"Navsari Tales” by Berjis Desai is an ingenious writing master class on recreating the lives of those who time forgot. It’s hilarious, sad, profound and profane, and sometimes all of these at the same time.
As the series slowly comes into its own, it’s now starkly evident that only a chronicler of Desai’s refinement would have been able to do the fullest justice to these "richly” ordinary yet astonishingly affecting lives. With due apologies to the Parsiana journalists who regularly put out an exceedingly readable magazine, I must say hand on heart that the joy and excitement of reading "Navsari Tales” is singularly unparalleled.
That joy multiplied manifold when I actually managed to place a character in flesh and blood, as I did whilst reading the pen portrait of "The fighter” (Parsiana, October 7-20, 2020). This is a lady we knew intimately through her three siblings (not two, a minor error in the piece). All four sisters died as spinsters but the most remarkable of them was this incredible fighter Desai speaks of. As eight to 10-year-olds my brother and I found her truly formidable and hence kept our respectful distance from her (utterly tragic in retrospect), while my mother, Khurshid (maiden name Gool Balgir from Bajaan Vad) and her sister (my aunt) Keti Wadia fraternized with her siblings in Baria Vad. As Desai avers, she was a legend of her time; just that we were too young to appreciate her true mettle and the loss is entirely ours. The expressions on the faces of my mom and masi who have now gotten on in years, and to whom I read out this piece, was something to behold.
What I cannot quite fathom though is why she has been given an assumed name in the piece. She has been deceased for decades, has had no descendants and done nothing of notoriety to disguise her identity. Au contraire, the writer himself affirms that she would have been quite proud of her life story and pleased as punch for her fame in the afterlife (if there is one). If the legal position is clear, then with Desai’s kind permission (which has been granted) I would like to share with your readers that the said Hilla Ghadially’s real name was Pilla Makati and her sisters in no particular order were Alla, Jer and Shera with a ubiquitous "mai” suffixed to all their names in those sunset years.
Here’s to reading and discovering more such exquisite Navsari nuggets in the coming issues. Truly, what a singular privilege it has been reading these beguiling word sketches on some of the most interesting personas of that sleepy little town where I had the pleasure of spending summer and Diwali vacations.
VISTASP SAM HODIWALA
vistasphodiwala@gmail.com
The editors reply:
Our readers are indebted to Berjis Desai for sharing his recollections of Navsari. The nuggets of information are probably the only source of such archival material on Navsari and its erstwhile, colorful residents.