Episode 2: The Parsis and the Past!

Although their marriage was as ordinary and plain as all other marriages around the world are, their pairing was unusual.

But one will gawk in bewilderment if I were to say that both Marian and Farooq belonged to the same family.

Marian was the daughter of Farooq’s mother’s brother. Both had grown up together playing in the backyard of their sea-facing building in Valkeshwar. And if those games would be the ones like Ghar-ghar where these children pretended to be Husband and Wife, you bet there’s bound to be confusion. As deceptive as those amateurish games could be it created a false picture in the mind of Marian’s father-Karl Sethna.

Karl had grown in Mumbai and had earned his living by working days and night at his own Ice-cream parlor. Some say that Parsis were the ones who started the culture of Ice-creams in India and with the benevolent touch of the Parsi bawas who would call out any kid irrespective of their cast or creed Dikra and Dikri; the kids were bound to love them. He was adored by the kids and respected by the families.

He had no name of his shop as he had no pile of dimes to have a shop. He just had a small shack of a place with a refrigerator on the corner of the roads facing Marine-Drive and a good heart. But it was the fondness of the kids which acquired his small shack a beloved name, ‘Bawa’s Ice-cream’. Every day he watched pigeons sailing over a pleasant sea and in the backdrop a saffron sun diving painfully slowly in the sea as little kids came running in for more ice-creams.

Living in the pleasures of proper English pronunciations, wealth of knowledge and enough money to survive, Life was merry back then.

But the partition changed everything.

More than the decision of partition, it was the period before partition-the period of persuasion which changed lives of many including Karl Sethna. And as usual the Parsis fell in no men’s land.

As a humble and homely man, Karl could feel the plight of the Muslims at the same time couldn’t deny the fact that Bombay and most importantly Hindus had given him life and the means of earning. But the communal violence between Hindus and Muslims didn’t just capture the imagination of many; it injected fear in the minds and hearts of an entire nation divided. Muslims were aggressive as it’s their natural tendency. The history of humankind is a glaring evidence of a fact that, Muslims are the most misunderstood breed.

All they wanted deep down was that Karl should understand their plight. They had cemented their lives, businesses, passions and bonding in India and like a rude slap they were told to shift their lives to Pakistan- a place for Muslims.

The name of that particular Muslim who changed Karl’s life was Rahim Khan. He wanted to be in India, in Bombay. But he was taken in the angry wave of Muslims fleeing away to Pakistan. The Muslims in his provinces were harsh on their fellow-beings, who wouldn’t come to Pakistan with them. They called them Kafirs and discarded them from the community. These discarded breed became the first prey of Hindu fundamentalists who in their misplaced sense of self-righteousness went out on a spree to kick out the Muslims.  Thus all Rahim wanted was that Karl should adopt him and his daughter so that they could convert into Parsis after all there isn’t much difference between a Parsi and a Muslim, an Iranian and a Muslim. But there is never a difference between a Hindu and a Muslim either. The world is just too childish to ignore it. But Karl wasn’t. So he accepted to take Rahim under his wings, unaware of the trouble he was inviting.