The Parsi way of life

Currently I am reading the 'infamously' famous book by Rohinton Mistry " Such A Long Journey"... Though I must admit that I picked up the book coz of all the hype and hoopla surrounding the book... However, having gone through the greater part of the book, I must admit that its definitely worth a read...

The story revolves round the protagonist Gustad Noble who is a middle aged Parsi gentleman and how he has to deal with various events that unfold around him... The story vividly captures Bombay of the late 60s and early 70s... The rain, the chaos, the sea of humanity and above all the sheer callousness and indifference of the common man, the state machinery, the neighbourhood etc etc which drives the protagonist to insanity and back... What keeps him reined in is the fact that he has a sweet family of 3 kids and a loving wife... However fate is not also kind on this front often  playing truant ... 

Since my masters day in Bombay, I have often been fascinated by the Parsi community and their way of life.. I have come to understand the fact that Parsis are a very close knit community whose population are sadly on the decline as the proportion of elderly people far outweigh those of the young mass.. However, I fondly recount memories of my interaction with people from this small community (mostly faculty at the institute, students or friends)... Apart from being very warm in their interaction, they are also quite a hospitable lot... Treating you to food and dine as generously as you may rarely have seen elsewhere... 

I still remember visiting the Dadar Parsi colony or the Parsi community towards Colaba or Anderi... The serenity, tranquility  and calmness about these settlement was something which attracted me to them... The houses, typically in these colonies, dated far back in history... though old and dated, they were maintained quite well and had a very haunting old world charm in them...The colony would typically have a very thick green cover with age old tree lining the road which gave it such mystical aura especially during the rainy season...

What lingers in my memory, like the fresh aroma of hot coffee made from freshly ground coffee bean on a very wet rainy day, is the charm of the community, their way of living and how the parsis have lent a charm of their own to Bombay in this enduring love affair  from as early as 10th century A.D and have made mainly  it their home... (a fact which is reflected in the statistics which estimates that globally there are only 100, 000 parsis and as per the 2001 census of India, 69,601 live in India - mostly in and around Bombay)

So go on and read the book if you want to have a flavour of this small but magnificent community which lends, to a great extent, the old world charm to the great city of Bombay...

A son is a son till he has a wife...

Was talking with a friend who was enquiring my well being and also about the expected date of the arrival of my long awaited, cherished bundle of joy... our baby...

I told him about the date (which happened to be somewhere in late December)... And some how spontaneously he asked (good intentionedly, of course): " So is it a boy or a girl?" I was somehow found wanting for answer as it has never even crossed my mind to check for the sex of the growing child in the umpteenth check up that my wife had with the doctor...

It is not out of a sense of pride or advocating for a burning social cause (like the case of female foeticide) which prompted us (myself and my wife) for not to go for such test... It was just a sense of joy and fulfillment which has kept us on our tenterhooks anticipating the arrival of our 1st child in to this world... boy or girl be damned...

While I have been an etic observer of the obsession that we as a country have for a boy child, it has always struck to me as a quintessential patriarchal passion which saw the birth of a male child as something auspicious or of someone to hold aloft the family torch etc etc... However, the real impact of the obsession hit me after we declared to the world about our forthcoming joy in to the world... That's when we heard whispers from relatives, friends et al to somehow sneak in the imaging chamber, coax the doctor to know the gender of our yet to be born offspring...

While I could go on and on about rattling statistics about the rampant female foeticide in the country (especially the northern part), how we as a country have brought ourselves to the brink of eliminating the female species with our obsession for the male child etc etc; I will desist from doing so...

As they say the proof of the pudding is in eating it, so is it in this instance too... In my opinion, the obsession to have a boy child stems from one of the basic emotion of humans.. fear... fear of loneliness in the old age, fear of being left abandoned in the evening of one's life, fear of having none to take the family name forward etc etc...

However, I have found such logic most 'illogical' and irrational... As I have seen umpteenth example of households full with boys and still the parents finding their way to an old age home in the late years of their life to lament the loneliness alone and wait for their death..

I think this perspective has to undergo a paradigm shift in our society and what should become a priority ultimately is the fact that we should strive to make a better human being  out of tour children and ensure that they become good citizens, better family man and somebody who would make you and your family name proud - boy or girl not withstanding...

I had heard of a famous quotation long ago and I will try to quote it here.. 

"My son's my son, till he hath got him a wife, But my daughter's my daughter all days of her life"
[1670 J. Ray English Proverbs 53]

Although a broad generalisation, but is  a good point for us to start to do away with our age old bias and obsession for the boy child and start looking at children more objectively in what they become in life through nurture than what they are by nature..