Minor Minorities

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).