Us and Them

I tell a friend I’m making a documentary film on poor Parsis. He laughs. “Where will you find them? There aren’t any.” But there are. I have seen them while growing up in Bombay. I have seen them in their shabby houses and their shabby dresses, hiding away shamefully, as if aware that they are the community’s dirty laundry, not meant for public washing.

I have seen them lining up for aid. In hundreds. Like ants teeming out of cracks. I never knew there were so many of them. All surviving on charity. They lived in subsidised housing (so did we, but we had used education and opportunity to move ahead, but they had remained where they were). Parsi charities doled out old clothes and food-grain allowances. They lacked neither food, clothing nor shelter. And yet they were poor.

I have even seen them beg. But only from Parsis. They would stand outside the agiaries, especially on Navroz day, their hands outstretched but not a word from their lips. Standing there pitifully, helplessly.

My attitude towards them would be like most middle-class Parsis. I would turn away, shun them, ignore them. They weren’t the Parsis I was used to. Their children didn’t go to convent schools like we did, but to Parsi schools where they got free schooling, free uniforms and free lunches. They didn’t go to see English films or listen to English songs. And when they married non-Parsis, they didn’t marry white-skinned foreigners but lower-class Hindus and Christians. I used to think of them as “Grant Road Parsis,” where a lot of them used to stay in one-room tenements in dilapidated buildings. Them is the key word. There were Us. And there were Them.

Behroz Irani, the chasniwala at the Patel Agiary at Nana Peth, sits on the 'otla'.