Sachin Bansal is Flipkart's executive chairman, Binny Bansal is new CEO

India's largest e-tailer Flipkart has reshuffled its top-deck. Sachin Bansal, CEO and co-founder of Flipkart, is appointed as executive chairman and its other co-founder & COO Binny Bansal, will be the new CEO of the company.

In his role as executive chairman, Sachin will provide strategic direction to Flipkart, mentor senior leadership and look for new investment opportunities. He will play an active role in championing the Indian e-commerce sector and building the internet ecosystem, and represent the company in external forums. He will continue to be the chairman of the Board.

"E-commerce in India is going through its most exciting phase and Flipkart has played a pioneering role in shaping this very remarkable journey. We believe that Flipkart can play a transformational role in improving commerce in India and improve the quality of lives of millions of people across the farthest corners of the country," Sachin said. "In this next phase of the journey, it will be our endeavour to fulfil this responsibility and prove that India can produce a world class internet company that can outshine any global behemoth. We also want to continue to play a pivotal role in shaping the internet and the commerce ecosystem of India."

Binny as chief executive officer will be responsible for its operations and overall performance. All the business areas - commerce, Ekart and Myntra will now report to Binny. All corporate functions including human resources, finance, legal, corporate communications and corporate development will also report to Binny.

Binny Bansal, co-founder and CEO, Flipkart said, "At Flipkart, we have come a long way in our eight year journey. Today, we are in a very strong leadership position with over 60% market share of the m-commerce market, 50 million customers and clear leadership in smartphones and fashion. The journey ahead is equally exciting and challenging. Flipkart has all the necessary ingredients of brilliant talent and great technology to win this next phase as well. We will continue to build world-class customer experience, expand our supply chain infrastructure to reach all parts of India, drive innovations in mobile commerce and bring in disruptive technologies."

Mukesh Bansal will continue as head of commerce platform, Flipkart's core business, and will have additional responsibility of the ads business. Mukesh will also continue in his role as chairman of Myntra. "These are exciting times for Flipkart. We have achieved leadership in e-commerce based on our focus on the Indian consumer and a great execution capability. Today, Flipkart is a brand trusted by millions across India backed by a robust seller ecosystem and world-class technology. We are confident that in the coming years, we will continue this momentum as we spread the benefits of e-commerce across the length and breadth of India"

Why the world’s Parsis are heading to this Guj town

Keeper of the sacred flame since 1742, Udvada will host the country’s first ever Parsi festival
Udvada is a nondescript hamlet in Gujarat of 5,897 people. Next weekend it is expected to host 5,000 Parsi and Irani Zoroastrians from India and abroad. That’s one-sixth of the entire population of this minuscule community, world-wide. The remarkable demographic will be triggered by the first-ever Udvada Utsav, December 25 to 27.
For all its secular nonentity, despite the decrepit silence of its once-babbling, squabbling Parsi mohallas, Udvada is the holiest place of Zoroastrian pilgrimage. Since 1742, it has been the ‘throne’ of the ‘Iranshah’, the sacred fire. It is believed to have burned continuously ever since it was consecrated between the 8th and 9th centuries on Gujarat’s Sanjan beach, where the storm-tossed Persian Zoroastrians had landed, hoping to save their 3,000-year-old faith from the invading Arabs. Their leader-priest, Nairyosang Dhaval, had lit it from the 16 embers needed, including those from a household hearth, a funeral pyre, a smithy’s coals and finally the ‘cosmic’ spark from a bolt of lightning. The refugees declared it their new king, ‘Iranshah’.
The idea of the new, pride-enhancing Udvada Utsav wasn’t ignited by the religious or secular leaders of the now divided, dying Parsi community, but from that master of the main chance, Narendra Modi. Way back in 2006, at Ahmedabad’s Cama Hotel, the then chief minister had told its Parsi owner that he’d like to showcase the exemplary community whose Indian roots were in Gujarat. A Visitors Centre was built. Vada Dasturji Khurshed Dastoor, who along with Dr Peshotan Mirza, is one of the two hereditary high priests of the Udvada Atash Behram, says, “When Mr Modi visited Udvada in 2011, he suggested an event to highlight ‘Parsi-panu’, our culture.” Udvada Utsav became a reality with Cyrus Poonawalla’s sponsorship.
Arun Jaitley is taking Narendra Modi’s place as chief guest next Sunday. Vada Dasturji Dastoor, spearheading the Utsav, insists that its theme of tolerance wasn’t prompted by recent events. “It had come up during the 2011 visit, with Mr Modi saying that Gujarat had taken a completely alien Persian civilization into its embrace, and Udvada, home to the Parsis’ holiest fire, should be celebrated as a place of peace, harmony and tolerance.”
Keeper of the sacred flame since 1742, Udvada will host the country’s first ever Parsi festival
Faith and nine priestly clans have kept alive the Iranshah’s 1,300-year-old flame in its chequered sojourn. These anointed families are descendants of the three Sanjan priests who protected it in its early, vulnerable years. They guarded the Iranshah during the Muslim invasions of Gujarat. When Sanjan fell to Sultan Mahmud in 1297, they kept it hidden — and alive — in the remote hill caves of Barot for 12 long years. After 14 years in tiny Vansda, it was enthroned for three centuries in Navsari, a thriving Parsi commercial centre, briefly spirited away to Surat to protect it from nomadic robbers. Skirmishes with local Navsari priests, prompted the nine Sanjan families to run away with it to Udvada.
Will faith — Udvada’s lonely claim to fame — hold its own amidst the Utsav’s feasting and the razzle-dazzle of Shiamak Davar, Latino Salsa, Karaoke and DJ nights? One hopes that the crowds will also throng the Iranshah Atash Behram’s marble lobby aglow with hanging oil ‘divas’ and stern portraits of past Parsi greats. That they will experience the spiritual implosion triggered by the gongs of the burnished bell as the near-celestial priest in his long white muslin robes performs the ‘boe’ ritual in the inner sanctum. It will be a true Utsav if the revered flames manage to leap across centuries, continents and controversies, to bind this beleaguered community to that ancient Sanjan beachhead, and to itself.
‘Community must change’
Vada Dasturji Khurshed Dastoor, the 21st hereditary head priest of Udvada’s Iranshah Atash Behram, on the place of a 3,000-year-old faith in the 21st century, and the decline of priesthood
Q. You are one of the two head priests of the holiest Zoroastrian shrine but, ironically, you have often been pitted against the orthodox laity…
A. I like to quote the scholarly Sir J J Modi, ‘’What we called ‘reform’ in the past is today’s orthodoxy, and that’s the way it will go on’.’’ To keep going, the community must change, but within the tenets of the religion. In his ‘Gathas’, Prophet Zarathushtra tells us to use our ‘wonderful God-given mind’ to decide what is right and wrong. My support of organ donation was opposed as going against the religion. But there was no notion of this in the time of the holy texts. If you can accept a heart — as the young Bengaluru girl Havovi did and has lived happily — you should equally be prepared to donate it. ‘Ushta te…’ is the keystone of Zoroastrianism, ‘Happiness unto him who brings happiness to others’.
Q. Why has the priesthood declined so abysmally?
A. Because priests have always had to submit to the ‘sethias’ who built the agiaris. The vocation was degraded. Priests got impoverished. There’s no fixed income; in the ‘panthak’ (parish) system, a fire temple’s chief priest keeps the more lucrative rituals for himself. And the pie is getting smaller. There have been some amelioration schemes, but it’s simply too late.
Q. You once told me about feeling self-conscious while sitting in your priestly gear at McDonald’s with your burger-loving five-year-old.
A. I’ve overcome this. I go as a father’s duty. The beauty of our religion is that we don’t force anything on anyone. We have no restrictions. We don’t sacrifice animals or renounce family. In fact, familial duty is of prime importance.

Sleepy Udvada springs to life with first-ever Parsi festival

It's where history meets hearty Parsi cuisine. Udvada, a coastal town about 200km north of Mumbai and a place of pilgrimage for Zoroastrians, is as beloved for housing the community's sacred fire or Iranshah as it is for dishing out scrumptious fare like khurchan and kheema pav. Once an 'uth vada' or grazing ground for camels, Udvada became the resting place of the holy fire in 1742. Today, less than 100 Parsis remain. Most are retired, senior citizens, who spend their afternoons snoozing on porch swings. But on December 25th, Udvada will be shaken out of its slumber by an influx of 1,000 people, who will congregate for the first-ever 'Iranshah Udvada Utsa


The three-day festival, organised by the Foundation for the Development of Udvada and the Udvada Samast Anjuman, includes heritage walks, Parsi skits, religious lectures, youth competitions and a treasure hunt. On the last day, if all goes as planned, business tycoon Ratan Tata will be felicitated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The PM is expected to attend because the festival was his brainchild. "When the prime minister was the chief minister of Gujarat and visited Udvada, he said that there should be a festival to attract Parsis from across the world," recalls high priest and FDU chairman Dasturji Khurshed Dastoor. "That was his vision because he wanted to portray Udvada as a place of religious harmony and tolerance."

Much of the focus will be on how Udvada became the home of the Iranshah. The story begins in the 7th century when the Sasanian rulers of Persia were defeated by Arab invaders. To escape religious persecution, about 2,000 Parsis came to India. In 721 AD, some Zoroastrians believe a high priest consecrated the holy fire or Iranshah in Sanjan from 16 different sources including a burning corpse, a potter's kiln and lightning 1,300 years ago. When Muslim invaders attacked Sanjan 700 years later, the fire was stowed away in the Bahrot caves. It then moved back and forth between Navsari, Surat, and Valsad due to infighting before ending up in Udvada in 1742. At the time, Udvada was ruled by the Peshwas.


During the heritage walk, participants will get to see Portuguese inscriptions dating back to 1714, the redeveloped bungalow which housed the Iranshah before the Atash Behram (Parsi temple) was constructed and the homes of the nine priestly families of Udvada. In the early 2000s, Udvada was declared a heritage precinct because of its 200-odd Gujarati Pol houses, old wells and narrow streets.


Today, most Parsis visit only to pray at the Iranshah and tuck into pulav daar and boi (fish) at the famous Globe Hotel. By late afternoon, families are already on their way back home. Young Parsis have been deprived of the joys of freshly churned doodh nu puff or playing on the rocky beach. Dastoor hopes to reverse this trend. "I want the youth to feel the pulse of the place," he says.

EVMs, 500 officials for big, fat Parsi polls in Mumbai

With just a week to go for the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) elections, aspiring trustees have been giving stump speeches at colonies across Mumbai. On Wednesday, three candidates, who are canvassing together as "The Tremendous Three" were speaking at Colaba's Cusrow Baug - a citadel of lemon yellow buildings, green lawns and vintage Fiats. With over 5,000 apartments and many commercial establishments under its control, the BPP is one of the city's largest landlords and Cusrow Baug is by far its most lucrative property with flats selling for upwards of Rs 5 crore.

Given the wealth at its disposal, it's no wonder that the BPP poll is being taken very seriously by Mumbai's Parsi community, which numbers just 40,000. In the run up to the October 18th polls, 250 election officers have been busy conducting mock drills, scouring the electoral rolls for duplications, arranging for ambulances at the five polling stations and pressing candidates to stick to a voluntary code of conduct.

Community papers and magazines - one of which is owned by a candidate - are rife with testimonials, voting FAQs and full-page ads that can cost up to Rs 55,000, and even aspirants are interrupting their chest-thumping rhetoric to give live demonstrations of the newly-introduced Electronic Voting Machines (EVM).

At Cusrow Baug, one contender pulled out a dummy machine and began explaining the nitty-gritties of the process. "Each booth has two EVMs because a single machine has only 16 slots and there are 23 candidates," he told the crowd of over a hundred senior citizens some of whom had expressed fears of "rigging". "It's not a touch screen so 'dabao' the button for the red light to come on," he added.

Since five out of seven seats are up for grabs, voters can select up to five candidates. An exhaustive set of EVM FAQs, created by the BPP's election team, deals with every question imaginable from "Can I undo my selection?" to "What if there is a power failure?" to "Can I vote for the same candidate multiple times?"

Last year, India conducted the world's largest election when 81.4 crore people - larger than the population of Europe - cast their vote in 9.3 lakh polling stations fitted with 14 lakh EVMs. This election might be diminutive in comparison - a maximum of 15,000 Parsis are expected to cast their vote at five centres fitted with 100 EVMs - but it's being arranged with the same earnestness.

"At each centre, there will be an in-charge polling officer and three to four assistant polling officers, who are established members of the community" says BPP Election President Mahiyar Dastoor. "The whole mobilization will be nearly about 500 people, of which 230 will be polling agents from the candidates' side, and a hundred will be IT support staff for the EVM machines."

One booth in each centre will be reserved for handicapped voters, wheelchairs will be available at all polling centres and three ambulances will be on standby for any elderly voter, who collapses while standing in line.

The entire process, which includes hiring EVMs and an external IT audit firm to oversee the process will cost the BPP about Rs 25 lakh, says Dastoor. And will have to be repeated in six months' time when one of the two currently-occupied seats is vacated. On Election Day, people will have to show their election cards and a government-sanctioned ID, their name will be ticked off an online electoral roll and their forefinger will be marked with indelible ink.

A dry run of 150 voters has already been conducted in Khareghat Colony to evaluate how long each voter will take to complete the process and ensure that there are no hiccups. The results will be declared the same evening at the Dadar Parsi Colony Gymkhana. One curious lacuna in this otherwise water-tight process is that when voters register to be added to the electoral roll, there is no way of verifying that they are Parsi. "Your passport, your aadhar card, nothing mentions your religion," says Dastoor. "It's only based on the name."

Many view this as a make or break election because the current board's rival factions have spent the majority of their terms blocking each other's' proposals and hurling allegations - and abuse - at each other. According to the editor of the Parsi Times Freyan Bhathena, "The fate of this community depends on these elections."


Which is perhaps why for the first time in over a 100 years, the BPP has also created a voluntary code of conduct. It asks candidates to refrain from luring voters with expensive freebies like cell phones, laptops, flat screen TV sets, and refrigerators. In the past, some candidates even organized buffets and retro nights in Parsi baugs, while other wined and dined voters at swanky restaurants.


It's these extravagances, which led the code's formulators to impose a cap of Rs 3 lakh on campaign expenditures. Additionally, to avoid the mud-slinging that has shadowed past campaigns, the code also asks candidates to "restrict criticism to polices, programmes, past record and work only".


"The code of conduct has definitely made a difference. It is far more gentlemanly, far more orderly," says Jehangir Patel, who runs the community magazine Parsiana. Bhathena agrees though she credits the Parsi press for educating voters more than the newly-introduced code of conduct.


Community member Farrokh Jijina, however, says personal attacks continue but have simply switched mediums. "It's there but it is surreptitious. Now, personal allegations are coming on Whatsapp and other social media."

Can marriage deprive women of their religion? Parsi woman asks SC

NEW DELHI: Can a woman be prohibited from practising her religion if she marries a man from a different religion? Is she bound to follow her husband's religion? Can her religious places bar her from offering prayers if she marries outside the community?

These are some of the questions 46-year-old Goolrookh M Gupta, nee Contractor, has asked the Supreme Court. She has challenged the rationale behind a "misogynistic" judgment by Gujarat High Court, which had upheld Valsad Parsi Anjuman Trust's decision to bar her from offering prayers at the Agiyari after she married a Hindu. The apex court agreed to hear the plea on April 28.

Goolrookh, who has old parents, had moved the HC after learning that another Parsi woman, Dilbar Valvi, also married to a Hindu, was not allowed to attend the funeral of her father and mother by the Valsad Parsi Anjuman on the ground that she was no longer a Parsi.

The HC, by a two to one majority, upheld the Anjuman's view. "The HC judgment is a grave affront to India's constitutional order which mandates adherence to basic human rights, dignity, religious freedom, gender equality and a uniform civil code," Goolrookh said in her petition.

What was the use of making women's right and empowerment the most talked about point when even an HC gave a judgment which was based on "the ancient feudal notion of women being regarded as chattels, an expression essentially reflecting the position of dominion over women by men", she said.

"There is no law in India which says that a woman must adopt her husband's name or religion upon marriage, she said. On the contrary, Parliament had enacted Special Marriage Act in 1954 to enable two persons belonging to different religions to enter into marriage without either having to renounce his or her religion and/or convert into the religion of the other," she argued.

Despite the law being in force for more than 60 years, the HC "concluded that by virtue of her marriage to a non-Parsi, she ceases to be a Parsi".

Goolrookh said though the judgment was on a petition filed by her, its effect would be used against all those women who marry outside their religion.


"The HC proceeds on a principle, stated to be 'generally accepted throughout the world', that until her marriage, a woman's decision as to which religion she follows is dependent upon the religion of her father and after her marriage, it is dependent on that of her husband," she said.


Goolrookh added that renunciation and acceptance of a religion was always preceded by a ceremony. While she was initiated into Zoroastrianism, she had never been initiated into Hindusim, she said.


Goolrookh said different Parsi denominations across the world (including India) applied different rules of conduct on Parsi women married to non-Parsi men.


"Agiyaris/trusts situated in Delhi, Pardi, Kanpur, Chennai, Kolkata, Jabalpur, Allahabad, Daman, Chikhli, Jamshedpur, Vadodara, London, Ontario (Canada), Florida and Chicago (US) do not prohibit Parsi women married to non-Parsi men from entering or offering prayers at the Agiyaris or participating in Parsi religious ceremonies," she said.

Why I want to be a Parsi

A haircut is meant to be a relaxing procedure. Someone gently washes your mane, scissors fly around, and then after a blast with the only sort of hot air that one should tolerate, you leave the premises with a bounce both in your curls and in your step.

But a few days ago when I went to the beauty salon I made the unfortunate mistake of asking the young girl rubbing conditioner into my hair if she was married. When she claimed that being in the salon all day didn’t give her time to meet anyone, my light-hearted suggestion of choosing a man out of the many working at the salon led to an explosion, as she immediately retorted, ‘They are all Muslims, no baba, they have permission to just cut anyone, kill and all!’

Taken aback by her vehement response and wondering who the ‘they’ were that gave people permission to cut people open, I said, ‘I am sure you mean people in the Taliban, ISIS or something, not these chaps here, wearing aprons and applying hair dye on geriatric society ladies.’

She replied, ‘Don’t know, I just don’t like them.’ And so while my frothing-at-the-mouth fanatic started untangling my hair, I felt my thoughts tangling up simultaneously.

How do such strong prejudices form, this sheer unfairness of tarring an entire sect of people with the same brush? In a world divided by religion where battles are fought and monuments pulled down over what boils down to a simple tenet — my belief is better than yours — how does one get people to see things without distortions. And doesn’t the situation worsen when members of the ruling party make statements such as this one by culture minister Mahesh Sharma who, in a recent interview, said, ‘I respect Bible and Quran but they are not central to the soul of India in the same way as Gita and Ramayana are.”

I for one didn’t know the soul of India was secretly Hindu and was hiding under a secular blanket, like the bogeyman on Halloween, waiting to pop out and startle us at the right moment by showing its true saffron colours.
But in deference to the dear minister’s version of Hindu culture, I have my copy of Ramayana ready. In fact, I was reading it to my daughter last Sunday. Unfortunately from the minister’s perspective, this adaptation is from Sita’s perspective and so he may have yet another problem with it because seeing a story from a woman’s point of view may also not be Indian enough.

Though I tried to dismiss the culture minister’s words, alarm bells began to ring louder in my already ringing ears when I went to a curriculum meeting at my children’s school, where the one sentence that came up again and again was, ‘Preparing to make them global citizens.’ Which is exactly what is required in a world that is now so closely connected, and I instantly recalled another alarming line from Mahesh Sharma’s interview where he stated that there have been discussions with the education ministry to prepare a new syllabus for schools and they have plans to cleanse every area of public discourse that has been westernized.

So I presume that another ban on education systems that don’t fit in within these parameters is imminent?

Which brings me finally to the meaty bone of contention about what we are allowed to cook in our supposed melting pot — the meat ban.

In the last few weeks, different states have put their machinery at work trying to enforce as well as extend the meat ban. When the high court was asked to chew on this matter, it thankfully tried to rule against it, and so a few organizations ran like headless chickens all the way to the Supreme Court stating that they had a beef with our meat and ended up with egg on their face when the ban was stayed.

The state had tried to advocate the ban by expounding the need to be tolerant of other faiths but the crucial question regarding who must show tolerance, who needs to be tolerated and who actually decides between the two, of course, still remains unanswered, and as is evident, people just seem to put up with only their kind.

And thus you have 2,000 men with axes, petrol and country-made pistols rioting at Atali Village in Ballabhgarh and attacking Muslims gathered to pray; a young Hindu man killed for marrying a Muslim girl in Bihar this year; a Muslim boy brutally beaten up by Hindu vigilantes for posing with his Hindu classmates; and a fatwa against A R Rahman for composing music for a film called Muhammad the Messenger of God. Not to forget the love jihads and other jihads, all trying to convert or eradicate the other.

Well, after giving all of the above some serious thought, I have decided that if I am reincarnated as a human being again instead of a holy cow or Baba Ramdev’s infamous Putrajeevak seed, then I just want to be born a Parsi; the most sorted bunch of people who have clearly worked it out that the world has gone to pot, and before anyone tries to eradicate them they have cleverly decided to go extinct themselves.

Spotlight's on khandias, the Parsi 'untouchables'

MUMBAI: Sam Vesuna was 19 when he became a pallbearer at the Parsi Towers of Silence at Malabar Hill. Today, 19 years later, bodies laid to rest in the roofless towers putrefy below solar panels, but at that time, hungry birds of prey still slouched along their stone walls.

"When I first saw vultures tearing into human flesh, I was terrified of being attacked," Vesuna recalls. But back in 1996, the young Parsi had little choice. He was a school dropout, living in a Santacruz slum with a young wife to support.

Like all 18 khandias (Parsi pallbearers), currently working at the 355-year-old Doongerwadi or Towers of Silence, Vesuna eventually got habituated to the gory sights and nauseating odours. But not to his "untouchable" status.

Last week, the 35-strong Doongerwadi staff, including its pallbearers, hearse drivers, and funeral hall cleaners, joined the rest of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet's (BPP) Class IV workers in a peaceful protest for salary hikes and benefits. But unlike the sweepers and gardeners, the khandias and nussesalars (pallbearers who enter the tower) must also contend with being shunned for handling corpses by fellow Parsi Zoroastrians.

Ironically, this wealthy community, numbering just 40,000 in Mumbai, is often lauded for its progressive outlook. In the past, khandias were asked to drink from a separate 'matka' at work. Even today, some Parsis dislike them living in community 'baugs'. Khandias must also undergo a ritual purification before entering fire temples unless they slip in unnoticed.





(Khandias' living quarters at the Doongerwadi)


Shaarookh Wadia, who has been working at the Doongerwadi for 13 years, recalls having to hold a pouch open so a pious Parsi could tip him without bodily contact. And when he joined the Doongerwadi for higher wages, his Parsi wife and son left him. "My wife tells people I'm dead," he confides.

For now, the agitation is restricted to workers wearing red union caps to draw attention to their demands for pensions and accommodation. The khandias have more specific demands including a higher per person stipend for cleaning the three dokhmas or towers. During these annual cleanings, Wadia says khandias trawl through the remains of about 700 corpses while fighting off clouds of mosquitoes and falling prey to skin infections. Community magazine, Parsiana, which tracks births and deaths, estimates about two new bodies come to the Doongerwadi every day. The Khandias also allege their attire and cleaning equipment is of poor quality but BPP chairman, Dinshaw Mehta, contests this claim. "They have good-quality masks and gloves but don't wear them," he says.

On Tuesday, the BPP, which is the city's biggest private landlord, agreed on a 7% counter offer to the 57-65% wage hike demanded by the workers. Dhunji Naterwalla, the general secretary of a local workers' union, Mumbai Mazdoor Sabha, says this "marginal increase" isn't acceptable. The agitation will continue, even escalating into a strike, until the issue is resolved. Khandias unanimously credit the union for empowering them. Before it existed, they say they were paid a pittance and had access to few benefits.

When Pervez Wadia became a khandia 30 years ago, he was making Rs 600 per month. After three decades of service, he claims to make just over Rs 20,000. Today, a starting salary is about Rs 12,000 per month though khandias can earn more for overtime and dokhma cleanings. Plus the job comes with free living quarters within the Doongerwadi or highly-subsidized accommodation elsewhere - a boon for those living in slums. Small-town Parsi boys, with little education, are lured by the pay. Many khandias were initially helpers at fire temples but switched jobs to better support their families.

Though a few khandias have married into broadminded Parsi families - some community members do treat them with respect - most are forced to marry outside the faith. Finding a match for their children is also challenging. Noshir Rasaldar's son, a gym trainer, has been dating a Parsi girl for two years but her family continues to object to his father's occupation. Today, the BPP subsidizes their children's education but old-timer Vesuna, whose elder son is studying civil engineering, had to approach rich Parsis for help. "They'd say, 'No, if we educate your sons, who will do this work,'" he recalls.

Social ostracisation isn't condoned by the scriptures but Avestan scholar Ervad Parvez Bajan explains that since corpses are covered in bacteria, khandias are expected to keep their distance. But once they have a bath, they are free to mingle with others. This separates the practice from untouchability. "There's no shame. It's a pious duty," he says. "The community has wrong notions about these people doing menial work."

In smaller towns, relatives turn pallbearers when family members die. Parsiana editor, Jehangir Patel, believes Parsis should return to this system to demolish existing stigmas and keep track of how the dokhmas are functioning.

When scavenger birds are plentiful, this 3,000-year-old Zoroastrian tradition of disposing the dead is both swift and environmentally sound. But in the late '90s, vultures disappeared because of urbanization and other causes. Later, solar panels were installed but khandias say they do a half-baked job leaving the body to decompose over many days.

Pallbearer Noshire Patrawala likens these remains to "soggy bread". "When we go to drag the body, a hand or a leg comes off," he says. It's for this reason that today, many Parsis opt for cremation.

Mumbai's 99-year-old iconic Parsi Dairy Farm may shut shop

MUMBAI: For almost a century, Parsi Dairy Farm has fattened generations of Mumbaikars on its high-quality milk, butter, ghee, and an assortment of mithais. Eateries across the city have for decades served its famous kulfis.

Now, this vintage Mumbai institution, started by Parsi entrepreneur Nariman Ardeshir in 1916, looks set to fade into memory. As a first step, the Nariman family has decided to sell its 300-acre land at Talasari on national highway no. 8. Although the family insists it will continue to run the dairy business, it is learned that the Narimans, currently comprising eight partners, will ultimately sell the brand itself.

The agricultural land in Warvada village on the Maharashtra-Gujarat border is expected to fetch around Rs 200 crore. The family bought the plot in 1968 for livestock and to support its dairy activities.

Real estate consultant Pranay Vakil of Praron Consultancy, appointed by the Narimans to advise them on the land sale, said: "The property touches the national highway. It can be used either for an integrated township, a special economic zone, a residential colony or an amusement park.''

Over the past decade-and-a-half, the Parsi Dairy business has plummeted—from supplying 15,000 litres of milk a day to barely 2,000 litres today. The clientele is mainly in south Mumbai, from Walkeshwar to Cuffe Parade and Colaba. A labour strike in 2006 further crippled the business. Family sources claimed the annual turnover today is around Rs 10 crore.

Regular clients at the dairy farm's popular outlet at Princess Street near Marine Lines station worry that the institution may shut down. "This is terrible news,'' said V Chandra, a regular at the shop. "Its dahi (curd) is the best in the city; thick enough to cut, rich and creamy and never sour, delicious enough to eat on its own. I always get the small matka of dahi—it makes an excellent starter—but often end up buying the large matka out of sheer greed.''