The Micro Community Which Offers Their Dead Bodies to Vultures by meeraom

With my training sessions with German hair colour giants Wella ,a Parsi colleague Freny who was the only local participant in Bombay invited us for lunch of Dhanshak at her Bhendi bazaar Parasi gali house! On the way from our company guest house at Napensey road she told us a lot about her Parsi community Since all was new to me ,sharing some information for those interested, others may skip and enjoy Netflix ( lines stolen from Swamiji). So the freedom fighter Dada bhaee Naroji or the nuclear scientist Homi Bhaba ,or the industrialists Tata and Godrej all belonged to the Zorashtrian community which fled from Iran to Gujrat coastal area to preserve their culture and religion of praying to the Fire ! Even our first prime minister’s son in law and iron lady India Gandhi s husband was a Parsi ! Hindi movies show Parsees as a funny black sherwani and black rooni topi community with an old watch hanging in their coats and they holding sticks calling someone Dikraa! Since British found them English conversant, they really favoured the Gujrati speaking community to migrate to Bombay.Freny made us meet her unmarried old Bua who had cooked for us! In a victorian style old house on first floor there was a most antique furniture with similarly antique Dadaee wearing triangle scarf tied to her neck! She boasted of Sir Manikshaw ,who made Pakistani army surrender to India aswell reaching hights of Armed forces! Freny s mom told us that most Parsi surnames had a suffix behind them like furniture wala ,daaruwala,batliwala or professional degree as surname like engineer, vakil or Doctor because British could only remember them with their profession. Also on lunch Freny s family told us the unique tradition of Parsis ,to take their dead to Tower of silence, where vultures,kites and crows eat their bodies!It is a compulsion for Parsis to marry in their own community Freny told us ,but she never liked any boy ,according to her they were not as intelligent and were Mumma s boys! So if a girl married another community, her kids were not allowed in their fire temple aswelll not considered Parsis.India s 1%population consists of this community who has reduced from 1 million in 1941 to 60,000 now.Also we saw in Freny s house the kitchen tiles had pictures of Zorostar and sacred fire temple ! After a hearty meal of Dhanshak rice we had a roohafza and soda mixed type drink ,i forget the name! But it was a unique and treasured experience of a culturally rich community! I wish Bombay people add more in my comments.