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The tinkle of gentle laughter and the occasional guffaw melded well with the backslapping and bonhomie at the reception room adjacent to the Gallops Restaurant on August 3, 2019. "NCPA Parsis” rubbed shoulders with lawyers, financiers, the racing fraternity, friends and family gathered at the launch of lawyer, Royal Western India Turf Club steward and Parsiana columnist Berjis Desai’s Oh! Those Parsis: A to Z of the Parsi way of life. No haandaas and lahuvaas (louts) were visible. The brilliantly lit room with floral decorations in green and white was full well before the appointed hour of 5 p.m. Oh!... is a compilation of  columns titled "Bawa Musings” written by Desai between April 2014 and August 2017 and published in Parsiana. As he wrote in the Introduction to the book, the columns covered "topics as diverse as maids, mothers and murders, legho (pyjamas), liquor, lagan nu custard; sex, superstitions and swear words; fish, fertility and funerals; goondas (conmen), ghelsappas and gadheras (swear words)...”  
A message from Supreme Court Justice Rohinton Nariman stated that he "anxiously awaited” each issue of Parsiana to read Desai’s "inimitable satire on the Parsi eccentricities of yesteryear.”
To senior counsel, former advocate general for Maharashtra and additional solicitor general of India, Darius Khambata who launched the book, Desai is a "bard of his times.” Commending his "effortless style” and "crisp writing” that provides "mellifluous entertainment,” Khambata said that Desai, unlike other writers, does not take himself seriously.  Desai is "someone who looks behind the person, for their stories.” As he noted in the Foreword to the book, the columnist "writes with biting sarcasm wrapped in disarming language.” Earlier, young Hriday and Rishika Galani from Desai’s extended family handed over the ribbon-wrapped books to both Khambata and Desai, to release formally.  
"Please don’t say ‘Oh yet another book on Parsis...there are more books on Parsis than there are Parsis!’” joked Khambata. There may be a dearth of Parsis, but there is no dearth of idiots among them, he said. "Despite our diversity and our vituperative disputes, we are a community that laughs at itself,” he observed.
"You cannot squash humor... a humorist can say things that you and I cannot... wit and humor can threaten tyrants,” noted Khambata. Recalling Parsi thespians and dramatists of yore, Dr Jehangir Wadia, Adi Marzban and Dr Jimmy Sidhwa, whose humor had important messages for their audiences, Khambata quipped, "Maybe the Parsi natak died because we were too busy watching” community shenanigans. He alluded to the Holy Fools of the Russian Empire who used ostensible ranting and imaginary insanity to reveal the insanity of the world.
Khambata summed up Desai’s writing as brilliant, with a subtle message, and an overarching theme that it is good to have diversity. On a personal note, he recalled that when he followed in Desai’s footsteps to study law at Trinity College a few years later, Desai "was the only Indian student the Masters there wanted to speak about!”
   Securities' law expert Somasekhar Sundaresan wanted Desai to "continue to make us laugh at Parsi eccentricities for a long time.” Ramjee Narasimhan, partner of Madras-based Zero Degree Publishing that brought out the book recommended that the book is one that readers should "read, savor, close, and read again.” "I have not read something as ‘easy’ to read as Oh!... in a long time,” he told Parsiana on the sidelines of the event. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Parsiana representative read out a message from the editor who could not be present. "Berjis’ columns are replete with compassion, especially for the unfortunate, the neglected, the forgotten and the heartbroken,” said the message. Commending Desai’s "eye for detail, graphic memory, the selection of the right word to convey an emotion, describe a situation or lend character and color to a subject,” the editor revealed his initial reservation about a book of Desai’s published pieces. But, "the more I think about it, I realize that the book is not just a collection of columns. It’s the story of a community and especially of people, people that Parsiana has not written about or even known,” stated the message.
Readings by Desai made characters from some of his columns come alive. On the dying sub-culture of Dadar Parsi Colony, Desai bemoaned that Nagoo Doll, Bafaat, Chocolate and Bun Pao are all aging or no more. There is no Pesi to write to the Pope complaining about the loud pealing of the bells of nearby St Joseph’s Church. When he read that "marhoom, manas saara, pan naara na dhilla utta (The deceased, though a good man, had loose pyjama strings),” from "No sex please, we are Parsis,” the guffaws reached a high decibel. Desai’s reading of the piece on why he chose the Towers of Silence for his mother’s final resting place after passionately writing about the failure of dakhmenashini was received in reverential silence. Cyrus Critic from "A matter of taste,” who likened qawwali singer Shakila Banoo Bhopali’s performance to hot and spicy kolmi na curry chaval (prawn curry rice) and a Zubin Mehta concert to a bowl of asparagus mousse, brought into focus the varied musical interests of the community.
Actor Nizwar Karanj read extracts from Desai’s pieces on Parsi swearing: "Priestly swearing gives confidence to the community to swear;” tippling: "Aloo Aunty’s boyfriend would savor narangi (illicit hooch) and was bemused we relished the taste of his concoction;” Parsi brand names of yore that evoke nostalgia: "No tapeli (container) goes under a Parsi Dairy Farm milk container; an office block has come up where Dippy’s made pumpkin murabba (preserve)...”
"There is not one iota of fiction in my pieces,” Desai said in his closing remarks. "In fact I had to actually tone down some eccentricities so as not to give sleepless nights” to the editor of Parsiana, he laughed. While the Introduction to the book carries snippets from his earliest piece of writing as a teenager in the erstwhile Kaiser-e-Hind weekly lambasting the then Bombay Parsi Punchayet trustees and its aftermath, Desai revealed that another early piece was one written as an entry for an essay competition organized by the Bangalore Parsi Anjuman on the future of the Parsis. "I had typhoid when I wrote it, and running high fever... which proves that one can write best about Parsis when in a state of delirium,” he ended.
Lawyer Farzana Mojgani compered the evening. A high tea brought the evening to a close. Cyrus Critic would have approved of its sumptuousness.