Of late I have shared some moments going down memory lane and, once again, having stumbled on the following, memories of Sohrab Modi as the great actor, a good friend of my father and with whom, as a young boy I had been on stage in the old Excelsior Cinema, came flooding to my mind. — Ronnie Patel, Berlin
| BEHROOZ KHALILI | |
The plan for building an artificial island in the shape of fravahar in the Persian Gulf is under completion .The agreed confirmation for this project has also been issued. This island is being built on a 6 million and two hundred thousand square meter land measuring 3×5 km.This island is located in front of the outskirts of the historical Siraf Harbour in the Bushehr province. This island includes Boarding and lodging sites,Hotels,University, Solar Energy Center ,Playground,A big cultural International Hall for cultural speech and conversations etc…. Dr.Esfandiyar Ekhtiyari(The Iranian Zoroastrians MP) being the managerial member of this team informed us that in the near future the plan for this project which is being supervised by 60 executives will be executed after final analysis.This project being unique in its own kind will be displaying something of its own kind to the generations to come. |
Courtesy : Zaver Bomanbehram
How did Tata transform itself from a family-owned venture to the position it istoday in an array of unrelated businesses? What is the ‘Tata Way’, which has earned it much admiration and respect?
These are among several aspects that the book “The Greatest Company in the World?: The Story of Tata” by Peter Casey looks into.
Today, the Tata Group employs nearly half a million people, and earns revenues of $100 billion. It reported a profit of $6.23 billion in 2011-12, and controls assets valued at $77.7 billion.
“The philanthropic trusts control a majority of the Tata holding company, Tata Sons. The Tata family is a very small shareholder. Yet, the owners are only one of four stakeholders Tata sets out to serve. In addition to the owners (which include shareholders) are employees, customers, and society itself,” the book, published by Penguin, says.
The members of the Tata family have established a set of philanthropic trusts to which the majority of the family’s personal wealth has been dedicated and bequeathed.
Like their father, Dorabji Tata and Ratan Tata also donated the majority of their personal wealth to trusts they established.
The book also talks about Jamsetji Tata’s successor Dorabji Tata’s passion for sports and how he advocated India’s participation in the Olympics as early as 1919, much before the nation had established its own Olympic committee.
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Defunct Tower of Silence lives on in the heart of an Andheri residential colony
In Andheri’s Salsette Parsis Association Colony, six-storey residential structures form a tight arc around a defunct dokhma. Children swing and slide just a few feet away and plans are underway to create a grassy patch alongside the tower’s wall where the colony’s youngsters can play football or an impromptu game of cricket. Residents explain that their nonchalance about living alongside this structure — which is meticulously cleaned by a band of young Parsi men every few years – stems from the fact that the 83-year-old dokhma has remained unused for well over half a century. Exactly when it fell into disuse, however, remains a matter of conjecture. “It was open for only a few years 
because it was hard to get pall bearers to come all the way from Bombay to perform the last rites,” says 79-year-old Ardesher Patel, whose paternal grandfather was instrumental in setting up the dokhma. He estimates that only 10 bodies were laid to rest within the stone wall of the Andheri tower.
Though the Tower of Silence was completed in 1931, its foundation stone was laid on April 24, 1927. About 10,000 Parsis — that is a fourth of Mumbai’s current Parsi population — attended the three-hour-long ceremony, which had not been performed since the last Tower of Silence was erected in Bombay more than 80 years ago. A Parsi battalion worked alongside troops of Parsi Boy Scouts and Girl Guides to control the crowd, and the Bombay, Baroda, and Central India Railway (BB&CI) arranged to run “six special trains” to ferry the visitors to Salsette.