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You will be glad to know that I have found the ideal daycare center for your grandson,” exulted my daughter Anahita Mukherji over the phone from the San Francisco Bay area, half the globe away from Bombay. "It is beautiful, open, full of sunshine and with a happy environment unlike some of the others that have a more formal, classroom atmosphere. And guess what, Mum, Ambrose Commissariat who runs the center is a Parsi from Bombay.” A feeling of warmth and comfort enveloped me. I knew instinctively that Daraius (Fernandes) would be nurtured with love and care. "Don’t look for another daycare center now,” I advised her. "This is the right pre-school for him.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Commissariat’s daycare center, Gems Academy, is situated in a picturesque bylane of Sunnyvale. A little garden path leads to her home lined with irises, roses and azaleas. The cascading branches of a tree overlook the well-kept lawn.
As my daughter parked her car near the house, an excited Daraius almost jumped out of his car seat in eager anticipation of meeting his friends.
"Goodbye Nani,” he waved to me as he trotted off eagerly with his mother.
At the door to greet him was the petite, youthful Commissariat who was drawn to pre-school education as it gave her an opportunity to work with "pure and innocent minds.” She loves to be with children because of their guilelessness, it’s "their pure ignorance of evil, and carefree nature that creates a perfect ambiance for learning and growing together.”
The children in Commissariat’s daycare are between two and three years of age. Part of her home has been converted into a pre-school with outdoor apparatus in the garden and lots of educational equipment for indoor activities.
Commissariat views the children in her care as an extension of her family. "I make sure they are safe, having fun, learning — not only their phonics, math and science — but also learning to be better human beings instilled with good thoughts, good words and good deeds, as they learn to share, care, work as a team, play and have fun together, follow directions and know what’s right from wrong.” Her methodology is a combination of the Play-way method and more structured learning.
She feels nothing is more elevating than knowing that she is touching these children’s lives in a positive way and instilling in them a love for learning while building their self-esteem and confidence during the very foundational years of their lives. For her, each child is a "precious gem” whose sparkle should never grow dim.
Commissariat holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Bombay University. After moving to the United States with her husband Hormazd in 2002, she first studied hospitality management and later child development, from Mission College, San Jose.
Born and brought up in Bombay, in a 100-year-old, two-story house in Balaram Street, off Grant Road, Commissariat’s was a loving, close-knit joint family, comprising her parents Daulat and Pervaze Dubash, paternal grandparents Kershasp and Khorshed Dubash, maternal grandparents Sarwar and Bomansha Irani, a grand uncle Edul Dubash, her twin sister Anahita (Wadiwalla), a younger sister Arzana (Daruwalla) and a brother Phirosha who passed away when he was only six. Pervaze was a wrestling champion as well as an engineer who worked in one of the Siemens factories in Sion. Daulat studied to be a lawyer but was "too soft-hearted” to handle disputes in court and so gave up legal practice for a secretarial position at Hoechst Pharmaceuticals. Her parents worked long hours to ensure that their children were not deprived of a good education. "We mostly grew up with our grandparents,” recalls Commissariat.
"In summer and during the Christmas break, we always traveled to hill stations which contributed to the best moments of my childhood. My mother — a perfect combo of brains and beauty — was a great planner and my dad was great at executing mom’s plans!”
Life chugged along smoothly until tragedy struck the family. Phirosha’s untimely death was too great a shock for Daulat. Overnight she changed from her vibrant self to a chronically depressed, angry person. There was no more laughter in the house, no more summer vacations to look forward to. A few years later, on the eve of Daulat’s promotion she developed a cyst in the brain and the operation performed to remove it resulted in her right side being paralyzed. Commissariat and her siblings were in college at that time; and they had to shoulder the added responsibility of taking care of their mother as well as managing the housework, helping their grandmother with the cooking and cleaning.
Even though the doctors had said that Daulat would not walk again, Pervaze, who loved his wife dearly, never lost hope of seeing his wife back on her feet. He found a physiotherapist who would come daily to massage her legs and he personally assisted her to exercise and walk every evening after returning from a hard day’s work. After a few years, his care and perseverance paid off. Thanks to his heroic efforts, his wife was able to walk! He bought her a typewriter to make her practice typing so that she could go back to work and claim the pension she was entitled to. With the support of her family and friends, she was back at work. But for a person with disabilities, the workplace can often turn hostile. Seeing how stressful life had become for her, the family persuaded her to quit the job.
Soon Commissariat’s aged grandparents were in and out of the hospital, needing all their love and care as old age and illnesses began to stalk them. Commissariat reiterated the admiration she felt for her father, the backbone of the family, who had "never shunned his responsibilities as a father, husband or son.”
Commissariat feels that these trials not only brought the family closer but taught her some important lessons as well: never to give up hope, the value of having a supportive family and the blessings of unconditional love. And all this helped her navigate her life’s path in the New World too.
 On graduating, Commissariat worked in a bank in Bombay. But after her marriage, she accompanied Hormazd to the US in 2002 where he had found work in Intel in California. He has a masters in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech, Virginia.
In America, Commissariat went back to school to complete a course in hospitality management because of her passion for cooking. She longed to have a restaurant of her own but was persuaded by her cautious husband to drop the idea. In hindsight, she was glad that he had done so. She took up a job at the front desk of the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose and was later promoted to the position of supervisor.
When she was expecting her first baby, Commissariat realized that her work would prevent her from spending quality time with her child. She needed a more stable job with more sustainable hours. So she went back to college to take a course in child development. She was determined to become a teacher and even during her pregnancy she attended classes after work. She has two daughters, Diana and Kyra.
After completing her course, Commissariat joined a private school as a teacher, the same school where Diana was studying. She loved every minute of her teaching experience. But the work environment, with its petty cliques and jealousies, was not a very conducive one. She left this school and joined another which turned out to be even worse. "It was like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.” The curriculum was a mess and the infrastructure anything but conducive to the needs of the children. Outward show took precedence over meaningful learning, and the child’s overall developmental needs were ignored.
Commissariat was inspired to start a daycare center of her own. It was not an easy decision to make. To open one’s own school entails a lot of prerequisites in the US. "I was very nervous at first. I knew I had to do this for myself, my children. Quitting and staying at home was not an option.” She used the opportunity her spacious house offered to put all the good thoughts, good ideas she always had in the field of child development into action and make a difference in the lives of young kids by starting them off in a happy, caring environment. 
 "Afraid of failure but knowing inside me that I was doing this for all the right reasons, I took the next step,” she recalls.
In 2017, Commissariat completed all the formalities needed to get her license. She got rid of some of her furniture to make space in her home to set up the educational equipment. It was not easy going. She started with only four kids and ran the center all by herself for some time. But in about six months she had a full house comprising 12 children and two assistants. Seeing the happy kids around her, learning and developing at their own pace, makes it all worthwhile and rewarding.
As for her faith, Commissariat is very proud to be a Zoroastrian. "But I don’t think it’s the religion that defines a person; I believe it’s more the person that defines the religion.” A sudreh-kusti wearing Zoroastrian who doesn’t hesitate to lie and cheat is definitely inferior to one who may not follow the prescribed ​customs ​and traditions of the religion but who upholds the essential tenets of his/her faith.
"Prayers and ​tarikats (rituals),​ after all, are only meant to remind us of our path. The tenets of ​good thoughts, ​good​ ​words​ and good​ ​deeds is what everyone should focus on because everything else is just man-made traditions and customs that really do not elevate the soul.”