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Have you always eaten your meals at a dining table?  Have you sipped hot tea from a saucer? Have you cooked your food in aluminum vessels? Do you know how to operate a primus stove? Have you slurped on a goor-daani (marrow spoon)? Can you drink water without touching the brass pot to your lips? If your answers are mostly in the negative, then you are a NCPA (National Centre for the Performing Arts) Parsi. On the other hand, if your answer is a resounding yes; then you are an authentic masoor-pav Parsi.
Parsis do not generally equate wealth with class. Ultra high net worth boors abound, and some impoverished ones are very proper. Like Jane Austen ("an English spinster of the middle class; knew a lot about the amorous effects of brass”), you can be classy, though not necessarily rich.

 

 

 

 Parsis like to use good crockery like Old Country Roses China Photo: http://relevanttealeaf.blogspot.in/

 

 

 

 

Decades ago, this columnist, as an applicant for the Rotary International scholarship to read law at Cambridge, was asked by a formidable looking interviewer as to how proficient he was with knives (at the dining table, of course). The response was a stupid smiling nod (which meant nothing), but was taken as a confident answer. The formidable one then boomed, "Of course, I forgot you are a Parsi! Of course, silly of me even to ask!” We still wonder as to whether we would have got the scholarship had we candidly confessed that not only were we most uncomfortable holding a knife, leave aside distinguishing between a knife to cut bread and a knife to apply butter, but at the relevant time, we were just getting used to a dining table at home.
Strange though it may sound, Parsis, who migrated from Gujarat to Bombay during and after the Second World War (1939-45) continued with the traditional way of life for decades thereafter. A large coir mat would be spread on the living room floor and the family sat cross legged, to partake of meals. Food was cooked in aluminum pots and pans (few knew then of its alleged link with Alzheimer’s). Stainless steel was a luxury, reserved for heating milk. The name of the head of the household was engraved on all utensils. Barring stuff which could not be picked up with the fingers, cutlery was not to be seen. A fork was used only to scramble eggs and a teaspoon to stir sugar in tea. Knives were for carving raw fish and flesh; the only exception being the table knife to apply butter. One ate with ones hands (Ayurveda lauds this as excellent for health); fingers deftly rolling a ghaoon ni roti (wheat chappati) around a masoor ma botoo (chunk of meat in lentils) – only the poor then ate jowar, bajra and the like. It was an art form, the manner in which one converted the dal sodden rice into a sushi like morsel (termed as a book in Parsi Gujarati), not at all unseemly or indecent. Did someone say soup? It was seldom on the menu. Also absent were steak or meats requiring to be carved or sliced or cut. Mutton was very popular and so were pomfrets; chicken, though, was a luxury. One was expected to pick up the meat stripped bone and suck the marrow within. Marrow which was too deeply embedded in the bone would be extricated with a goor-daani.
Cheap white crockery was purchased from roadside vendors lining Colaba Causeway, and of course, Crawford Market. A slightly chipped cup was not immediately replaced — anyway, one poured tea in the saucer and drank it with a relishing slurping sound onomatopoeically called surakka. We have seen tea being similarly drunk from saucers in other East Asian and Arab countries. If one really wanted to feel satisfied, one had to eat with one’s fingers; and enjoy tea (no déclassé tea bags then) best from a saucer. Even the anglicized Parsis would condescend to eat the sticky, gelatinous khariya (trotters) with their fingers. A rather pretentious loud mouth lawyer had once told us that his mother-in-law was so aristocratic that even when she was compelled to eat khariya with her fingers, she would ensure that only her first phalange was soiled.
The meals would be washed down with boiled water strained through a glass cloth and stored in a matloo (red earthenware pot). When refrigerators arrived in the late 1950s and early ’60s, cold water was savored in the sweltering summer. Priestly families and other orthodox never touched the katli (brass receptacle) holding the water to their lips. Glasses were a late entrant and many felt that water did not taste as well as it did from the karasyo (metal drinking utensil).
The early migrants, who had then assimilated with the British rulers, eagerly adopted the English lifestyle.Wedgwood dining ware and Waterford tea sets, imported from England, without payment of customs duty, were prized possessions, not only of the rich but the anglicized upper middle classes. It would adorn the table on festive occasions or to impress guests, who would breach etiquette by slightly turning the plate when out of the host’s eyeshot, to ascertain whether it was indeed Wedgwood or a cheap Japanese imitation (today’s China). Cutlery had to be Sheffield. The "boy,” as the serving attendant was called in Parsi households, was familiar in the art of arranging the knives and forks in order for the courses planned for the dinner. The "mistry,” as the cook was called, was equally well versed in selecting the appropriate serving dish. The landed gentry would exchange a polite snigger or two, if their nouveau riche hostess displayed ignorance of the crockery-cutlery code of conduct.
The dining bell, or the silver gong compliments of Wedgwood, was a ritual religiously observed, even if Sorabji and Goolbai were just a few feet away from the dining table.
Freshly brewed tea, with mint leaves floating, from a Royal Albert teapot, ensconced in a Pemberley tea cosy, strained through a silver Royal Doulton strainer, poured into an exquisitely thin bone china cup with its subtle floral design, sugar (always white) stirred with that familiar tinkling sound – all so subtle and heavenly.
The classic Parsi kitchen would have been so aghast to see mugs, toasters, mixers, tea bags, microwaves, sweetener sachets, jostling diners at soulless buffets, port wine and sherry in champagne glasses and unbreakable Chinese plates.
If NCPA Parsis were given a choice between modern invasions and the masoor-pav way of life, they would have opted to sit crossed legged on the coir mat and eat with their hands.