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We were far from the daily ceremonies of agiaries. Here in Nairobi, Kenya we had no public annual festivals or mass celebrations which would imprint rhythms upon us to carry us forward for the rest of our lives. 

There were community prayers of course, for funerals, and weddings and navjotes. But while we were its devotees, we had never seen a fire temple. There was none in our city, none in our country. Weddings there, for us, were crowds. But much later when we examined the records, we could see that even when the whole community of the city had been present, there were no more than 120 persons in it at its largest moments. A hundred was a large number for a child, but its translation into a ‘crowd’ was meaningless, and we thus had no reliable benchmark in formulating a perception of the world. There remained an inexhaustible opportunity to learn of the new. 

There were advantages though. We enjoyed ourselves hugely celebrating everybody else’s festivals and holidays. It made us adaptable, it prepared us for the shifts we would have to make 20 and 30 years later over continents and places. So later when we were components of an exodus and had tags marked expellee on our lapels, when neglected by both media and history we moved, we were equipped better than we thought. We had become able to be this and that, to be here and there, and, despite all that, still to hold on to those old ceremonies we had never fully learnt. 

So we came to our rites of passage in a mix that neither our spiritual rulers far away, nor our temporal rulers in this small colony, nor our local priest, nor our parents, nor our nine-year-old selves could wholly unravel. And in this unresolvable melee the big day was announced. My cousin Phil Dastur and I would have our navjote on Jamshedi Navroz in two months’ time. We had been learning our prayers for a long time and reciting them by rote to the satisfaction of the priest, our grandmother and our mothers. But now the occasion was imminent. We were to be initiated at last into the religion.

The infrequent ceremonies had given me no understanding of ritual, but only a pleasurable sense of uniqueness, as hardly any of my childhood friends shared them with me. That uniqueness, seldom visible, did now assert itself in an unexpected way. As the navjote came nearer, and we attended as before the Boy Scout troop evenings (as Cubs), my cousin and I were surprised to realize that the knot we could tie behind our backs without any difficulty, while none of the others could, was a knot in the Troop manual, probably a reef! So, before acquiring a sudreh and a kusti we also picked up another scout badge.  

As the navjote approached, our minds were filled with the expectation of presents, serious presents, like fountain pens or wrist watches, which then were the acme of gifts and the acknowledgment of adulthood. But the latter was accomplished most of all by the announcement that we had to be fitted out in suits. This meant a jacket, tie and shorts. That was not really a suit. It was many years before we finally obtained long trousers or matching long trousers at that. But for now we were content. The shorts were to match the jacket and both were to be woolen. 

Our indulgent Prophet, who seldom prescribed any harsh penance for his followers, and extolled the virtues of good living, was I am sure forgiving of us two boys who viewed the event as one where we were to acquire our first suit, rather than our good religion.

Into this qualified rite of passage into half a suit, another big day arrived. We were to be taken to Dharmal Bharmal and Company, tailors and outfitters, to be measured. There we entered a deep and vast hall, apprehensively and ready to be awed, like all pilgrims. To us, who had so far been users only of lowly cottons, the smell of clean, quality wool, humbled us. 

But when we caught sight of a solitary figure standing amidst those bales we were terror struck. We recognized him. This was Mr Thakore. This was the man who held the power each weekend of failure or success over our heroes. Thakore was a qualified international cricket umpire. Nothing went past Thakore. 

Now here he was standing in the shop as he stood at the crease, leaning forward at attention, his hands behind him, the stern and unmoving judge of all the action before him. He shook hands with our parents and replaced his hands behind his back, and looked down at us. He was seeing all our faults we were sure. By now he must have already discerned that we did not yet know all our prayers, that those garbled words we parroted were not Avestan at all, that we were in fact quite unworthy of acquiring the Zarathushti faith, much less a woolen suit, and one more misstep here and he would give us out. 

The ceremony of measuring began. We were turned around and around. We were made to hold up our arms. To put them down. To raise them again. Nooses of tapes circled our necks, then chests, and waists, and wrists. We had to look up like soldiers, and down like nuns, till finally we were released. Holding on to each other we tumbled out of the shop into the sunlight, and there expressed the easing of our fears and our relief in a noisy return home.

In due course the other ceremony, the navjote, took place. Ervad Soli Rabadi mellifluously led us through our first public prayers and gently wound our first kusti round us, as he had done to many dozens since he had come out from India to Uganda as a teacher in 1922. He was thus known as Master to all, and there and in Kenya to which he had moved, he had tended to our births, navjotes, weddings and funerals for the next 60 years with his slow courtesy, never taking a cent from any family. Twenty-five years after conducting my navjote in 1948, he would do the same for my first child, Binaifer in 1972 and Anahita Sia and Elchi in 1978, also in Nairobi.

The navjote over, and after we were finally clothed on the dais into our coveted finery, everybody pushed back the chairs. Being co-religionists of Allbless and Cama Baug familiarity, we got down to the serious business of the day: the emptying of the vats of biryani that Abdulbhai Mithaiwalla had prepared for the dinner. His sons and grandsons still sell that biryani every Sunday from the same premises at which he had prepared ours those 60 years ago.

We had indeed been initiated into that world of suits we had set our hearts on with the greater immediacy but also into the beautiful religion we would rediscover for ourselves with much delight in later adulthood. 

Author, poet and columnist Pheroze Nowrojeee is an internationally respected jurist from Kenya who was a recipient of the Pravasi Bharati Samman Award from the President of India in January this year. He chairs the Asian African Heritage Trust and received the Asian Foundation Community Award in 2005.