted out to the 52 Gnostic Gospels: in the third century A.D. they were all banned and proscribed, and the Gospels of only Mark, Mathew, Luke and John were declared as the Authorized Version of the New Testament (the Bible).

I was also delighted to see in the magazine the photograph of Cooverji and Amy Bhabha and their children Sorab and Rati taken at the time of the latter’s navjote ceremony. Amy, her sisters and their parents were great friends of my parents (and mine) in faraway Rangoon in the years before the Second World War.

FALI NARIMAN

Delhi

falinariman@gmail.com

The editors reply:

We opted for a question mark in order not to appear presumptuous!

Regarding Berjis Desai’s piece, we had sought Dastur (Dr) Firoze Kotwal’s opinion on the contents and will carry his views along with Desai’s clarifications in the next issue.

• • •

In the editorial ("Significant at 60?” Parsiana, November 7-20, 2023) your forecast about the number of Zoroastrians in India by 2033 as being around 35,000 is bang on.

Our numbers were the highest ever at 1,14,890 as per the 1941 census, after which there has been a steady decline. Once the generation born between 1941 and 1951 is no more, the decline is bound to be even greater than the number 9,500 projected in 2101.

While the optimist in me harbors the fond hope for an upswing in numbers, the pragmatist in me is resigned to the fact that it is all over bar the shouting.

DINSHAW F. TAMBOLY

dinshawtamboly@gmail.com