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Being cutely cuckoo

Our famed ability to laugh at ourselves emboldens others to slip in a few nasty ones about our mental health. Nine out of 10 Parsis are nearly mad, and the 10th one is mad, goes one jibe. All Parsis are mad but Homi is a mad Parsi, is another. The world often perceives those who are different, as mad. Are we just outstanding eccentrics or are we cutely cuckoo? Do most of us appear pleasantly mad to other communities, like some funny looking harmless aliens still trying to assimilate, for the last thousand years, in the land of their refuge.
We are not talking about the disproportionately high prevalence of neurological disorders in Parsis due to intense inbreeding and other obvious causes. Clinical insanity is sad and arouses compassion. Being an oddball is fine, but does the buck stop there? Intense eccentricity can degenerate into madness when one stops living in the real world and occupies fantasy land.
Our demographics are horrific. The widening chasm between deaths and births every year; more than half of us being single; very late marriages; poor fertility; much of the community being senior citizens — a deadly cocktail indeed. Lonely old bachelors and spinsters desolately staring at their grandfather clocks chiming unnecessarily every quarter, as life slowly ebbs out each day. The youth no longer enjoys the head start of yesteryears when just being a Parsi was a guarantee for a job, respect and adoration by other communities. No wonder then that mental health issues abound.
Most of us take refuge in the abiding faith in our agiaries which recharge our drooping spirits and provide hope. The atheists and agnostics prefer, of course, to lie down on the psychiatrist’s couch. We are often not even aware that we are subtly depressed. Increasingly, the external environment appears hostile and mocking. Some respond by forsaking the communal identity and prefer not to be seen as Parsis. Most take solace in the emotional cocoon that a baug or a colony provides. We create little fortresses of xenophobia, a morbid dislike of strangers. Others adopt the ostrich approach of digging their head into sand and pretending that all is cosy and secure.
The deteriorating mental health is reflected in increasing stridency and cantankerousness in public affairs [Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) trustees washing dirty linen in the media and the courts]; hotly contested cases in the Parsi matrimonial court (even amongst couples in their late 60s); inability to tolerate any dissent or a different viewpoint (bitter fights over petty issues like whether to allow advertisers to shoot in colony precincts); occasional outbursts of violent behavior with methipaak (beating) administered to liberals and other heretic scum (roughing up of the Russian navar-aspirant at Sanjan and rearranging the furniture in the BPP boardroom); a burning desire to excommunicate (banning of priests, and crores of public funds lost in defending the ban); an obstinate refusal to reform or innovate in a fast changing situation.
In the 1960s, many Bollywood films would depict the ubiquitous ‘bawaji’ (dressed in a dugla and pugree) to evoke a few good natured laughs. In the ’70s, Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s comedy Khatta Mitha, sweetly cherished the community. The tone suddenly changed in the ’80s and we had films like Pestonjee, depicting, though with empathy, the sadness, loneliness and isolation of a micro community. Later, Percy, on a similar disturbing theme of being trapped in a time zone. More recently Being Cyrus and Little Zizou; on the surface, light-heartedly lampooning our idiosyncrasies but also highlighting the creeping sadness of a dying community.
Many will disagree. What about our infectious laugher, our gregarious spirits, our joie de vivre, being the soul of the party, our sense of humor, our compassionate charity? they ask. Aren’t these evidence of our mental robustness? We have always enjoyed juicy and salacious details in the Parsi matrimonial court [some senior citizens spend their entire day there along with their bhona no dabbo (lunch box)].
Life would be too drab without a dash of Parsi madness. A screw may be loose here or there but we are not about to knock collectively on the doors of a lunatic asylum. We are not even bothered that we are a dying community. Why worry when you won’t even be there? Let us all laugh uproariously our way to the solar crematoria. The sane are often sadder than the mad.

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