Category Archives: Miscellaneous

India’s Zoroastrians dying out for lack of Parsi clergy ?

In the cramped heart of the suburb called Andheri, the MF Cama Athornan Institute was strangely quiet. The institute, founded in 1923 to train Zoroastrian priests, is a large, M-shaped edifice with excellent infrastructure and teachers dedicated to the welfare of their students.

At present, those students number precisely four.

Classroom after classroom lay locked, their blank innards barely visible through smoked-glass windows. One room on the first floor, so big that even the softest voice echoed, used to be a dormitory holding as many as 50 beds; now it is occupied only by a clothesline strung across its breadth, bearing the laundry of its residents.

One leg of the M has been rented out as office space to an aviation academy. “Have you ever seen a school like this, where there are more teachers than students?” Dastur Firoze Kotwal said with a sigh. Mr Kotwal is a high priest and one of the religion’s greatest scholars. He is also an alumnus of the Cama institute and a former principal there. “It is almost a dying seminary.”

Click Here for more………

Courtesy : Ader Gandi

Farhad Khurshed

Farhad Khurshed has been accepted among the prestigious ranks of Stanford Who’s Who as a result of his magnificent work in the Marketing Industry.

HORNSBY, NSW, AUSTRALIA, January 27, 2011 /Stanford Who’s Who/ — Farhad Khurshed has been accepted among the prestigious ranks of Stanford Who’s Who as a result of his magnificent work in the Marketing Industry. As the Founder and Managing Director of Copywriting-Results, Mr. Khurshed has consistently demonstrated the passion, vision and dedication necessary to be considered among the best.

Copywriting-Results is a company which offers clients a 100% satisfaction guarantee to triple their leads and double their sales within 12 months through a unique combination of offline and online direct response marketing, emotional trigger copywriting and social media initiatives. Their services are ideal for organizations seeking professional standard copy without having to incur the excessive costs associated with an advertising agency.

Click Here for the full story

theparsievent.com

My name is Ader Gandi and I live in San Francisco, California, USA. My email address is AderGandi@gmail.com.

I, along with Yazdi Tantra in Bombay, started TheParsiEvent.com on January 18, 2011.

Our idea behind the TheParsiEvent.com is simple: use the power of the Internet to help fellow Parsis and Zoroastrians connect with each other at organized events worldwide.

This idea came to me as a result of the many times I would read or hear about a Parsi Zoroastrian event after it had occurred. I would have gone to the event had I head about it, but no one told me about it, and there is no central place on the web where I could find out about the event. Now there is: www.TheParsiEvent.com

You can write me an email at AderGandi@gmail.com providing me with the details of the event.
The more detail you provide, the more chances of people coming to your event.

What is the name of the event.
What is the day, date and time of your event.  How long will the event last.
Who is it open to? All Parsi Zoroastrians? or Parsi Zoroastrians of a certain age.
Is there a cost to attend the event
Do you have a web link with additional details.
Contact information for event organizers.

PLEASE ADD ” PARSI EVENT” IN THE SUBJECT LINE OF THE EMAIL, OTHERWISE YOUR EMAIL MAY NEVER REACH ME. I will post your event on this web site, which is now being read by thousands of Parsi Zoroastrians world wide.

 

Kersi Dubash attire attracts customers

Kersi Dubash attire attracts customers

By Mahtab Bashir

A weeklong dazzling variety of Indian saris, shalwar kameez, jewellery and bags in an exhibition by Kersi Dubash of Nazakat Collection at Jacaranda Guest House, continued to attract a large number of visitors especially women interested in good taste of dressing in capital.

Displaying a wide range of exclusive Indian Saris, antique Parsi Garas, Gara borders and Gara Shalwar Kameez suits, Tancholi, French chiffons, Lucknow saris and shalwar kameez suits, Kantha Saris and pure cotton saris, Satya Paul Crepe De-Chine Sari’s and Shalwar Suits, evening bags.

Besides, Indian Jewellery, with their striking colour combinations and trendy designs, Kersi Dubash under his brand name ‘Nazakat Collections’ from Mumbai, presented a seamless transition from Indian Banarsi and Lucknowi formal and casual wear to delicate wedding saris and dinner wear.

Click Here for the full story ……..

Courtesy : Jehangir Bisney

Genome Sequence of a Parsi Breast Cancer Patient

Avesthagen Limited has yet again established its position as a leader in the successful application of next gen technologies as it announces the completion of the first Parsi breast cancer whole genome sequence of a 74-year-old Parsi woman with a heritable form of breast cancer. The incidence of breast cancer in most populations is strongly linked to a genetic basis but little is known about the variants at the present time. By employing whole-genome sequencing of affected individuals all genetic variants linked to the disease can be identified. This will lead to a broader understanding of breast cancer disease mechanisms, the development of new diagnostic tests, and the discovery of new drug targets and design of drugs.

Click Here to read more……….

Zoroastrian demographics and our population decline

I am attaching here a copy of the full version of the paper I delivered at the North American Zoroastrian Congress in Houston on Zoroastrian demographics and our population decline.  This has additional material, footnotes, and charts and graphs.

Feel free to pass along to others.  I’m very keen in giving the community some reliable data.

The summary of my paper is given here:

This is an extended version of a paper delivered at the 2010 Houston Congress.  Within the Zoroastrian community, there is little consensus on population figures and demographic trends.  This paper attempts to provide a realistic estimate of the worldwide Zoroastrian population—including Parsis, Iranian Zoroastrians, and Iranis—based on the best scholarly and community estimates available.  It questions, due to lack of evidence, the idea that thousands of people are converting to Zoroastrianism worldwide.  Having established the actual small size of the community, this paper furthermore highlights the staggering demographic crisis that it faces.  Amongst the Parsis of India, at least, population figures are dropping rapidly and the prime reasons are not out-migration to the West or even, for the moment, intermarriage.  Rather, a large corpus of scholarly studies indicate that the Parsi population crisis is due to stunningly low fertility rates; that is, an incredibly limited number of children born to the community.  Low fertility rates are not due to biological problems but rather due to cultural and attitudinal factors that prompt late marriage and non-marriage amongst Parsis.  Quite simply, Parsis’ decisions to marry late, or not marry at all, have translated into a drastically shrinking population.
This paper is based on data and scholarship produced by actual demographic scholars in India and the United States.  I have simply summarized findings that have been well known in the academic community yet surprisingly unknown within the Zoroastrian community. I conclude by suggesting that Indian Parsi demographic trends may also hold true in the diaspora.  I also offer some ideas on how we can reverse our current population trends.  Please feel free to distribute this paper and publish excerpts.  My aim in writing this paper is to educate our community and provide some realistic data.  You can contact me at dpatel@fas.harvard.edu.

Best regards,

Dinyar Patel
Ph.D. Candidate, Modern South Asia
Department of History
Harvard University
+1 (650) 796-2486

2010-12 Jaago-Bidari – Zoroastrian Demographics – NAZC

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 160,000 times in 2010. If it were an exhibit at The Louvre Museum, it would take 7 days for that many people to see it.

In 2010, there were 589 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 1922 posts. There were 352 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 340mb. That’s about 7 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was August 11th with 893 views. The most popular post that day was Zoroastrians’ Home.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were mail.yahoo.com, zoroastrian.net, mail.live.com, google.co.in, and facebook.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for parsi surnames, parsi matrimonials, parsi calendar 2010, parsis, and bombay parsi panchayat website.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Zoroastrians’ Home September 2007
129 comments

2

Parsi Zoroastrian Matrimonial Web Sites : August 2009
3 comments

3

Dadar Parsi Colony April 2009
1 comment

4

Original Parsi Names March 2009
8 comments

5

High Tide Dates – 2010 Monsoon in Mumbai June 2010
1 Like on WordPress.com,

Adi Marzban – A gentle genius

Adi Marzban – A gentle genius – by Hormazdyar Shahpurshah Dalal

“…. I am happy to write about Adi’s life and work. The task was not easy, since Adi was close to me. And also because he was a silent man who did not talk about himself….. ”

Read this interesting account of the history, foundation and growth of Jame Jamshed which is intrinsically linked with the Marzbans.

Click Here for the full book online.

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