Today, at the age of 80, I look around at my beloved community and see no future. I feel a sadness and a sense of defeat. I think we have reached a stage of no return.
Who can one blame, but our own people? Did anyone really bother to teach children anything about our religion except dogmas? Did we translate our prayers so the young who we started educating, and who would no longer just accept, understood what they were saying? There is a church located near our house where they have mass in English as well as in Konkani so that those who attend know what is being said. Surely Christ did not speak either of these languages?
We teach our children to ask the reason why and work things out as far as their studies go, but do or did we do the same regarding our religion or religious beliefs? No. We were more concerned with western modes of behavior and concentrated on them — eat this way, talk that way. I am not criticizing. Yes, we shone, and brightly too — but we lost out on something.
Today we are a squabbling lot. Instead of putting petty beliefs behind us and working together, we nitpick on matters of no importance completely forgetting the main issue which is our survival. To me it brings back the words of a census specialist who said at a meeting some years ago that unless something was done we would end up as museum pieces, a condition he never wanted to see as he was a great admirer of the Parsis.
On the lighter side, do you think Parsiana could stop our youth from making statements like "We have 101 Gods,” a statement I have heard much to my chagrin and the surprise of my non-Parsi friends who always believed our religion was the first to propagate the belief in one God.
Yet another request: Would you please explain to the general public the difference between Navroz and Pateti and please, please, never refer to Pateti as a "baby spud!” MEHROO S. KHAREGAT
meherbai36@hotmail.com
Independent researcher Farrokh Vajifdar of London explains:
Salutations like Pateti Mubarak should never be exchanged. The patets contained a vast array of "sins” ranging from errors of omission — ignoring or forgetting to recite the nyayishes or supplicatory prayers to the fire, the sun, the moon, the waters, to errors of commission including the vilest sexual perversions.
It is thus amply clear why this burden of "sins” should not be celebrated with a "happy or blessed” suffix. The word "mubarak” too has its root in Arabic (blessed, sanctified), and the proudly nationalistic Zardushtis are increasingly objecting to its all-too-free Parsi Jarthosti usage. Our glorious No-ruz, "New Day; New Year” (always March 21!), they maintain, should dispense with "mubarak” and the greeting should instead be "No-ruz farrkhondeh baad” (may you be blessed).