Parsis

Tariq Engineer, the laughing Parsi, and me were good friends for a time till he quit for a better job and me retired. For sometime read his pieces in ESPNcricinfo and now do not know. Mostly will come in whites with a tie and a bag, doctors carried long ago; today they do not own stethoscopes. He wrote on marketing in Business Line while his computer had more, if not all, of cricket. A luxurious drinker, we met up at Press Club, for drinks; best friends are made by plenty of rums and gins; a Saturday evening we sat on Press Club lawns, ordered rums; on the sixth rum Tariq contrasted batting styles of Mark Waugh and VVS Laxman, bowling subtlities of Bedi and Warne; next, we met on Monday at the office with Tariq sofly inquiring: What happened? and me having no answer. Today miss him a lot; am comfortable discussing the game with Tariq, Sanjeev Sankaran, Ravi Krishnan and son Ganesh. Tariq surfaced Sunday, reading an Indian Express long essay on Parsis: Keep the Fire burning: The sleepy little coastal town of Udvada in coastal Gujarat is where the earliest  Parsi imigrants from Iran settled ..  as a sub me would have headlined: Keep the Laugh going as that makes Parsis entertaining and possibly the finely civilised Indian with a taste for birds, grass, books, silence, ...grace and compassion ..a wonkish delight in life and a grand civic sense. No community has done more good to a city than Parsis; Kabira and Tuka at Marine Drive in Arabian Sea will testify; they are me thinks Laughing Zen Masters. When me is born into a new janma, me would like to be a Parsi in a bunglow like the grandfather of Shreyar Ookerjee in Altamont Road and other true stories; ' I remember my grandfather, whom my sister and I called 'Mohtoo', having his morning tea, wrapped in a dressing gown, on the first floor verandah outside his bedroom, and casting, as he drank, breadcrumbs to the sparrows. He drank out of a "moustache" cup, so called because it had a little ledge inside it with a vent to prevent the walrus moustaches of Victorian gentlemen dripping into the tea.'  There is the tale of Avabai, the large lady, and Dali. 'How large can be gauged from the only risque remark I ever heard from my father, that her ample bosom could easily support a tea tray. The couple dwelt on the first floor of the building and she increasingly found it more difficult to manage the stairs. Dali being a sort of Renaissance man, seriously offered to rig up a pulley on the verandah and let her down and haul her up in a basket. Avabai rejected the gallant offer,' writes Ookerjee, a wierd, if not a funny name. Me thought he was a Bengali with M missing from a Mookerjee; a Mookerjee in Calcutta will surely be upset and announce a revolution; a Ookerjee will smile like the likes of Tariq, Lyla Bavadam ....Ookerjee was born and grew up in Altamont Road... 'a quiet locality....no through traffic...no building of new houses'..... Parsis will always be around, Parsis will be seen in Udvada....Parsis will be always.....as ..... Parsis are decent.