Fading Glory of the Parsis

Though Bombay is a city that is all-inclusive, that does not mean that there are not quite firm divisions between communities. These different communities may meet and barter on the street without differences, but back inside their homes they will pursue markedly distinct ways of life.

One of the most intriguing communities (to me) is the Parsi one. Parsis, aka Zoroastrians, are a religious group, originally from the area covered by the ancient Persian Empire, who started coming to India around 900 CE. In the nineteenth century their fortunes, in Bombay in particular, seemed to have taken a huge lift-off, and some of their members became very powerful.
The fact is that South Mumbai (the old part) is absolutely riddled with statues, and most of them seem to be of the great Parsi merchants and entrepreneurs who, alongside the British, virtually ran the city in the 1800s and early 1900s. Frozen in their monuments, they sit on stone thrones, and stare out at the city that seems to have been moulded by them.

However, what’s odd is that the Parsis’ status, influence, and even numbers, seem to have dwindled at an amazing speed over the last half-century. Their population in Bombay has almost halved since the Second World War. Certain individuals shine out, but mostly the Parsi tone in Bombay now appears to be one of faded glories.

The previous paragraph is of course a generalisation, but, if you want to see just how faded the glories can become, check out Mumbai’s painfully wilting Parsi History museum….


Museum unregarded
The Time Out Guide to Mumbai doesn’t even mention the FD Alpaiwalla Museum (though, oddly, it does mention the Khareghat housing estate, aka “colony”, in which the museum is located).
At first this would seem a strange omission – after all, the museum has some ancient artefacts, which it claims are nearly 4000 years old, and a beautiful sixteenth century carved gate from Gujarat, which alone would give it high prestige. And then there are also antiques from the Persia area, including stone tablets with cuneiform writing inscribed on them, which are fascinating. (Well, they are to me).
Despite its small size, just that of four large rooms, the museum has got some nice pieces.

But, the full story is that… it’s dingy, dilapidated and under-serviced.
The visitor’s book, speckled with age, told its own story – twenty entries in the last six months. And, certainly, I never saw another soul in the hour was there.

You begin to wonder who’s running it – and why they do so little to promote it…
It’s almost as though the committee/trustees/whatever prefer it that no one comes there!

For example –
There are no directions to the place inside or outside the housing colony.
There’s no sign on the front that outlines opening times, admission details, or contact information.
No photos are allowed (not even for a fee, as at most Indian museums).
There were no souvenirs on sale, nor information leaflets to be had.
There is no website (This really gets my goat. C’mon guys, this is the 21st century, and a webpage can cost you nothing. Just do it!)

The sweet lady who occupies the office next door reinforced that no photos were possible. Why?, I asked. Because the committee does not allow it. Why does the committee not allow it? She then completely confused me by saying that the exhibits were rotated from the main collection, as if that explained the policy somehow.
However, I was now intrigued and asked – so, what other exhibits are there that you have that I might want to see next time, and when does the next rotation cycle kick in?
She seemed nonplussed, as though the idea of my wanting to return was completely crazy, and then she said – ah, sorry, I don’t know, and there is no catalogue of artefacts anyway…
I was stunned.
She said apologetically: “There is no money. The government does not give grants”.
I thought: I’m not surprised – you do your very best neither to attract visitors nor to entertain them…

Whoever is on the committee should be awoken from their coma and get responsible. Now!


It actually could be rather good…

Because, the fact of the matter is that this could be a decent small museum with a unique selling point in that it is dedicated to a surprisingly influential but tiny community. And it has some interesting (ok, ok, they are a bit dry – but I liked them) displays.
One top attraction is the Mother goddess terracotta figurine dating back to 1800BCE – who has one hand cupped around one of her breasts in an oddly modern pose – and which is from Iran itself.

The great Parsi businessmen whose photos are on the wall – such as Nariman, Mehta (whom Zubin Mehta is a descendant of), Jamshedjee Jejeebhoy, Dadabhai Naoroji (who was elected as a British MP in 1892, believe it or not), Godrej, Tata, Modi, and Petit – must surely be staring down in huge disapproval. The priceless collection of porcelain, the furniture and the antiques are all just gathering dust, as far as I can see, and all those Parsi business instincts are being turned on their head.

(Just a side-note here. Parsis aren’t universally liked in Bombay even if they are respected. They got very pally with the British during the Raj, and became almost more British in their mannerisms and outlook than the British themselves. The well-off Parsi homes that I’ve seen do look as though they could be in Surrey! As a result, some Mumbaikers look askance at them, feeling they made a devil’s pact with the “oppressors” during the 1800s.)

There is also a practical need for this museum to be successful.
Parsis won’t need reminding that the Battle of Nehavand in 641 was nearly fatal for their religion and culture. The Muslim Arabs were in the ascendancy at that time and their blitzkrieg across the Middle East meant that it took just thirty years for them to overrun the old Assyrian Empire. Zoroastrianism has survived in that part of the world of course, but only in tiny clumps and under duress, and of the 120,000 Parsi/Zoroastrians left in the world, just under half are in Bombay, having originally come there as part of the Parsi diaspora. (A lot of them also went to China, which I only learnt thanks to the museum).

And now there is a similar crisis. As I said, their numbers are in big decline. You see, you can’t convert into the faith, and if a Parsi’s child is born of a mixed religion marriage then they are not allowed to be of the faith either. In a mobile and free-choice world, such rules spell possible disaster for the community. (There is dispute about who can become a Parsi - check the link below to the Wikipedia page).

See – another reason to get this museum up and properly running.


Donate the lot

Poor old Alpaiwalla. He put most of this collection together and then died in 1952 just before the museum opened, and now look at what’s happening.
Somehow, I think he’d be just as happy if the whole collection were handed over to Bombay’s main museum, the CSMS, which is doing a fine job under difficult circumstances. Surely, the trustees there would make a decent job of looking after it.
It just needs some courage from the apparently sleeping committee to go ahead and donate the lot asap.

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Links
'Yahoo Travel' entry on the Alpaiwalla Museum
Wikpedia's Section on Parsis
UNESCO Project to preserve Parsi Heritage

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(Addendum -- Bet you never thought an Englishman could write a piece about Parsis without mentioning vultures, or the rite of The Tower of Silence, or Freddie Mercury…! )

Monsoon Myths

Living as a foreigner, in any society I suppose and not just Mumbai, means that life is just one long series of startling revelations.
Because you are learning from scratch, you are constantly running up against a theory or sight previously unknown to you. What’s more, if you have a curious mind and want to ask “er, why is this so?”, somebody is usually there to give one (or more) explanations to you of what’s going on.
But – and it’s a Big But - the advantage of being an outsider is that you do not have the same in-built belief system as everyone around you. You have the advantage of being able to be sceptical of these so-called explanations.
And, having tested them, then you might rightly wonder if people’s explanations sometimes might contain no truth at all.

This is most evident in the case of The Monsoon, which comes here in the months June to August. You wouldn’t believe how many old wives’ tales there are, and how contradictory the pieces of advice can be…


Myth 1 - Swimming Is Bad for You in the Monsoon

The seas around Mumbai are probably not very healthy, so it’s advisable to bathe in swimming pools - at all times of the year. And because it’s also very hot in the monsoon (despite the grey skies and rain), I head out to the sports-club even more regularly at this time of year. It has an outdoor pool that is huge, so it’s very relaxing, and - for some reason - very empty during the monsoon months. My presumption was that people were worried about lightning striking, even though lightning is rare.

But when one day I told the man in the flat downstairs that I was going swimming, he got very agitated: “Don’t!” he said. “Think of all that pollution coming down from the skies!”
Now, he’s an intelligent man (though not, admittedly, a meteorologist) but I couldn’t help but wonder - what pollution? After all, the rain comes in from the southwest, from the lovely Arabian Sea. But then, he has the local knowledge….

After that, I spoke to a friend who has young children and she also said she avoided the pools. Why?, I asked. Because the high monsoon winds bring in spray from the sea and that gets in the pools, she said, and I cannot let the children risk catching what comes with it. But – what’s in the spray, exactly?

But, I suppose these fears, irrational or not, explained the lack of swimmers in the pool.

So I thought I should reproach the swimming-pool manager for his lack of care for his clients, and explained to him what had been said, and advised him that, if this were all true, he should shut the pool for the monsoon months.
He thanked me for my concern, but gently pointed out that the pool water – drenched as it was in cleaning chemicals and filters – was probably healthier than the air we breathe in this city.

So I asked him how he explained the paucity of swimmers. He
shrugged his shoulders: “Who knows why they think what they think,” he said.


Myth 2 Eating Fish (Not)

When we met a group of friends at a restaurant in early July, they immediately told us not to eat the fish.

Now one thing that is always enjoyable to me is to find a group of people who all adhere to a long-held and passionate - but quite irrational – belief; and then watch them as each try to explain the reasons for it to each other.
For example - people who believe passionately that wearing glasses weakens one’s eyesight even more (it doesn’t) come up with all kinds of amazing rationalisations for their belief and even start arguing with each other about their incorrect theories. It’s slightly crazy.
The fact is that often when people hold a belief that has been with them, probably since childhood, they never ask themselves – do I have real evidence for believing the thing that I believe?

Something similar happened at this table. Everyone had an opinion why not to eat fish in the monsoon. Here are a few of the opinions uttered….
*The fish is inedible because it is not fresh; and that is because it is not locally-caught in the monsoon, but in fact is shipped in, some said. (What’s wrong with that?, I wondered). They explained that the fish is not fresh because the local fishermen (the Kolis) are afraid of the fierce monsoon storms, so they stay in port.
(I thought I would check on this and later went to the Sassoon fish dock, and yes, it seemed to be true that there were no fishing boats around in July… yet a week later, on August 1st, suddenly all the boats were in the bay again. Admittedly, this was strange, and I haven’t worked out why yet. Anybody know?)
It still didn’t explain why eating fish at this time of year is bad. Unless you don’t like imported, frozen fish…

*No, said others, there are in fact fishermen out at sea, but they often net dead fish, which have been shaken upwards from the sea-bottom as the raging monsoon storms stir the seas, and then are taken in the catches. Restaurants, they said, use these old fish as much as the fresh fish.
(Personally, I thought this was ludicrous, but I’m no marine biologist.)

*Ah, said someone else, it’s not dead fish that are shaken up, but the very silt of the sea-bed (by the turbulent stormy seas). The seabed is massively polluted, they said, therefore the fish – which consume the stirred-up pollution – are poisonous. (Blimey!)

It was all very confusing, and yet sounded all very unlikely, despite the firm opinions.
The next day I checked the local fish-market, and the women were screaming their wares as usual (it gets to be quite a din in those market-halls) – so it looked like someone at least was going out to catch fish. No great dearth of locally-caught fish there, apparently.
I bought some, cooked it and tasted it. Seemed okay to me; but then maybe it will take a week or two before any effect takes place?

Nevertheless, at lunch today, at the sports-club, the café manager shook his head: “No sir, no fish on the menu for the next two months. It’s because of the monsoon, you see.”
Funnily enough, however, he couldn’t explain exactly why.


Myth 3 The Monsoon is a Good, er Bad Thing

Depending on whom you talk to, and the day you talk to them on, the monsoon is Good – or Bad. Strangely, people rarely consider it simply a bit of both, as you might think.

Of course in Mumbai, the monsoon can cause great damage to both life and property; the floods that resulted from the incessant rain in July 2005 led to the deaths of over 500 people in the city.
The danger from water-borne diseases also rises of course in flooded areas, and the incidence of malaria increases too because there are so many pools of standing water - which encourages mosquitoes to breed faster. Thus monsoon can be BAD.

But the same conditions on rainless days can also turn Mumbai into a sort of balmy English summer – fluffy, grey, and cooler than the usual Mumbai heat – a relief from the baking and sweaty sauna-like state of affairs that is the month of May. The rains also bring green back to the recreation grounds (the “maidans”) allowing the cricket pitches to re-grow. GOOD.

What is hard in this debate is to accept is the fearful state of the pavement-dwellers and in the slums.
Everywhere suddenly, in June, great swathes of blue stiff plastic are attached to the makeshift roofs, but it doesn’t provide anywhere near complete protection from the rain, and inside these tiny shelters/homes, the new insulation simply produces an intense breathlessness – forcing many to choose to sleep outside on the paths until the rains come to wake them, and then they crawl back inside their dwellings. What’s worse is that the really heavy rains will just flood and even sweep away homes. BAD.

But hardened Mumbaikers will also tell you that this is the great time for cheap holidays just a few miles outside the city. The rains make hiking in the hills possible, the rains make the landscape intense and green, the rains make river rafting possible on the main tributaries. If you don’t earn a lot – and the vast majority here do not – and you have time to take a holiday – and the vast majority here do not – the monsoon can give you a good reason for a weekend away. These holiday-starved city-dwellers yearn for monsoon. To them it is GOOD.

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I guess we all have opinions and preferences. What’s odd, and you really do observe this when you are an outsider, is just how fierce and aggressive people can get in defending what are really quite weak positions. It makes you think about those "beliefs" you have back home too…


Addendum
One nicely weird fact is the contrast of the days pre-monsoon with the fortnight post-monsoon.
Before monsoon, some people are almost giddy with excitement, looking at the skies for rain-clouds (just as the English stop and smell the winter air for hints of coming snow). When the first drops plash down, they squeal: “I love the train; I love the rain!!”
But, two weeks later, the same people are miserable with the grey cloudy sameness of it all: “Monsoon. I hate Monsoon!” they whisper.

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Independence Day

I must admit it was the oddest thing – while the world celebrated a very significant Indian Independence Day (“Sixty Years of Freedom!”), Mumbai remained, er, silent.
And, what’s more, it seemed that a lot of India did.

In fact, almost all the photos of Independence events that we saw in the newspapers here all seemed to come from other countries. There was the photo of the Nasdaq building in New York, bannered in the colours of the Indian flag - green white and orange. There was the India exhibition in London where NRIs and Indophiles were going mad. And even the French celebrated it through their India themed festival in Lille.
But very little here in India – BBC (India) only found two celebrations of note to report on! (See link at the end of this entry)

Of course, one of them was the Big Event in New Delhi, but in the rest of the country, including here in Mumbai, it seems it was muted. All I saw in my quick runs around the city was a small drill of the local police in cocked headwear, but it wasn’t going anywhere.
The biggest noise came from commercial interests, which saw an angle through which to sell their wares – Airtel commissioned a chauvinist song which accompanied their adverts, Baskin Robbins put together a patriotically coloured ice-cream, and the TV channels ran loads of relevant historical movies all themed around India’s struggle, with swirling flags in their promos to show just how heartfelt their commitment to the nation was. Etc etc.
But – on the street – zilch! (Though I forget – there were the boys at the traffic signals desperately trying to sell their reproduction flags, and obviously trade was not brisk, as I was eventually offered a flag at the rock-bottom price of one rupee).

The point is that, unlike South India (which dislikes the government’s apparent support for Hindi-language domination… because the South doesn’t speak Hindi much) or the northern border areas where there can be various sorts of unhappiness with the rule of New Delhi, Mumbai is quite patriotic. People stand for the national anthem in cinemas here quite enthusiastically. And of course, the Quit India movement started here. And on Republic Day, which was held in January, there was even a military fly-past at the city’s Chowpatty beach.

So what happened?
No one seems to know. The local newspapers were silent on the matter, and the local people I spoke to just shrugged their shoulders.

I can only guess.
Security must have been an issue - being the 60th Anniversary I suppose it was one terrorists must have thought about. In fact, for a week before, I found myself ducking round police barriers every time I went near the World Trade Centre in Colaba.
What’s more, there appears to be an undercurrent of bitterness in the city over how justice is served here. While the trial of the Muslim bombers behind the 1993 blasts here in Mumbai has recently come to an end (with a number of them receiving death sentences), there have been next to no convictions of the Hindu militants responsible for the many deaths of Muslims in what was essentially a pogrom during the ’93 Riots. As a consequence, there has been considerable growling by each side in recent days. So – that uneasiness in the city could have been a reason for a no-show of any official events.

But, apart from one minor piece of enthusiastic shouting at a college festival, which happened to be on the same day as Independence Day, there were no spontaneous shows of celebration on the street either… Very odd.

The rest of the world seemed more gung-ho about India’s Independence than did Mumbai. I’d be interested to know why.

Links: BBC Online report on Independence Day events

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