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While the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe (ZTFE) has been celebrating Jamshedi Navroz for the last 119 years, this year’s event was special for it marked 25 years since the Grade II listed building was purchased and repurposed as the Zoroastrian Centre. The premises were inaugurated 20 years ago when Dorab Mistry was the association’s president. "Zoroastrian Centre thus serves a historical role and simultaneously builds a stronger sense of community in Harrow,” as noted an email from ZTFE communications officer Dr Karishma Koka. 

As per the ZTFE practice for the past few years, two Jamshedi Navroz celebrations are held in March, the first, on March 21, at the Zoroastrian Centre, with a three-course dinner subsidized from the endowment created by ZTFE life member Minoo Kalifa. The second event at St James’ Court — A Taj Hotel in Central London was held on March 29, where their substantially discounted rates for the fine dining experience allowed nearly 130 attendees, "including our staff team and volunteers, to celebrate together,” as acknowledged an email from ZTFE president Malcolm Deboo.

Over 150 Zoroastrians and members of the wider community gathered in the Zartoshty Brothers Hall at the Zoroastrian Centre on March 21 to attend the celebration that started with a jashan performed by the priests followed by a maachi in the Setayash Gah where the fire had been kept burning for 24 hours for the convenience of devotees.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s Navroz message for the Zoroastrian community was read by Parliamentary Under Secretary of State Gareth Thomas who is also the co-chair with Lord Karan Bilimoria of the Zoroastrian All Party Parliamentary Group. Additionally acknowledged was the cooperation of architect Shahrokh Shahrokh who had supervised the renovations and Navin Shah, then leader of the Council of the London Borough of Harrow, who had assisted in getting the building plans approved. 

ZTFE honorary secretary Rohinton Munshi introduced the guest of honor chief superintendent Simon Ovens, representative deputy lieutenant for Harrow. Ovens then felicitated Jasmine Dotiwala on being awarded the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to broadcasting, to music and to equality, diversity and inclusion, in the recent New Year Honours List. Since the 1980s Dotiwala has been working with television and radio news platforms such as MTV, Channel 4 and BBC Radio London, and has written or blogged for The Huffington Post UK and The Voice. 

Known for helping others, especially members of the ethnic minority and women to forge a career in media and broadcasting, Dotiwala enjoys bringing Zoroastrians to the forefront. An active member serving ZTFE’s Care in the Zoroastrian Community (CZC), she is known to enrich the lives of the elders. She frequently accompanies her mother Roshan to the Zoroastrian Centre. Her late father Noshir was very active in the Labour Party.

The celebration at the Taj too commenced with a jashan. The highlight of the evening was the felicitation for Maira Bana at the hands of Bilimoria. For diversity in engineering she was the recipient of the British Empire Medal in the New Year Honours List on December 31, 2024. 

Bana is the co-founder and trustee of SheCanEngineer, a diversity, equity and inclusion charity based in the UK, formed by a collaboration of professional engineers representing engineering institutions, to encourage girls to join engineering and highlight the achievements of women in this sector. She is a chartered mechanical engineer with expertise in analyzing and resolving cooling and airflow challenges in the data center industry through thermal simulation. At Red Engineering Design Ltd, Bana is a CFD (computational fluid dynamics that uses computers to predict the flow of liquids and gas) manager. Last year, she featured among the Top 50 Women in Engineering by the Women’s Engineering Society. 

Maira’s father Darius and Bilimoria had studied chartered accountancy at the same time and Bilimoria recalled how they were both late for one examination when the Central line had broken down for an hour. Her mother Beroze of Bana Vaid and Associates has been frequently consulted by the community for her legal services across the residential and commercial property sectors as also for documents like wills and probate.  

To ensure that senior citizens too could participate in both the ZTFE events, CZC organized shared cabs and lifts to and from the venue. Music and dancing brought both the celebrations to a close.