I read with great interest the editorial "The progressive patriot” (Parsiana, June 21, 2017). You are right. One needs to shake up the young. The spirit of adventure and enterprise has gone from the community. Wealth and success has made us soft. Look at the stalwarts we had in the legal and medical profession. In fact we had remarkable men and women in every field of endeavor, including sport. The few that now exist are in their declining years.
Left: statue of Sir Dinshaw Wacha Illustration by Manjula Padmanabhan;
above: V. S. Srinivasa Sastri Photo: Wikipedia
Do you think it would help if every issue of Parsiana took up one of the greats of yore and did a biographical sketch romanticizing that person’s life with some pictures? Not just a drab sketch like the one in H. D. Darukhanawala’s book Parsi Lustre on Indian Soil which is not good enough to inspire.
The last paragraph of your editorial is like a clarion call but it is not enough. You mention Sir Dinshaw Wacha. I remember as a 12-year-old lad I wanted to go down and play football with a group of boys. My dad insisted that I go with him to the unveiling of Wacha’s statue opposite the Eros Cinema. I tried my best to get out of it. My mother put in a word for me but my father would not relent. He said that the statesman and founding father of the Indian Liberal Party V. S. Srinivasa Sastri is unveiling the statue and he will be speaking after that. The boy will hear the English language spoken as he has never heard it spoken before and will never hear again. My father was right. What a remarkable orator was Srinivasa Sastri. The master of Balliol College at Oxford Universy, Arthur Smith, said that he "had never realized the beauty of the English language until he heard Sastri speak. Men like Arthur Balfour and Winston Churchill thought the same. Sastri was home grown.