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

Matchmaking still works

Matrimonial efforts are among the few constructive activities being pursued by the Bombay Parsi Punchayet these days

In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Ms Bennett spends most of her waking hours in trying to get her five daughters married. No Parsi mother has five daughters, and even if someone did, she may not care less. Marriage is not an aspirational matter for the community. On the contrary, for some it is almost fashionable to be unmarried. To make a provocative and unscientific generalization, Parsi men in the matrimonial market are insipid and unexciting, while their female counterparts are overtly aggressive. The more educated and the more affluent tend to marry interfaith. We seldom distinguish between sons and daughters in matters of inheritance. Women are most certainly not unequal. Pre-marital and extra marital sex is not such a taboo any more. Most women work and there is little economic compulsion to marry. We are not children obsessed, like other communities. Bachelors and spinsters are envied; not looked down upon. All this makes for a deadly cocktail of dramatically falling marriage rates.

If one were to analyze the statistical trends published by this publication, at first blush it may appear that more and more Parsis are marrying interfaith. The number of Parsi marriages is declining at a rapid rate, while the number of interfaith marriages is rising. In 1989, 383 Parsi marriages were listed as versus 62 interfaith. In 2013, only 156 Parsi marriages were listed while the interfaith increased to 98. We are dealing with those Parsis who will not marry interfaith but also find their own kind uninteresting. Most in this category are more steeped in Parsi religion and culture. They just cannot imagine living, on a day-to-day basis, with non-Parsis. They cannot withstand any intercultural shock. Matchmaking comes into play here. These Parsis may not bother going to a restaurant but don’t mind being spoon fed. Matrimonial advertisements and kaajwallis (traditional matchmakers, usually women, who operate by word of mouth) are no longer effective. Mutual friends may arrange a meeting or two, but hardened singles will not vigorously follow up.

The Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP), the Zoroastrian Youth for the Next Generation and a few other Parsi organizations arrange mass dating, picnics and social gatherings to create mating opportunities for singles. Most of the organizers not only take the horse to the water but also make it drink. A majority of the candidates are in their mid thirties to mid forties and expectations are not too high. The strike rate may not be great but it is well worth the exercise. If these combined matchmaking activities can result in 50 more marriages every year and about 50 more children, there is hope yet for the community.

Divorcing under Parsi matrimonial laws is not too easy, and woe betide if it is a contested divorce. Again, unscientifically speaking, the rate of divorce in such matched marriages is lower than in love marriages. Cultural homogeneity ensures easier adjustment. The differences are usually trivial (you cannot make bheeda per eedoo like my Mumma). Most of the matched ones come from the middle classes and predominantly from the baugs. Emphasis is more on steady companionship rather than pulsating romance. Familiarity with the B. D. Petit Parsee General Hospital wards scores more brownie points than attending a concert at the National Centre for the Performing Arts. In any event, the matchmakers do not target the “caviar” Parsis but the “masoor-pau” ones; admirers of Rafi and Asha Bhosle rather than Zubin Mehta or Freddie Mercury. This class requires external intervention to goad them into matrimony. Once they tie the knot, however, they are most likely to make a decent try at begetting a child or two.

The BPP can provide them with priority, out-of-turn housing allotment, which is a huge attraction to would-be wedders. Can this result in marriages of convenience, like marrying a US or British citizen to get right of residence? Unlikely, in the present situation.

For those who spurn these matchmaking efforts, here is some stellar advice from that shrewd observer of men and matrimony, Jane Austen herself: “Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.”

Of course, Jane Austen herself, like our Dolly from Cusrow Baug, never married.

Berjis M. Desai