Dinaz vervatwala biography of mahatma
Quetta Parsis: The Untold Story
In the heart of the city, surrounded by beautiful mountains, Quetta’s Parsi Colony is picture-perfect. The lush green trees sway in the breeze. There is a rare feeling of trust: instead of the common elevated walls demarcating boundaries of houses, there are flimsy grills with open, inviting doors.
by Adnan Aftab | The Dawn
To the unsuspecting eye, this scene may not look like one from a metropolis in Pakistan, let alone one from the troubled province of Balochistan.
Despite the oft-reported turmoil in the region, however, Parsis have peacefully lived here since before partition. It was during the British Raj that the community was allotted this colony.
Today, of the many Parsis who once resided here, only about two to four families remain. Others have either died because of natural causes or migrated out of Quetta.
The presence of Parsis in the provincial capital has not been documented by the mainstream media like that of their counterparts in Karachi. This is understandable, Parsis, after all, migrated from Iran to Sindh as far back as the 8th Century. Furthermore, the community is relatively bigger in Karachi as compared to the one Quetta.
Yet, there are Parsis who prefer their home city to the concrete jungle that is Karachi.
Khurshid Minocher is an 85-year-old resident of the Parsi Colony who was born in Allahabad, India. She fondly remembers when Feroze Gandhi, a Parsi man, married Indira Nehru (later Indira Gandhi) and became the son-in-law of Jawaharlal Nehru. She also remembers seeing Mahatama Gandhi in his iconic dhoti and walking stick garb.
With these memories of her childhood home, Ms Minocher moved to Karachi as a young woman. In 1949, she started working at the prestigious Mama Parsi School, but quit the job soon after. The educationist did not like how, “The Parsi teachers, the Christian ones and the other teachers who belonged to different religions, would sit on different tables”.
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Dance actually!
Dancing partners to life partners
Picture this: He is supposed perform salsa with a partner at an event and his partner falls ill. So she comes to his rescue. While shaking a leg, cupid strikes and marriage is just a month away! That’s the story of Ranodeep Sen and Sanchari Dasgupta.Doing salsa for more than three years now, the couple says their love for dance was the thing that brought them together. “I always had a passion for dance, so I started learning salsa and that’s where I met her,” says Ranodeep, an HR professional. Sanchari, who has trained in classical dance since she was three, adds, “After doing classical for so many years, I wanted to explore a Western form and salsa sounded exciting. That’s how I started. We can’t do without dancing even for few days.”
Dancing for fitness's sake
Twenty one years ago, she found her kick in dancing aerobics and thought of taking it up as a career. Today, she runs a dance fitness studio in the city. Dinaz Vervatwala, a Zumba fitness instructor, says “Those days dancing was not an acceptable profession. My journey was full of challenges.” So, has the scene changed? She explains, “Not tremendously.” And change can happen only when, she insists, “There are more professional courses and the mindset of the society undergoes a change.”
Dancing without music!
If you think one needs to listen to music to feel it and dance, then you’re wrong. Drama Association for the Deaf, a city-based group for the hearing impaired, does musical theatres where people dance without hearing. Anju Khemani, founder of the group, says, “Their passion for dance and the spirit to overcome their ‘disability’ is what keeps them going.” But while they are on it, do lyrics go amiss? She explains, “No. Even the lyrics are accessible because they sign the lyric