The recent incident of a cockroach being found inside a dahi vada ordered from a well-known restaurant in Colaba is unfortunate (see "Violations in eatery,” Events and Personalities, Parsiana, May 21-June 6, 2019). Maharukh Irani (pictured), who spotted the cockroach in time, did not eat the dish and was saved from food poisoning. Her son-in-law Parvez Cooper filed a complaint with 
the restaurant and the Bombay Municipal Corporation. Food poisoning is to be feared as will be evident from the following incident: A fun loving 30-year-old youngster in the information technology field was working with computers and married to a pretty woman whose father is Parsi and mother, a Muslim. The couple lived on Balaram Street with their two small children. One day, suffering from an unrelenting fever, vomiting and diarrhea, he was admitted to The B. D. Petit Parsee General Hospital (PGH) as a serious case of unidentified "wasting away” along with continuous debilitating fever.
Eighteen days later, the doctors called it an unknown "syndrome,” a rare case of food poisoning, as they termed it. When I visited him, the weak, listless, dehydrated, sickly man told me that he had been to a posh restaurant and found the taste of what he had eaten to be unpleasant, unpalatable and disturbing.
Within a week of his return home the fever returned, and he was readmitted to PGH. The fever was "handled,” and the emaciated patient was sent home again. But not for long! The fever returned uncontrollably and reached his brain. This time he was placed in the intensive care unit (ICU) at PGH and slipped into a coma. The doctors said there was little hope.
His young wife ran from pillar to post, pleading for monetary assistance, begging people to come and see her husband in the ICU while she, still in her 20s, coped with two children, the second one a girl of less than two years! Alas, he did not survive. He was a valuable Zoroastrian, not the run-of-the-mill, eat, drink, women and song type!
RASHID KHOSRAVI
The editors note:
Rashid Khosravi (pictured), a regular contributor to our Readers’ Forum column who also supplied numerous newspaper and 
magazine clippings on Parsis for our So they say column, expired on June 2 this year. He was a storehouse of knowledge on the Zoroastrian Irani community and a willing source for a book on Irani cafes yet to be published. An intellectual, poet and lawyer, he was an avid reader of Parsiana and a well-wisher. We shall miss his insights and editorial inputs.