Serving both the local Parsi population and global diaspora for 52 years, Parsiana, the community’s firmly liberal publication, faces imminent closure
Jehangir Patel with grandson Zaran, and dog Tiger at the Parsiana office in Fort. PICS/SHADAB KHAN
I enter through the beautiful Gothic Revival archway. Cocooned in cool familiarity, I instinctively tread the corridor twists and turns leading to an office revisited after several years. From 1990 till 2015, I would drop in at Jehangir Patel’s publishing offices at Fort, on the ground floor of the Parsi Lying-in Hospital. A matter of pride to write for the community’s leading, and possibly only, liberal publication, which Patel has edited since 1973 with good sense and great integrity.
Now, from October, it’s adieu to the last of a trio of magazines he steered to high standards (Signature and Voyage were the others). Packing 30 to 40 pages with thoroughly researched, fiercely independent content, Parsiana became what Bachi Karkaria has defined as “path-guider, trend-tracker, back-patter, call-outer and therefore as much hackle-raiser as praise-getter. But age and ill-health have caught up with its intrepid editor and his team.”
They certainly have, agrees 80-year-old Patel, who lost a prolific senior editor, Farrokh Jijina, to cancer earlier this year. Asserting that finance is not the reason, nor is such closure limited to Parsiana, he says, “There is a dearth of fresh entrants to our profession. Even when I taught journalism at the Xavier Institute of Communication, few writers went out into the field to file reports or features. Content writing, websites and an explosion of social media possibilities claim promising writers. Conventional print is no match. But I have faith in the Parsiana archives made available to the public.”
In his verandah editorial cabin to discuss the decline of print publishing, I glance across flanking rooms. Patel’s smiling wife Veera sits at the same table she has for years, quietly supervising the accounts and advertising departments, welcoming freelancers like me with tea and coffee. Sifting through editions, I find a heap of my longform articles for Parsiana. Profiling the 19th-century painter Pestonji Bomanjee who depicted Parsi daily and religious life. Tracing the more contemporary Jehangir Sabavala’s artistic journey. Describing philatelist Darabshaw Mistry’s collection of 50,000 rare stamps. Mapping 50 memorable years of the Jehangir Art Gallery in 2002.
Dr Pestonji Warden, who introduced Parsiana in 1964. Pic courtesy/ Parsiana
Rummaging for more rediscoveries, I gaze with awe at the solid 19th-century buff walls embellished with carved stone screens, designed by the Municipal Corporation’s star civil engineer, Muncherji Cowasji Murzban, for the Parsi Lying-in Hospital. One of Bombay’s oldest maternity facilities, co-founded in 1887 by obstetrician Dr Tehmulji Nariman, it provided pregnant women hygienic conditions to deliver in an era of soaring mortality rates. Incidentally, Patel’s mother Maki Adenwalla went that wonderful step further. She opened a unique creche in this building in 1969, assuring women working in the Fountain area a safe space for their children.
“I never stopped being enthralled on entering the Victorian Gothic entrance of the hospital premises,” says Geeta Doctor. Having written extensively for the magazine after teaming up with Patel at Freedom First, Minoo Masani’s monthly of liberal ideas, she says, “Under Masani’s spell as a roving intellectual tilting his lance at the orthodoxy with the glee of a Parsi Don Quixote, Jehangir launched Parsiana [the version we know today] on a whim and a dream. We imagined the next generation of Parsis was being born behind our corridors. The magazine was a means of recording the arrival and perhaps encouraging the rebirth of a new cycle of the Parsi elite that made the city what it used to be at one time.”
The January 1974 cover, and the October 1973 cover (illustrating her sister Geeta Doctor’s lead interview with Sam Manekshaw) designed by Manjula Padmanabhan. Pic courtesy/Parsiana
The gentleman who conceived Parsiana was Dr Pestonji Warden. Running a pair of sandalwood shops, the general practitioner launched the magazine in November 1964 to propagate the teachings of Zoroastrianism. Warden also stood for Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) trusteeship elections, with a triangular placard advocating universal adult franchise. A theatre buff as well, he twinned passions — placing cyclostyled Parsiana copies on seats in Tagore Hall, Dadar, before a show of Gool Shavaksha’s play, The Splendoured One.
Wanting continuity of Parsiana, Warden was happy when Patel, a distant relative and political science graduate from Yale, expressed keenness to start a community publication. Ownership transferred in exchange for just one rupee and a two-year mention of Warden as the founder. The stylised-font Parsiana logo was visualised on the desk of Bahadur Meherwan, an artist with J Walter Thompson, the ad agency on whose panel Warden was appointed doctor.
From June 1973, Patel led a low-cost, high-value operation, doubtful of advertiser support for “an untested publication brought out by obscure individuals with a liberal bent of mind”. He was most pleasantly surprised. The next edition, September-October, attracted Shapoorji Pallonji and Company, K Wadia, and NS Guzder. By the third, ads from Air India, Tata Chemicals, Jeena and Company, and Central Bank of India poured in.
The original November 1964 edition produced by Dr Pestonji Warden with the tagline “New medium for old wisdom” under the logo, later slightly redefined by Patel’s art director Mini Boatwala; (Right) Bahadur Meherwan who created the logo. Pic courtesy/ Thrity Stafford
All this solidarity despite Parsiana catching people off-guard with progressive socio-politics, right from Patel’s first cover story in August 1973, “Parsi Divorces: The Cultural Alternative”. The magazine boldly questioned hallowed establishments like the BPP on decisions governing its properties and other concerns. It sparked strong opposition from outraged traditionalists for listing “mixed marriages” in the Milestones section — resulting in many readers demanding subscription refunds.
Interestingly, in a New York Times interview with Bernard Weinraub, as far back as March 1975, headlined “The Indian Parsis: Waning, Troubled”, Patel had observed, “Basically, we are two communities — an urban, reformist, sophisticated community and a diehard, orthodox group controlling our institutions and trusts.”
Fielding brickbats and bouquets with equanimity, Patel soldiered on resolutely. His band of diligent writers, including Geeta Doctor, Feroza Paymaster, Pervin Mahoney, Sanober Marker, Jeroo Gorimar, Gustasp Irani, Arnavaz Patel, Parinaz Gandhi, Arnavaz Mama and Dina Mehta, presented the community’s every controversy and celebration with scrupulous detail. Homi Rogers was among the regular freelancers.
“Jehangir was a relentless guardian of the truth of the written word,” avers Doctor. “At heart a professor and perfectionist, if he debated the difference between a comma and semicolon in a sentence, he was equally hard on himself. My first contributions were mundane. One of Jehangir’s methods on initiation was to hone the writing of obituaries. Under his eagle eye, obituaries became works of art, resembling the etching of stone memorials with precision and flourish. ‘Please give me a living person,’ I’d beg. Sometimes he did. One interview I recall with affection was with retired Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw in his beautiful Coonoor bungalow and garden.”
Aboard, too, came one of the country’s finest illustrators, Doctor’s younger sister Manjula Padmanabhan, to create stunning magazine covers and memorabilia. Patel asked Geeta’s son, food writer Vikram Doctor, to review Parsi cookbooks. Vikram says, “I grew up reading Parsiana and always felt Jehangir and the publication are remarkable. He insisted on rigorous reporting, not the sentimentality that comes easily with community reporting. Best to keep it this way in tributes.” And so he matter-of-factly states in a recent newspaper column, “Parsiana stayed seemingly unchanged over the decades, even as the rest of the building fell silent, a symbol of plummeting Parsi birth rates and migration abroad.”
The intelligentsia look forward to Editorial Viewpoint columns reflecting Jehangir’s wit, wisdom and in-depth knowledge of the community, says Managing Editor Parinaz Gandhi. Joining in 1984, she admires her “principled and pragmatic” editor ensuring factually accurate news and a broad spectrum of views not necessarily echoing his — “Jehangir’s reputation for frank and fearless journalism is respected even by the orthodox who find him approachable. His communication skills, marked by patience, tact and diplomacy, have helped him win over his most vociferous opponents.”
In last month’s Editorial Viewpoint, “Winding down”, Patel explained: “The cessation of Parsiana evoked interest from do-gooders, little realising that qualified and experienced personnel are required for a niche publication focusing on the international Parsi, Iranian and Zoroastrian communities. When the community bemoans the impending loss of Parsiana it is lamenting the absence of a publication that covered the community with its own take on events, developments and personalities. The occurrences and individuals we chose to glorify or vilify may be quite different from the approach other journalists may choose to portray the community… Each institution is created with a purpose and a goal. The community has to decide which institutions need to be salvaged and which to be sacrificed.”
Candid chronicler, thoughtful voice, trusted companion, you will be much missed. We hold hope in the words of Geeta Doctor: “The novelist Tan Twan Eng writes of a dried-up stream — ‘Though the water has stopped flowing, we still hear the whisper of its name.’ We will continue to hear the name Parsiana long after its doors shut.”
Author-publisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay. You can reach her at meher.marfatia@mid-day.com/www.meher marfatia.com
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
