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| Navroz play rehearsals on Friday evening. (Sayantan Ghosh) |
Bollywood’s most famous Parsi face was among the 467 passengers touching down in the Calcutta airport’s new terminal during its second trial run on Friday, but sadly Boman Irani has no role to play in the comedy being staged by the city’s dwindling community for Navroz.
On Saturday evening, to mark the Parsi new year, Kevi mari Dolly toh will be staged at Vidya Mandir for the 550-odd Parsis of Calcutta. A play enacted by and for the community on Navroz is an age-old tradition that is struggling to remain a trend.
“The number of people turning up to watch the play has been decreasing over the years. The tradition seems to have barely managed to survive,” said Adal Sutaria, a veteran member of the community that will celebrate the 250th anniversary of their arrival in Calcutta in four years.
Even in the early 1970s, more than 6,000 Parsis lived in the city. “This fall in number is posing a challenge for us. The new-year drama used to be the high point of the celebration but now, it’s done because it has to be done,” said Cyrus Madan, who has been steering the Navroz plays for over a decade. “The language is a problem but more than that there aren’t enough members to turn up for the rehearsals.”
New year’s day for the precious few Parsis in town will begin with morning prayers at Calcutta’s only fire temple or Agiary, on Metcalfe Street, which has stepped into its 100th year. This will be followed by the distribution of fruits and snacks: traditional Parsi food served on banana leaves.
That the Parsis are still very traditional when it comes to food was underlined in June at a debate organised by the Calcutta Zoroastrian Stree Mandal to mark its 75th anniversary. The topic? “Pizza not Patrel is the preferred taste”, patrel being a savoury made of yam leaves, chickpea flour and spices and baked or fried before serving. The winner? Patrel, of course.
Tradition rules when it comes to the Navroz play, too. The Calcutta Parsi Amateur Dramatic Club opened in 1907, and started staging the famous Parsi nataks, mostly comedies, the year after. Initially, these plays used to be held at Corinthian theatre, which belonged to Jamshedji Madan. The theatre was later renamed Opera cinema. These nataks have been held at Moonlight, Globe and Star as well. This year the venue is Vidya Mandir, the play is Kevi mari Dolly toh and the response is lukewarm.
The script could have been dramatically different if only Boman Irani was drafted in. “The most wonderful thing about Parsis is that they don’t mess with tradition,” Bollywood’s favourite comic actor told Metro while passing through town on Navroz-eve. “They go to the Agiary in the morning where they hug and kiss and then hug and kiss and then hug and kiss a little more. Then they have home-cooked food for lunch and they snooze. In the evening they have to watch the play and it’s always a comedy.... I love celebrating Navroz in this traditional way... it’s so warm.”