"To the best of my knowledge, this is the first novel about the Parsis,” Perin Bharucha, who passed away on April 14, 2025 at the age of 87, told Parsiana in 1973 about her book, The Fire Worshippers. The novel had been written seven years earlier. "I can give you the exact dates, I started on April 1 and finished on December 15, 1966.” It "underwent a lot of re-writing, editing and changing but the main part was written at that time,” said the frequent contributor to various publications such as The Onlooker Annual, The Hindustan Standard, Eve’s Weekly and the Free Press Journal. She was among the Parsi authors featured in the anthology, Parsi Fiction, edited by Novy Kapadia, Jaydipsinh Dodiya and R. K. Dhawan (Prestige Books, 2001).
Perin and Sam Bharucha; below: Perin
While working as personnel and public relations officer at Dharamsi Morarji Chemicals, Bharucha "met a lot of foreigners and they were intrigued about the community and had a lot of garbled ideas. Basically my book is to inform people about our community… It is now recommended reading for sociology and anthropology students at Monash University in Australia.” She, however, cautioned that her book is a novel and not "a commentary on the Parsis of our time.”
Even so, the book "came under attack from certain unexpected quarters. Mostly from Parsis who were upset that somebody had written a book about the Parsis and about certain subjects which are taboo in the community.” These sensitive subjects "which were particularly reprehensible” were intermarriage and dakhmenashini. She felt, over half a century back, that these are problems which must be faced and that she was justified in bringing them up in her book. She was also critical of Parsi attitudes to charity, indifference to the plight of pallbearers, a sense of superiority.
Nor did the author overlook the demographic factor. Through her characters she shared her views on the community: "Personally, I give about two centuries more — after that pfft! There will be no such thing as a Parsi.” Yet another character says, "Zoroastrianism is no longer a faith to be lived, it is just a unique cultural heritage.”
The prophetic novelist is survived by her husband Sam Bharucha, retired Chief Justice of India and her sisters Zareen Merchant and ZenobiaMarker.
S. V.