[Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] what does it mean to be a passing to me I think it is God's gift to me that he has made me a [Music] passing this community in India still stands for qualities that are good that are honorable that are decent and I'm proud to be one of those [Music] what I love most about the community is our sense of humor and I feel if we lose that then we lose [Music] everything I love being a passing I love the idea that I enjoy all kinds of food I love the idea that the community is seen as a slightly eccentric slightly weird slightly strange Community but very loved for me being a Pary is really about a certain morality about growing up with uh good words good thoughts Good Deeds M I think somewhere it seeps down in you hey handsome in zerm the religion is very optimistic we believe that every moment things are improving and our belief is that we have to generate good thoughts words and deeds but importantly words and deeds to bring about an ethical awareness into the world and in doing so being happy within and promoting Harmony in the environment that I would say to you is the zor as message the fravashi is in my view seen as the essence of God in man the wings of the fravashi represent the spiritual world the body of the fravashi represents the physical world and the head of the fravashi represents Consciousness it's now seen as a zor asan icon of identity [Music] the first important ritual that zor asan undergoes is the initiation ceremony known as the Nao and underest known as the sudre is given to the child and a cord made of Lamb's wool it's obviously tied three times round the waist and this na ceremony is is done by an ordained priest in ZM we have this one life to live this life has to be lived in the most comfortable possible way there is no concept of fasting celibacy flagellation of the body in other words generate wealth it's a religion which in fact encourages capitalism but capitalism with a very important social responsibility that if you made a lot of money you must learn to share it [Music] of [Music] in now [Music] ever [Music] all all see [Music] now [Music] remember that for any colonizing par a agent group of community or a group of community who acted as commission agents a very important of trade had to thrive the pares knew how to Source uh or where to Source um goods and they were able to deliver to the British what they wanted um there was also the ability of the pares who by then had learned English so it was easy for them to deal with whereas other communities in India were still um maybe a step below the pares simply because in terms of communication in terms of creating a Rao the paries were way ahead every kind of service was given to the British so if they wanted sail makers or if they wanted rope makers even if they were not present in Bombay they were sourced from the many villages of Gujarat and therefore you see migrations and waves of pares coming into Bombay between 1680 and 1780 over a period of 100 years more and more pares came in [Music] for most passes uh Bombay is the only home we have a lot of us don't have an ancestral Village to go back to so Bombay is all we [Music] know we've been here so long we've been here practically since the beginnings of the city we've helped to build it we have such strong associations with it we have such strong Nostalgia about [Music] it [Music] you know we are really a very very integral part of the city and the city is a very integral part of us I don't think we had an identity crisis where we suddenly said oh God who am I where do I come from it only happens when people ask us questions and if you ask your father where do you come from he says from RE Kandi which is the hospital room 501 apparently we don't have a memory I was inside the womb uh the female and then you but that's for all not just parses you come out from the same place the pares were certainly very closely aligned uh with the British almost twins in Partnership and when Independence happened the pares at least the top Pary industrialists had to make a huge leap perhaps the pares did it most successfully for those like the Tartas who moved into industrialization of India so if you are participating in the development and industrialization of a new country you become part of that Elite group they must have felt orphaned in my opinion with the British moving away and they had to uh sort of renegotiate their position in Modern India now last year was the DI Jubilee celebration of our Majesty que Elizabeth they were all celebrated in England and she was so good and so sweet to remember me so the queen sent me her full size picture from London and I have got it PR you like to see yes there she is there she is next to the CR her [Music] magest [Music] aasi really enjoys the food at the table really but they want good food I like food to be like nice antika of course danak is my favorite then masur is my favorite fish is my favorite and the vegetables for AI is very difficult some PES say ATI vegetables banado so I make it for them but to give them a meal with a vegetable dish and not even if you put meat in the vegetable like we have P goost French beans goes but they want Bas and no vegetables first there is the aroma which comes to you it goes to your nose then it goes to your head and then it goes to your stomach and your stomach expands z z z your tongue comes out Po and then you start eating but mutton hot favorite mutton is the hot favorite of Derby winner Pary food Derby winner to be mutton mutton and mutton you can eat whatever you want there's no no beef no pork which is a good thing cuz I like my food and you know Pary food is the best like according to me like danak and all nothing beats [Music] that [Music] [Music] is [Music] are always cracking jokes making fun and they're very [Music] jovial but they are also very particular let me tell you one thing if a Pary comes on the cash counter he wants a fresh note you don't you can't possibly give him a Tor note or a soil note cor not that is the characteristic of uh the Pari is very honest they are very loyal then uh they are also uh very uh disciplined people like you won't find ay person will spit on the road I love that we argumentative I love that we have no central figure who's like a pope I love that it's so anarchic most of the time of course it's not good for the community to be like that but it's better that than having a strong kind of dictator at the head of a community and I love that we are a bit eccentric a lot of the time sometimes inadvertently if I cross a red light uh and the policeman comes up to me I said haha mistake sorry sorry I'm F so he says I said yeah he says I said he said to me in Hindi which is very bad where I speak he said you are the only one who will not only admit to what you've done wrong but will insist on paying a fine cuz there's very few of us so I'm like a rare thing you know I'm exotic in my school I didn't know growing up that it was so small the community in the sense that Mumbai is everything then it was Bombay uh so that's a bit strange actually suddenly the last 10 years people have woken up that along with the Great Indian bustard and the tiger the one Hound Rhino three of my favorite friends the part is also you know dwindling we find funny ways to express everything including something like death you know I mean there are four or five really fun ways to go about it one is one is another is uh which is one of my favorites photo frame you know I mean imagine being quirky about the most solemn things that's a lovely tra it means a face like an advertisement for cter oil when someone is very morose looking mutton shop they were all brains displayed one ask how much is that 50 rupees why this belongs to this one this community this belongs to this community in the end when it goes to 5,000 rupes why so much this belongs to a par why so expensive if you break 500 skulls you will get one brain so that is how we take care that is ridiculing but still people enjoy it so we what happens to a Pary man with a heart on when he walks into a wall he breaks his [Laughter] nose P another string he [Music] willo Daddy was very sweet he used to take us to Hanging Gardens which is nearby and he said Johnny Johnny I'll teach him how to fetch the ball now you follow me and my dad would bend like that and throw a tennis ball and Figaro would not even look at it so every day he would go we would do this and then you know people would come to watch this old middle-age Pary man go and pick up a ball in his mouth to show the dog and bring it back you know and but he never learned how to fetch the ball I mean my dad did but the dog didn't if there's a little thing happening because it is a baba involved they take the total Liberty to accentuate the whole thing like if I were to tell you you you are very beautiful so and somebody heard do you know what Sam told that girl can you imagine any when he's supposed to go up God knows where he's telling this [Music] girl and you are so tall and you are so gracious so that fellow goes and tells another man everyone goes on adding and adding and adding and adding and that is how something grow [Music] was [Music] we do not realize being so smaller numbers that we have a responsibility to a community which has given us so much to a nation which has given us so much here the nation is telling us produce kids we're giving you money to produce kids and we then still say no no we want to marry out doesn't make sense to me but I think that children whose mothers are Pary and whose fathers are not it's absurd it's absurd to keep them out in light of morality in light of gender equality everything uh it's crazy that we go to such lengths to keep them out that's my feeling what you're asking is a very simplistic rationale that people come up with open our doors and those kids are going to become marvelous zor asons what are we interested in increasing zor asran or increasing the number of pares which means to increase our ethnic stock how can ethnic stock increase if one marries out can zor asismagally nonp Pary according to the spatial Marriage Act of 1954 and she's following a ro religion I don't understand why we can stop her from practicing thetion religion so this little bit of change will bring peace in the community and it will I'm not encouraging the interfet marriage by saying all these things but this are the problems where the youth are getting disintegrated from the community we we are trying instead of make a fabric we are trying to break the fabric of the community historically Iranian Society has been agnetic this is not something you and I can change this is a legacy of history but should we change to something even worse by opening the doors for our girls so that there's a greater chance of more and more people marrying out as a result of which our ethnicity is weakened generation after generation that that is the issue we have to think of we don't try to understand each other we just want to put our thoughts like this are my thoughts that's it it has to be like this because we have not done this in so many years we should not do it again but then there are so many things which we are not doing since we came from Iran and we have changed and we have the change is the most important thing and if we don't change we are not going to survive [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] to [Music] day [Music] [Music] CRI [Music] [Music] be [Music] [Applause] [Music] part