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Minor Minorities

31/3/2013

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It's amusing to see minorities which number in millions. That's the wrong use of the word 'minority', right? They should be called minor majorities. Now take us Parsis, we are the only ones who know the real meaning of 'minority'. At last count there are around 1,00,000 of us worldwide (that's one lakh for the numerically challenged). The more optimistic amongst us (me included) peg the figure at 1.5 or 2 lakhs, because we count a pretty large population hiding out.. oops.. living in Iran. And the smart 30,000 or so who have settled in the US and UK. The other real minorities would be Jews, Armenians, honest politicians…you get the picture.

You know you're from the Parsi minority when:
1) You jump with joy when you meet anyone else who is also Parsi. 
2) In college you're lucky if you can find three other Parsis in the entire campus. One year at NID I found five and was practically ecstatic. 
3) As you move away from the strongholds of Mumbai and Pune, you find yourself increasingly explaining who you are and when you're from. 
4) You rejoice when you meet a non-Parsi who knows something about your community. 
5) You spend hours tirelessly explaining the beginnings of your community, and how you are neither Muslim nor Hindu.
6) You spend even more hours explaining why you speak Gujarati (and English) as a mother tongue. A friend of mine actually believed that we spoke a language called Parsi. I had to enlighten him that it was Farsi, nor Parsi, and very few Parsis speak it anymore. 
7) When you meet another Parsi, you know you'll eventually figure out how you're both related after an in-depth conversation about relatives and friends. "Acha, so you're Rustom's cousin! Arey, Rustom is very close to us. He is my maasi's husband's cousin's mama's nephew's dog's owner's wife's mother's step-son!"
8) You have a long, convoluted, and/or highly unusual first name, and are so used to spelling it out you hardly bother saying it anymore. Easier to just shut up and hand over a business card.
9) Many people live hand-to-mouth. But Parsis live meal-to-meal.  
10) You take great pride in Parsi-owned companies such as Tatas and Godrej, and gloriously defend their honor in public (even if deep down you don't believe it). 
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Roark and Religions

4/1/2011

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A good weekend is one where you get to relax. A great weekend is one where you finish reading two juicy books! I finally finished The Fountainhead (very late in life). It is an epic, with a really strong dose of some pretty headstrong philosophy thrown in. This was the Centennial Edition, and at the end of it were notes, reviews, and edits by the author herself. These were more illuminating than the book itself, and give us a little peek into Ayn Rand's formidable brain. Books like this are pure hard work, sweat, blood and toil as the notes confirm. Not that she was complaining about the work. She was her own most stringent critic and heartless editor. 

Rand started work on the characters of the book a few years before actually starting the book. Each character has been sketched out in detail, with descriptions of the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects. Some of these characters are not used in the final book. Then there is her own first review of her first chapter. The notes read 'too many adjectives', and 'don't use words for the sake of it, use them only if really needed' and many more notes to that effect. Each chapter has its own review. More than the books, I would love to get my hands on the journals of Ayn Rand, and they do exist. She also interned at an architect's office for a year prior to writing the book, as part of her in-depth research. A monumental undertaking, this book must have been. It's one thing to have a strong, unique and original philosophy. Its quite another to build a fictional world around it, that is detailed to the nth degree. And it's the ultimate, if you have the sharp reasoning to cut, trash and re-write portions and pages of your work. She designed this book, and crafted every word, thought, and blink, down to the last comma.

One minute I was on the sidewalks of New York in the last century, with Roark challenging all existence, the next minute I was crossing medival Europe and stepping into ancient Iran. In Search of Zarathustra by Paul Kriwaczek is a non-fiction work about his own journey across countries, centuries, and gods. A Polish Jew and a dentist, he had a long-time fascination with Zoroastrianism, and its beginnings and influences. He believes Zoroastrianism has influenced Christianity, Judaism and Islam, infact many world religions much more than anything else. Its just that its never been documented. And since Zoroastrianism has been in the twilight zone for 1300 years, its even harder to get evidence of anything. But it does exist, as he takes us through his long journey through Europe and finally to Iran via Turkey and many other places. Some interesting points are that Avestan, the ancient language is surprisingly close to Old Sanskrit. In fact some prayers when translated, are almost exact. 

The author, and some others believe that it was one band of people from Central Asia that separated into two branches. One settled on the river Indus, and the other on the river Oxus (now the Amu Darya). The custom of shaking hands, apparently can be traced to Zoroastrian culture, as it was not originally Christian, and definitely not Islamic. It is also shown in some Iranian sculptures. Zoroastrianism also strongly influenced ancient Egypt, a fact unknown to most of the world. This is probably because history is written by the winners of the last war. One fact that comes out glaringly in this book is how present day history is dominated by Roman/Greek history, and is strongly one-sided. The Zoroastrian empire at its height, stretched from Egypt to the Indus (Kushan) and from Rome to the Gulf. It was, by all accounts, the greatest civilization of the ancient world. It was the first time in recorded history that the rulers were 'civilsed' in the true sense, being tolerant, open-minded, and just. Many other religions were allowed and encouraged to flourish within the empire too. For instance, Cyrus gave the persecuted Jews a home, and let them flourish. Yet, all this never gets mentioned in history. The world started and ended with the Roman Empire. And films like 300 don't do anything to help this. Now I understood where the two-winged symbol so common in ancient Egypt came from.

The beginning of the book is a bit tedious, but later chapters are engrossing and deeply moving (for a Parsi reader). He explores Iran, and visits sites of the great civilization. There are still Zoroastrians living in Iran, and practicing the faith. He visits the ancient sites of Cyrus and Darius, analyses and links Iranian art and sculpture to other times, cultures and places. Even in ancient days, it is astonishing to know the amount of cross-cultural exchange that happened. Finally, someone enlightened me about the beginnings and significance of the festival of Noruz, still celebrated worldwide. In spite of centuries of Islamic rule, Noruz (Navroze) is celebrated in a very Zoroastrian way in Iran, as it has been since the beginning. Infact, Muslims in Iran are extremely proud of their pre-Islamic heritage, though they might not be very well-informed about it.

The author ponders on the beginnings of Zoroastrianism, which was in the Bronze Age. We can imagine what people were like in medieval times, but its hard to imagine life in that era. What was life like then? Did the same things move people? And what was the prophet Zarathushtra himself like? These are questions that will always remain unanswered. However his teachings, thoughts and philosophies are relevant even today. Externally life changes, but internally humans remain the same, and the same issues of ethics, morals, and meaning of life plague us since the beginning of time. The author set out to find this ancient and all-but-lost culture and religion. He was looking for signs, symbols, places and events, but in the end, he is led to Zarathustra's core teachings. That is the thread that lives on inside people, that is the thread that connects us to people of the Bronze Age, and connects us to Zarathustra himself. 
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