PUNCHAYET TALES

BPP Trustees have always been interesting human material

By Berjis Desai

They say that Muncherjee Khareghat was the best ever trustee of the Bombay Parsi Panchayet (BPP). Few will dispute his impeccable record of service. We know exactly the thought passing in your mind. No, we are not in a position to name the worst ever. Like Lord Byron and the Queen, not that we won’t, but we can’t. So many vie for this position that it would be unfair to disappoint. Almost everyone has a tale to tell about their favorite candidate. Even Solomon would be hard pressed to decide. We will, however, narrate a few of these tales without naming those who are living [considering the countless ‘mari jai muo’ (die, wretch) uttered by the beneficiaries, they must be truly blessed to be insulated from these curses], for the dead cannot be defamed.

When this columnist was 14, he impulsively shot off a letter to the Kaiser-e-Hind about how the youth ought to replace the blue blooded geriatric trustees clinging to the rusty throne of power (in Gujarati, the letter sounded even more melodramatic). That very evening, BPP trustee Erach Nadirshah and his wife arrived at our tiny flat unannounced. Father gave us an irritated look not about our penning the letter but because he had to endure their presence on a Sunday evening. Even on that sultry May evening, Nadirshah was dressed immaculately in a three piece suit. His wife, after spurning the offer to have tea, imperiously announced how disturbed her Erach had been since morning. Whereupon Nadirshah fished out the newspaper cutting of the letter and held it up like a rat he had caught for the municipality (he retired as the chief hydraulic engineer from the BMC and that is another story but of no direct relevance) and asked our father whether his son had indeed penned the offending letter. We smilingly nodded, which incensed the trusteesaheb no end. He launched into a diatribe about the lack of respect for our akabars and how our father ought to have prevented the publication of the letter. Our father simply said that he had no control over Kaiser-e-Hind or his son (he was then editor of The Bombay Samachar). After the couple departed, we innocently asked why out of the seven trustees only one had protested. Our father said something which is unprintable.

The trustee was equally incensed with his brother-in-law, Minoo Nariman, who wrote several Parsi comedies including a hilarious one about his old aunt who met Hitler and introduced kera pur eedu (eggs on bananas) to the dictator and how that spurred him to gobble up Poland. Nariman invited Nadirsha to be the chief guest at a Parsi New Year play which he had written. Nadirsha discovered to his utter horror that the play titled Houdaas Choudaas (corrupt) was a satire on the BPP. He and his wife had to endure the catcalls of the audience. A few years later, the BPP honored the then about to be deposed Shah of Iran at the Taj, when the Shah told Eruch that he was a ‘Shah’ too. The Nadirshahs were delirious with joy, as if the purpose of their incarnation had been achieved.

The trustee stayed in the same building as B. K. Boman Behram (BKB), his co-trustee. BKB was a cool cat and perhaps the most controversial trustee of his times. If the Nadirshas had pretensions of being aristocratic, BKB was a people’s man, polite, diplomatic and suave. As an independent municipal corporator, he managed to get himself elected as mayor of Bombay with the help of 40 Shiv Sena corporators. Somehow, after this election, his popularity in the community dramatically dipped. Allegations flew fast and furious, with that doyen of Parsi solicitors of the yesteryears, Rustom Gagrat, calling him all sorts of names in the Press. BKB wrote in the Evening News that he was not bothered by the rantings of “some Tamarind Lane solicitor;” to which Gagrat retaliated by calling his bête noir a Meadows Street lawyer. Rarely though did BKB’s veneer come off. He was a liberal at heart and truly secular, though, like many today, he projected himself as orthodox, particularly after he allied himself with Dr Nelie Noble in the BPP boardroom. He was extremely popular with the Kannadiga community and chose to unwind in their religious festivals by donning traditional attire, dancing and playing the violin. Apart from those merry jousts, he was keen to adopt an orphan boy called Chinappa. BKB never married.

Murmurs about all not being kosher with housing allotments started when BKB was at the helm. In the late seventies, under the editorship of Jehan Daruwalla, the Mumbai Samachar ran a long campaign against BKB’s acts of omission and commission in the BPP, and just stopped short of alleging lack of probity. This was the catalyst for the CER (Committee for Electoral Rights) movement when the very thin cucumber sandwich eating elite took to the streets and won all but one seat in the electoral college. BKB and Noble naturally did not recontest and Jamsheed Kanga of the CER was elected unopposed. BKB, slightly bitter, faded away from municipal and Parsi politics.

Noble, a spinster, was known for her sternness even while a student at the Grant Medical College. Her integrity was never in doubt even during those BKB-Nadirsha years. A diehard fanatic in religious matters, she believed in Minocher Pundole, a self-proclaimed Ilm-e-Khshnoomist scholar, and his many miracles including conjuring up the exact number of mutton cutlets from the refrigerator of an Udvada hotel for his hungry disciples, even though he preached vegetarianism. To make sense of the last sentence, you require akuri with masala logic, which Noble amply possessed. She was instrumental in the creation of an additional agiary at Udvada, causing consternation to the non-Pundolite traditionalists who detested her. At BPP elections (those days, elections were a very tame affair), she managed to capture some registers in the then electoral college with sponsored voters and a mild display of some muscle by one of her brothers until 1980 when Dinshaw Mehta made her realize what a rank amateur she was.

Just imagine Nadirsha, Noble and BKB in the present BPP boardroom. Noble would have wilted like a daisy upon learning that MC does not mean master of ceremonies. Eruch would have fainted in his three piece suit upon seeing chairs being flung. Perhaps even BKB, a veteran of many a fight in the legislatures and the courts, would have felt a trifle embarrassed. Hope you got your answer.

Berjis M. Desai, managing partner of J. Sagar Associates, advocates and solicitors, is a writer and community activist.

This piece was published in Parsiana edition dated August 7, 2015