How many are privileged to be nurtured by Yogacharya B.K.S.Iyengar himself? To be simultaneously blessed by Sri Aurbindo and Mother of Pondicherry? To inherit the legal virtuosity of father Behram Palkhiwala and Uncle Nani? Meet Jehangir Palkhiwala, an astounding individual, who chose and carved his own path through time and is an enlightened soul. His journey of yoga commenced during his formative years at the correct age of seven. While his mother tenderly coached him in yoga daily, Jehangir played truant from class if the asanas were difficult. Yet, he was a rather favoured student of Yogacharya B.K.S.Iyengar. Affectionately calling his teacher ‘uncle’, he would sit around on his lap and play. Yogacharya B.K.S.Iyengar, considered the benchmark of a strong teacher, evokes awe in Jehangir even today. Whilst cultivating yoga in her three sons, Adil, Feroze and Jehangir, their mother also instilled a belief in the Mother of Pondicherry in him. If as a child, he suffered toothache or a bad dream, his mother’s strong belief led her to give him the offerings of the Mother of Pondicherry in the form of rose petals and his pain would just ease away. His dimension of spiritualism and healing are a result of his strong connections with Sri Aurobindo, his faith in the Mother and the imbedded character of yoga.

Continue reading the entire article at UpperCrust.com

It is* Friday and Behram Roj ‘motto daro’.* The Fire Temple is buzzing with people. All sorts and all ages. Every face is at its serene best. The Flame is leaping with delight gorging at the large diet of Kathi and Sukhad and in return is offering patient ears to the various request prayers. Some serious, some almost comic, some trivial, some greedy, some incessant and the odd one out of only Thanks. A little girl is poking her dimples with a sukhad until mom says ‘M nai karvanoo’.

Some daily regulars are in corners swaying and shifting their weight. Some ladies have stifled the circumstance of their face with a tight scarf and are hobbling ahead pushing aside any in their way. Some men are darting around hurriedly as they are at the brink of a busy day.

Coomi is praying— pug no sojo ochho thai.

Jamshed is praying — bawa bike apavey

Dorab is praying – dikra neh Dubai maa naukri maleh.

Gustad is praying – restaurant majenoo chaleh.

Kersi is praying chaavi ghoomai gaich te mali jai.

Katy is praying – bheja no mad boss paadhro reh.

Jaloo is praying – nallee ne eskool ma admission maleh.

Nawaz is praying – bhess jevi sassoo bargaum jai.

Jal is praying – saajeh Daisy satheh baar javanooch te eh jara

ghela-chhera kaarva deh.

Jangoo is praying – aajeh deekri noh America thi phone aveh.

Viraf is praying – shaitan jevo landlord khapri jai.

Zenobia is praying – navi janas maleh.

Firoze is praying – daat koih gayoch te pelo dakoo jevo dentist

korhwa nih vaat nai kareh.

Marazban is praying – hu Godrej jetlo paisawalo thao.

Siloo is praying – heart majenoo thai jai operation vagur.

Rayomand is praying – shares oopur jai.

Maharukh is praying – paylee teevee Udwadia nooh appointment juldi apeh.

Sammy is praying – baddha gehrna sarikani reh.

Gai is praying – thankyou Khodai – ghanoo apech.

Now the Flame is ready to courier the amassed wishes to the high Heavens.

Freny is hurriedly walking out of the Temple murmuring -

Khodai kareeneh taximali jai.

His dhansak, a chicken or lamb stew with four kinds of lentils, vegetables and spices, harkens back to his ancestors’ Persian origins. Request the dhansak, a kebab or his oven-baked halibut, wrapped with mint in a banana leaf for a delicious change. Call ahead to make sure he’s cooking the week you want to try a dish, at 941-7616.

Panini’s is located in the Village Court shopping Center, 4546 El Camino Real.

Original article here.

She can be contacted for all your travelling needs, eapecially for ladies and kids in aircond comfort.

Her business card reads as :

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Mumbai’s Kyra Shroff will be India’s lone campaigner at the Junior Wimbledon this year. Hoping to make it to the girls’ singles main draw, Kyra is currently playing at a Grade One event in Roehampton. The qualifying rounds for Wimbledon that begin on Thursday will feature Kyra. However, if she enters the semifinal of the ongoing ITF tournament in Roehampton, she might be exempted from playing the qualifying rounds and may walk straight into the main draw.

More here.

Be warned that this will leave you all hungry and yearning for some lip smacking food.

Check out part 2 and 3 on Times Now

Of the many gifts given to Parsis by their Prophet Zarathushtra, that of the Manthras is one of the most significant. Manthras are the divine words of the Prophet and His appointed disciples which form what we loosely call today the ‘Avesta’. Over the thousands of years that have passed since the time of the advent of Zarathushtra, the great majority of the Manthras have been, unfortunately, lost. What we have left is not more than 5% of the original, which are used for daily prayers as well as the rituals which form the core of the faith. The question is often asked: What is the use of praying in a language we do not understand? Cannot the same prayers be translated in to a common language like English and the same said with more concentration and meaning? Would it not be better if some newer and shorter prayers were introduced? In order to answer these and related queries, it is necessary to firstly understand who man is, what is his role in nature, what is prayer, why does man need to pray and what benefits accrue from praying.

Continue reading the entire article here.

UPDATE:

Part 2. Part 3 and Part 4 of the series are up on Frashogard’s site.

"She’s been a staff favorite for a very long time," says Leighanne Law. "A few of us have had a chance to meet her, and for the big scope of her books, and their emotional intensity, it’s a shock that she’s such a humble and charming woman."

Umrigar, who has just sold her sixth book to HarperCollins, wears her acclaim lightly. She made tenure two years ago at Case Western Reserve University, has won a midcareer award from the Cleveland Arts Prize and will lecture at the Chautauqua Institution next month.

Her best-known book, "The Space Between Us," has found an international readership; it still sells strongly in Brazil. The 2006 novel pivots between the lives of Sera, [mbo: cq: ]an upper-class Parsi woman in Mumbai, and Bhima, [mbo: cq: ]her servant. Umrigar, 47, dedicated the book to the "Bhima" of her own girlhood in India.

The Cleveland Heights author has been touring for "The Weight of Heaven," which published in April, and is rushing to complete a draft of her next book before she resumes teaching in the fall.

"The balancing act is getting very hard," she says. "I’m in perpetual fear that I’m going to drop one ball. But when I’m in the classroom, I still get a high from it. I have really grown to love and understand the student body at Case.

"Many of these kids are wicked smart, and I see [teaching literature] as an opportunity to give engineers and nurses and doctors an essential life tool. If you have an understanding of the humanities, you will have an understanding of human nature."

The next novel, tentatively called "The Clarifying Principle," will center on four Indian women, all former student activists, including one who married a Muslim, and who and converted to Islam herself.

"What is important is I’m not talking about Muslims from a Western, 9/11 point of view," Umrigar says. "I am telling the story from within an Indian context — and India has a shameful history of mistreating its Muslim population."

Umrigar’s mix of the intimate and the international continues to percolate through her art.

Sonu Bohra

While the Parsi community is coming to terms with their declining numbers, the burning issue now is the dwindling numbers of vultures in the city, which aid their sky burial ritual. According to a Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) survey done in 2007, there were about 11,000 white-backed vultures, 1,000 slender-billed vultures and 44,000 long-billed vultures in the country as against an estimate of approximately 40 million vultures in the early ’80s.

“The vulture population has declined by more than 99 per cent and is diminishing at the rate of more than 40 per cent annually. If precautionary measures are not implemented, they will soon be extinct,” says Dr Vibhu Prakash, deputy director and head – Vulture Conservation Breeding Programme, BNHS.

“The vulture population has declined by more than 99 per cent and is diminishing at the rate of more than 40 per cent annually. If precautionary measures are not implemented, they will soon be extinct,” says Dr Vibhu Prakash, deputy director and head – Vulture Conservation Breeding Programme, BNHS.

In the monsoons, the weak sunlight delays the burial process for which they installed solar panels at Dongarwadi also called the Towers of Silence at Malabar Hill. Now, the community is planning to build a breeding centre for vultures at the Borivali National Park.

The Bombay Parsi Panchayat (BPP) has decided to import and breed vultures. “We have been in constant discussion with the Central Government about this. Our first phase — of banning the drug Diclofenic (as explained later in this article) — was successful. The second phase consists of building the breeding centre and is yet in its planning stage,” explains Khojeste Mistree, trustee, BPP.

The project, being led by scientists at the BNHS, has seen recent success in breeding the endangered birds in conservation centres in Haryana and West Bengal. “The BPP have approached us to set up a vulture breeding centre in Mumbai. So far, there was no consensus among the community members about the same. Hence we could not set it up, although they are still in constant touch with us,” adds Dr Prakash.

The project is expected to cost about Rs 2 crore and will take about a year to start only after the government permissions have been obtained. After that, about a 100 of these almost-extinct scavengers will be brought into Mumbai and will be housed in three aviaries, two of which will be at the Towers of Silence.

Drug abuse
Dwindling numbers of vultures is to be blamed on widespread veterinary use of the drug Diclofenac. The drug is used for the treatment of sick domestic livestock throughout the Indian subcontinent.

The Indian government banned the use of the drug in March 2005. “But we have come to know that Diclofenac that is used for humans is getting filtered into veterinary market as the veterinary Diclofenac is banned. We are working with the government which has come to an agreement to package human Diclofenac in smaller doses which the veterinarian will find difficult to use,” explains Dr Prakash.
sonu.bohra@timesgroup.com

Tips to prevent extinction of vultures
* Restrict and prevent the use of Diclofenac.
* Spread awareness about vulture conservation.
* Inform BNHS, contact them on www.bnhs.org or (91-22) 22821811 or Forest Department about sick/dead vultures.
* If you spot a sick vulture, move it to a cool place and give it some water.
* Do not cut big trees that are used by vultures for perching and nesting.

Original article here

A play around migration and its conflicts is at the heart of an ambitious new project of the Auckland based theatre group Prayas.

Following the success of its earlier productions including Charan Das Chor by Habib Tanvir, and The Terrace by Madhu Rye, the group decided to write and stage its own play.

“It was an ambitious thought,” writer-director Amit Ohdedar said.

Khoj (The Search) was the result of intensive reading and discussions that he had with co-writers Sananda Chatterjee and Poorna Prakash.

Dramaturge Fiona Graham facilitated the initiation; the rest was the creative talent of Prayas, led by Amit and his group.

He believes that the play is a tribute to best-selling author Rohinton Mistry and his collection of short stories, Tales from Firozsha Baag.

He was touched by the story of a Parsi migrant in Canada trying to come to terms with the difference in culture and lifestyle.

The idea was truly intriguing and Prayas took the story further. The differences in lifestyle, funny and distressing, became the underlying euphemism for the various adjustment issues a new migrant faces in New Zealand.

While the group did much of the writing, it went out to the community for ideas.

A couple of public meetings in Auckland drew shared migration stories.

Many of these, some funny and some not so funny, have a place in Khoj.

“As a process it was fascinating; marvellous to see the loud laughter in parts and in others, to see future actors in this play trying to work its meaning and context.

“The end product has a strong New Zealand-Indian feel,” Amit said.

He said the play on stage would be exciting, although it is still being fine-tuned.

After casting calls, it is currently going through the demanding process of rehearsal and refinement.

Prayas is adding a unique dance drama feature to complement the play.

The dance sequence runs parallel to the play and is being choreographed by Sharmista Chakraborty and her team.

A mix of trained Bharata Natyam and contemporary dancers has begun rehearsals.

Last year, members of Prayas joined the Auckland City Council in a successful multiethnic play, Our Street.

Sudeepta Vyas is the spokesperson for Prayas.

Most times we read news articles and move on. News is something that is happening to “them” and we are mere readers to the aftermath of the event. However once in a while the news hits home, when the people in the news are those we know.

That is exactly what happened when I read the article titled “Pay for dad’s upkeep, court tells NRI son” published in the Times of India dated June 09, 2009 by TOI reporter Yagnesh Mehta.

The article talks about how an NRI son abandoned his old father and refuses to pay for dad’s upkeep.

The “son” in the article just turns out to be Pesi Satarawala, a dear friend of many years now, who lives in New Jersey with his wife and two kids. However I did not relate the Pesi in the article to the friend I know because of the numerous factual errors in the article. However Pesi did let me know that he was “the Pesi in the article” and the first he knew about this was when a friend from Poona forwarded the link to him.

Aspi Satarawala, the “father” in the article, and Pesi have not met in 34 years. Pesi is now 41 years old. This is because, one fine day after Pesi’s navjote at the age of seven, his father walked out of his and his mother Villoo’s life. Villoo Mamma, as we all knew here, passed away last July.

Aspi abandoned his wife and only child all these years ago, without any money at the complete mercy of strangers in a strange city. Through sheer hardwork, dedication and a zeal to succeed Villoo raised Pesi, educated him, and left no stone unturned as a single parent.

Where was Aspi all those years? Missing in action. The article claims that he paid for Pesi’s MBA. Well that would be great, however Pesi does not have an MBA degree. He did his Diploma in IT from NIIT Pune through a scholarship he received in Pune. The article claims that Aspi got his son married.  Aspi was not invited and was not present at Pesi’s wedding. His uncle stood as the head of the family and was witness to the wedding.

The article states that Pesi, is not currently in Chennai. His in-laws live there, and the last time he was in Chennai was just before Villoo Mamma passed away.

The TOI article is flawed at many levels. Even tabloids and rags would verify information before printing it and in the process defaming the subjects referred to in the article.

Over the years Aspi Satarawala has been known to defraud people from all walks of life. Born with a silver spoon, he single-handedly dismantled the family fortune and wasted away the money. And since then its always been a cat and mouse game to somehow get money out of gullible unsuspecting people and then disappear.

For such a fraudster this is yet another scheme to sponge off money from his “America settled” son, the same one who grew up with only memories and no presence of an abusive father that never was. Indian laws have a provision where children need to take care of their parents in their old age. A fantastic and “idealist” notion that was made into law for all the right reasons. Alas, this is a case where it is being used for all the wrong reasons.

Pesi Satarawala is currently pursuing legal avenues to get this mysterious “court order” dealt with.

If you have a moment and feel strongly about this issue, please leave a comment below.

Disclaimer: This article contains my thoughts, solely; and no one else’s.

Arzeen and Avan have pipped Bollywood celebrities and the cricketing world.
"A production house has prepared a Rasna advertisement filming my two daughters. We have seen the film and liked it. The advertisement has clicked. Probably, Rasna’s next campaign will star both my little angels," Khambatta told DNA.

"We have been doing advertisement campaigns for Rasna with celebrities. But now is the time when emphasis is put on product-based campaigns rather than celebrities campaigning products," he said.

In the past, Rasna had roped in celebrities such as Anupam Kher, Kapil Dev, Vivian Richards, Hrithik Roshan, Paresh Rawal, Karisma Kapoor and Johnny Lever to promote its products.

"But the trend nowadays is to focus advertisements on your products and not celebrities," said Khambatta, who has received the Dr Dadabhai Navroji Millennium Award for Young Entrepreneurs.

Talking about the company’s future plans, Khambatta said they wanted to expand their fast food chain — Devil’s Workshop.

As for soft drink concentrates — a segment in which Rasna enjoys 93% share of the Indian market — the company plans to focus on health drinks.

Although the phenomenon has been documented for more than a decade, nothing appears to be slowing the decline. That has posed a particular problem for the country’s Parsis, a dwindling population themselves, whose religion demands that they leave the bodies of their dead above ground, to be picked clean by the birds.

The Parsis, who fled Persia –the present day Iran — centuries back and made India their permanent homeland, practice the religion of Zoroastrianism. About 100,000 live in major cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad and Kolkata. According to their religious practice, the dead bodies cannot be buried or burnt because the corpses could pollute the Panchabhootam (earth, water, air, ether and fire). Hence their bodies are left in a high-rise ‘Tower of Silence’ to be consumed by the scavengers.

"Unfortunately the vultures have disappeared from our region and a sustained breeding project for vultures has become essential," said Khojeste P. Mistree of the World Alliance of Parsi and Irani Zoroastrians, in an interview. "The vulture happens to have been the first scavenger of the world and hence they should be brought back for a sustained ecological balance."

How long there were will be enough Parsis around to satisfy the vultures is another question. According to "Parsi Khabar," a website for the Parsi community in India, the Zoroastrian sect’s numbers are diminishing because of self-imposed discouragement of intercommunity marriages, leading to inbreeding. Members of the community from Hyderabad point out that by rough estimates there are just 70,000 Parsis in Mumbai and 1,200 in Hyderabad.

Many Mumbai Parsis have been pursuing a plan to breed vultures in captivity. However, Minal Shroff, the chairman of the Bombay Parsee Panchayat, which runs the Tower of Silence, said scientists studying the proposal shelved it, saying it will not be possible since vultures appear to be particularly susceptible to a ubiquitous anti-inflammatory veterinary drug called diclofenac. It is cheap and can be used for treating cattle, buffalo, sheep and goats as well as human beings.

Accordingly, in Assam and other areas, conservationists have started captive breeding programs that face problems, but vultures are notoriously hard to get to reproduce. They are monogamous, mating for life and producing perhaps no more than a single egg per year after reaching breeding maturity at five years of life. Critics maintain that the captive breeding programs are being mismanaged and robbing wild populations as the captive breeders steal eggs from native nests.

Vibhu Prakash, the principal scientist for the vulture conservation breeding program at the Bombay Natural History Society, said some nine species of vultures in the wild numbered 40 million birds in the early 1980s. Today, only about 60,000 birds are left. Nor, says Dr Prakash, are other countries in South and Southeast Asia in any better shape. Vultures have been almost wiped out in Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Singapore as well as South Asia.

Vultures do not hunt living animals but depend on the carcasses of livestock and wildlife for their primary food supplement. The scavenging birds that way help in keeping the environment clean. And, ugly though they may be, they are an integral link in the natural chain, eating the flesh of carcasses completely and cleanly. The birds thus prevent the spreading of severe diseases like rabies and anthrax among the wildlife, livestock and humans.

A mature vulture may weigh up to 10 kgs and needs almost half a kilogram of meat daily. The most common theory is that the birds are dying from eating meat with high percentages of diclofenac residue. Scientists suspect that the diclofenac remains active for a longer period in the carcasses of treated animals. The drugs reportedly cause dehydration, with the birds soon dying of visceral gout and kidney failure.
"We found that, over 75 percent of vultures which were discovered dead or had died of visceral gout had diclofenac in their tissues," Prakesh said.

The BNHS launched a rigorous campaign against diclofenac in 2003, 10 years after India introduced the drug. New Delhi banned its use for veterinary purposes in 2006. It is also banned in Pakistan and Nepal. However, researchers believe diclofenac made for human needs is being used for veterinary purposes. Hence, the BNHS continues to pursue the government to warn against its veterinarian use.

Not everyone blames diclofenac. Ajay Poharkar, a veterinarian in the Maharashtra Animal Husbandry Department, argues that malaria is also a major cause of vulture deaths.

"I always thought the diclofenac theory was inadequate," Pohakar said in an interview. "One vulture requires around 500 grams of meat per day. In that case, there should be very little trace of diclofenac in their bodies."

Writing in the journal "Current Science" recently, Poharkar cited his experience working with vultures at Gadchiroli, near Nagpur in Maharashtra, arguing that the Gadchiroli farmers are too poor to use diclofenac on a mass scale.

Rather he and his associates found malarial parasites in blood-smear samples from the birds. The Hyderabad based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology and the veterinary college in Mumbai agreed.

"It is amazing that the malarial symptoms are quite similar to that caused by diclofenac like shivering, ruffled feathers, respiratory distress, circling movement of the head, greenish watery diarrhea, paralysis and anemia," Poharkar asserted.

Prakash says that considering the catastrophic decline and the availability of diclofenac in the markets, a captive breeding program appears to be the only way to save the species. In California, the condor, a giant bird with an eight-foot wingspan, had diminished to just 23 birds in the wild before a captive breeding program was got underway. Today, about 200 pairs have been reintroduced into the wild.

"By bringing some vultures into captivity, their lives can be saved and once they start breeding, they would augment the population," he argues. "The vultures will be released back in the wild once we are sure that there is no diclofenac available in the system."

The century-old BNHS, recognized as one of South Asia’s most respected wildlife research organizations, has already taken initiatives for the captive breeding program. With the support of international organizations like the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (UK), the Zoological Society of London and the Peregrine Fund (US), the BNHS runs vulture breeding centers at Pinjore in Haryana, Rajabhatkhawa in West Bengal and Rani in Assam.

The Pinjore center has 120 vultures and Rajabhatkhawa centre has 76 vultures of three species, the Rani center 30 of two species.

" Our objective is to have 50 birds of each of the three species at Pinjore and Rajabhatkhawa and 50 each of white-backed and long-billed vultures at Rani," said a BNHS official, adding that 75 percent of the birds are to collected as nestlings or juveniles and the rest as adults or sub-adults.

There are critics. Soumyadeep Datta, an environmental activist in Northeast India, argues that the captive breeding of vultures will result in nothing.

"Mature vultures select their partners in the wild and the birds lay eggs in such a way that cannot be arranged in captivity," Datta said. "They are monogamous birds and they maintain the loyalty of conjugal lives till death. Only one egg is expected from a pair in one season. The caring mother continues its close bond with the baby till the chick attains maturity," said Datta, who serves as the director of Nature’s Beckon, an Assam based environmental NGO.

"The indiscriminate lifting of chicks from nests, as done by the BNHS people in Assam, will only disrupt the male-female ratio," he added. "We suspect that collecting babies from the nests will have a negative impact on the sex ratio and the population in our region."

Datta said that unlike other parts of India, the populations of white-rumped and long-billed vultures have been stable if not increasing. Although the birds are breeding naturally in the state, he said, members of Nature’s Beckon suspect that the BNHS people have captured as many as 100 adult and semi-adult birds in Assam since 2005, with most of them taken to breeding centers of Haryana and West Bengal.

Asad Rahmani, the BNHS director, faced public outrage in Assam when local people protested the capturing of vultures from their localities. Nature’s Beckon has urged the Assam government to stop activities of BNHS people in the region and also demanded an enquiry about the fate of the birds.

Whatever their fate, it is certain that it will take a longtime to restore the native population by captive breeding. Nita Shah, the BNHS vulture advocacy program officer, acknowledges that vultures breed slowly. As they give birth to only one chick a year and a baby takes nearly four years to attain sexual maturity, she said, nobody should hope ‘for the population to be restored to its original size within our lifetime."

Article Source

.The first Indian DCP of the CID: In 1928, that laurel was won by Kavasji Jamshedji Petigara, who made the most famous arrest ever by the Bombay Police, that of Mahatma Gandhi. On January 4, 1932, Gandhi was arrested from Mani Bhavan in Gamdevi by the then Commissioner of Police G S Wilson and Petigara.

Years later, it was the CID  Special Branch that probed the assassination of Gandhi. DCP J D Nagarvala, a Parsi who headed the investigation, personally arrested Narayan Apte from Pyrkes Apollo Hotel in Colaba, behind Regal Cinema.

Read the entire article here.

Message from Lille ,  France where we had the European Council of Religious Leaders (ECRL) Council meeting.

Delighted to inform you that the Zarathushtis now have a  full  membership seat on the council in their own right,  Not only was  the Zarathushti elected to the council but on to the Executive Committee.

This in a way was a special honour to  our community for as  some of you may know there are six groups , Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, Jews, Muslims and the "Other" 

The Other Group has members from the world faiths new to Europe comprising Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and Zoroastrians.

The Executive is made up of one member from each of the  six groups.

The Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs nominated  the Zarathushti  to represent them on the Ex. Com. This shows the great trust they have in our community, we can all be proud of the legacy of our forefathers.

For more info visit www.rfp-europe.eu

Following is an excerpt from a full page article with Ms. Sohrabji’s
picture, that appeard in May 23, 2009 issue of India West :

"India West Congratulates Its Reporter Sunita Sohrabji for winning 2 more
awards for our publication for Excellence in Journalism.

These awards were announced this week by New America Media, the country’s
first and largest association of Ethnic Media.

Sunita Sohrabji was awarded Second Place in the "Health Care" category
for her story titled "Postpartum Depression: South Asian Women Suffer in
Silence."

Sohrabji also secured the second place award in the "Environmental Issue"
category for her article titled "Green Rules Force Small Truckers into the
Red".

The awards will be handed out at the annual NAM Awards and Expo event on
June 4 and 5, 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia

Head of the association Parviz Vakhshuri and library director Mehran Gheibi collected historical artifacts for the museum.

The museum was officially inaugurated in summer 2005 in the presence of the then head of Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO).

Farzaneh Hormozyar Oshidari and Mahindokht Siavashian were among the figures who donated funds to help finish construction of the museum building in 2001.

Among the oldest items preserved at the museum are a handwritten copy of Gathas (17 hymns believed to have been composed by Zoroaster himself) estimated to be over 200 years old, and one handmade Afringan (fire brazier) upon which the year 1207 (1828) is engraved.

Rare documents and photos of notable personalities like Keikhosro Shahrokh, Mirza Borzu Amighi, and Keshvar Khanum are also on display at the museum.

Women’s costumes including coats, dresses, pants and scarves, all embroidered with beautiful patterns and flowers are kept at the museum. Also included are different kinds of candle lights, fire braziers, and tallow burners.

Every year a great number of tourists visiting Kerman during the Noruz vacation are sure to pay a visit to the fire temple and the museum and the Zoroastrian youth give guides to the visitors.

Interested youth register in education courses at the museum throughout the year and learn in depth about the details of fire, the fire temple, religious beliefs and rituals of the Zoroastrians.

… Payvand News – 06/05/09 … –

The vacation court has given J D Bharda English Medium school at Lamingoton Road, south Mumbai, a breather. Court stayed the MCGM notice till June 10, when a regular judge will hear the case.

Some 350 students are on the school’s roll, its lawyer Shardul Singh said.

MCGM’s education department served a notice to the school authorities on May 22, asking them to shut down the school by
June 1.

Corporation alleged that in the school’s accounts, Rs 20 lakh were unaccounted for, and it must be a sum received as a capitation fee.

An aided school can not receive capitation fee, it said. However, according to the school, it is not aided, and the amount came from Sir Dorabji Trust.

Today, the corporation’s lawyer said that the period for which school was granted recognition had expired three years ago.

However, Justice J P Deodhar pointed out that education officer did not cite this as a reason for his order.

Case has been adjourned till June 10.

Original article here.

The UK-based wholly owned subsidiary of New York-listed Molson Coors Brewing Co., Coors Brewers Ltd, has acquired majority stake in Karan Bilimoria-owned Cobra Beer Ltd. It will pay £14 million (around Rs105 crore) for a 50.1% stake in a new joint venture company called Cobra Beer Partnership Ltd. Bilimoria will own the remaining 49.9% and continue as its chairman. The Indian-born entrepreneur explains the rationale behind the deal in an interview. Edited excerpts:

You put the company up for sale around November. What’s happened in the past couple of months?

In fact, the sales merger process started almost a year ago with Rothschild (NM Rothschild and Sons Ltd), the investment bank. We approached nearly every drinks company and brewer in the world, and this was in an environment where for a high-growth company like ours, finance had completely clammed up.

We have grown 40% from the time we started. Even in these horrible markets, the beer market dropping 8% per year in the UK, we have been growing 20%. But we couldn’t get to finance growth, so we thought let’s team up with a global major player, we have the critical mass in terms of sales and volumes, and the synergies are there and the ideal, ideal player right from the beginning was actually Molson and Coors, and three months ago they agreed on a joint venture with us.

Of course, many of these unsecure creditors and suppliers out there, they will be the ones to suffer in this deal ultimately.

Well, the deal from Cobra’s brand point of view is a dream come true, to be part of one of the biggest brewers in the world, the owners of Carling, the biggest brand in the UK. The synergies are fantastic for the brand going forward globally. The employees are being very well looked after…the secured creditors are being payed off and being payed off in full.

But unfortunately, this upsets me a great deal, in the way this deal is made. The unsecured creditors are not being paid and that’s something I feel very strongly about and very upset about.

Why did it come to that?

We were working on a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) where creditors would have the opportunity of being paid up to 50 pence to the pound and we had prepared this for weeks in a, thorough sort of, 200-page document. We had 90% of the creditors supporting the CVA, and the day before we were about to launch it, one of our major suppliers (pulled out), because of one of their credit insurers put a statute demand, and the whole CVA was completely scuppered at the last minute, and so in a week we had to go down another route.

The company had been up for sale for several months and the CVA had been worked on for several weeks and then we had to change at the last minute and this was the only option.

I’m sure a lot of companies have found themselves caught up similarly in the circumstance of the time. In hindsight, how could you have grown a high business differently that would not have ended up in this situation?

I think looking back on it three years ago, we raised several million pounds…. A year ago, we almost had a deal at an equity valuation of £75 million, and suddenly the world changed, and banks and finance dried up. And for a high growth company, you need that.

So no one could predict exactly what happened over the last few months and the way the world changed. So its timing, you can’t predict it. And I would say that looking ahead, our business model is going to be completely different in the hands of a giant brewer. It will be very much growth, but yes, huge profits as well.

You are going to stay on with the business, as part of the arrangement here. What else do you see your future at this point? Are you going to be involved in any future brands?

My focus is very much on Cobra now, on supporting the joint venture, on working with the team at Coors, integrating my team into the Coors’ team, and on building a bigger global brand because the brand has an enormous future; it has got great following; it’s got 80% prompted awareness household name; and we created a beer brand in 20 years when most beer brands are centuries old.

Is it possible for a small start-up to launch a brand such as Cobra in this day and age since the beer market has become consolidated among giants?

We started Cobra in 1990 when the last recession actually started, so you can start a business in the worst of times. We have shown now that we can all actually be not in the ideal way, you can merge with a giant in the worst of times, but the best of times are ahead of us.

AMIDST the gloom and doom and the national scenario of death and destruction, with the horrific plight of the displaced persons hanging over us like a pall, plus the ongoing military operation in the Malakand area taking its daily toll, a few of us had a welcome break the other evening as we cast our collective minds back to better days.

Our old school, the Bai Virbaiji Soparivala Parsi High School (BVS), housed in a proud building that stands on Abdullah Haroon Road in our now plagued city of Karachi celebrated the 150th anniversary of its founding — not a bad record in these days of constant change and turmoil.

An old saying goes that one’s school days are the happiest days of one’s life — well mine may not have been the happiest days of my life, but they were undoubtedly happy and carefree days, of fun, joy and of course of learning —the last being the greatest gift that can be given to a child. My school days started in 1931, when I followed in the footsteps of my parents, Rustom Fakirjee Cowasjee and Mucca Rustomjee H J Rustomjee and all my various uncles and aunts. I was later joined by my two brothers, Cowasjee (better known as John) and Cyrus, and a large handful of cousins and friends.

Our principal in those far-off days was a skilled educationist, Dr Maneck Pithawalla, DSc, FRGS, FGS, who took on the job in 1920 and stayed until his retirement in 1946. The finest tribute to him was possibly that paid in 1955 on his 70th birthday when Old Virbaijeeites gathered to honour him. My cousin, Dr Roeinton Khambatta, spoke on the occasion: ‘ … We have built no monuments for you and have erected no pillars. Great empires have built these and they have been razed to the ground, forgotten for ever. We give you something more — the promise of a thousand and more Old Virbaijeeites to tread the paths you hacked out so well, to pass on your teachings by word of mouth to the generations that come to seek that goal you set for us — Towards the Best Light [the school motto].’

Dr Pithawalla taught us geography, geology and English poetry — I can still (though admittedly with difficulty) trot out The Ballad of Inchcape Rock (which so stressed the old saying ‘Do as you would be done by.’)

For a brief period we were taught English and history by my cousin Behram Sohrab H J Rustomjee, an old boy of the school, before he went on to London to do his BA in education from Goldsmith College. An ardent musician, whilst there he took courses at the Royal School of Music. He went on to take over as principal, or headmaster as he preferred to be called, of the BVS in 1946, when Dr Pithawalla retired, and it was during his era that the school first opened its doors to non-Parsis, on the request of Governor General Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Behli (as he was familiarly known) served for 19 years.A story is told of Behli. One day in 1947, his friend Ahmed Ghulamali Chagla who had just written the music for an anthem for the new country dropped in to visit him and hummed the tune to him. Behli sat down at his piano and strummed out the melody. It is said that he was the first individual to so do — and thus his old piano has become a great family treasure.

But of all our teachers, the most memorable was the man who taught us ancient history and Zorastrianism, High Priest of the Parsis of Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan and the NWFP, Asho Dastur-an-Dastur Shams-ul-Ulema Dastur Doctor Maneckji Nusserwanji Dhalla, known to his flock as ‘Dasturjee’. He was born in Surat in 1875 and died in Karachi in 1956.

He had studied Avesta and his religion at Columbia University, New York, where he did his MA and then obtained a PhD in 1908. He was later to be awarded an honorary D.Litt by his university. A true scholar, and a man of meagre means, he had no problem with gratefully accepting support from members of the community for his frequent academic-related trips to the US.

One clear recollection is the exchanges between Dasturjee and my paternal grandmother on his many visits to our house. My maternal grandmother, Dinbano Rustomjee H J Rustomjee, was loving, liberal and lovable, whereas Aimai Fakirjee Cowasjee in whose house we grew up was relatively orthodox and severe — she had to be strict as she ruled over a rebellious crew. Aimai would harangue Dasturjee on the subject of smoking and insist that in his preaching to the community he firmly instruct that Zarathustra had forbidden his followers the use of tobacco. Dasturjee would inevitably patiently explain to her, ‘My dear sister, Zarathustra lived and died long before Raleigh found and brought tobacco back to England from America.’

He was the most tolerant of men, and constantly preached and instilled into us the spirit of tolerance in all manner and walks of life. In this fraught day and age, where bigotry and prejudices reign and flourish, what is badly needed, and particularly in this country, is tolerance, and more tolerance. One of his essays sticks in my mind — an essay he made us read over and over again so that we fully understood what it was he wished to din into us. It was entitled ‘Let none nurse intolerance’ and it told us:
‘Intolerance and bigotry and dogmatism are the bitterest enemies of religion upon earth. They make religion a tyrant, a persecutor….

‘All religions come from one and the only God, who makes Himself known by many a name … All religions make man equally good upon earth … All open their hearts to the same God … Man has no right to demand that his neighbour shall address God after his pattern and shall pray in his own way and worship according to his liking and sacrifice unto God in the manner he does….

‘Teach me, my God, to see that I have no right to impose my own way of thinking upon others. Teach me to acknowledge and honour the right of all to pray and worship and sacrifice in their ownway … Teach me to discern true religion from religiosity. Fill my mind and heart with the spirit of toleration.’

Original article here.