News You Can Use

Rustom (name changed) migrated from Rustom Baug to San Francisco and became a successful businessman. His widowed mother made impassioned pleas to her son to marry — even a ‘mudum’ (foreign lady) would do.  In his early 40s, Rustom wrote to his mother that he had married a nice American lady and would soon return home with her.  His mother and assorted aunts, equipped with aacchhoo michhoo thalis (German silver trays containing flowers, coconut, eggs; to be passed over the heads of the newly weds, to wish them an auspicious beginning) anxiously awaited Rustom and his bride. When finally the doorbell rang, Rustom and his lovely bride with beaming smiles, greeted them. His mother took one look at the bride, an attractive African American, and fell unconscious to the floor, the contents of the aachhoo michhoo scattered. She never spoke to her only son, for the cardinal sin he had committed. Unbelievable, but true.
A Parsi official of the Turf Club wooed a smashingly good looking hostess with Air India. When she was introduced to the person’s grandmother, she squinted her beady eyes and remarked, "Quite beautiful, I must say, but rather dark, isn’t she?”
Our paternal grandmother, a pragmatic sort of person, observed about our father’s close friend, a certain Vishnubhai (all deceased), that "Vishnu is an excellent human being, if only he was not so black.”
Matrimonial advertsements do not care for being politically correct, when promoting "a fair, slim bride.” One comes across the occasional advertisement which even talks about the complexion of the bridegroom. Traditional kaajwalis (matchmakers) and matrimonial bureau services of Parsi organizations testify to the demand for the fair skinned. You may just manage if you are horizontally or vertically challenged but not if you don’t "look like a Parsi.”
Burjorji Bharucha, the noted Gandhian social worker, organized mass navjotes of children of Parsi fathers and mothers hailing mostly from the scheduled caste. The ‘Vansda Navjotes,’ as they came to be known, generated heated controversy in the Parsi Press (Kaiser-e-Hind espousing the liberal perspective). Several, who were not so aghast at the purported sacrilege committed by Bharucha, wondered as to how these "unfortunate children” would be assimilated in the community due to their dark complexion and ‘unParsi’ looks.
We have observed how the composure of portly ladies praying in agiaries, talcum powder embedded in their double chins, is disturbed on spotting a new chasniwala (fire temple worker) who suspiciously looks like a non-Parsi.
Complexion though does not seem to be an issue when it comes to the trustees of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet, now elected by universal adult franchise. One, elected thrice in succession as a trustee with a huge majority, bewitches the electorate with his twinkling eyes and beaming smile, even though he, in his own words, looks "more like John than Jehan.”
As the most forward looking and westernized of all Indian communities, the Parsis nevertheless retain their bias for the doodhpak (a sweetened rice and milk dessert) complexion, with the ultra thin purple colored ‘Kayani’ veins visible on pink cheeks and whose sheer presence would light up the room during a power outage. For many Parsis, black is still not beautiful.