Navroze falls on March 20 this year. It is the Zoroastrian or Parsi New Year celebrated by various communities around the world then or on successive dates as their New Year, too. Navroze, meaning ‘New Day’, is based on the Iranian solar calendar, on the spring equinox, which is on or around March 21. The holy book of the Parsis is the Zend Avesta, the Creator is ‘Ahura Mazda’ and their high priests are known as dastur. Their threefold path is Humata, Huxta, Huvarshta, meaning good thoughts, good words, good deeds, and respecting nature and protecting water and the environment. There is an emphasis on charity, and men and women are considered spiritually equal. To Parsis, and by association with Parsi friends, to me, Navroze, seems like a forever feeling.
I got a rare chance to visit the original homeland of the Parsis almost 20 years ago with the staunch sisterhood of the Indian Women’s Press Corps and Iran refuses to fade from memory. It appears suddenly as a gift of gaz, which is white Isfahani nougat, rose-scented and pista-laden. It glows in the sienna colour of my kelim from Isfahan, in the blue-and-white wall clock made by the fauladgar or ironsmith in Imam Square, and in the photo of Rabindranath Tagore in the tomb keeper’s office at the grave of the poet Hafiz in Shiraz.
I took rose and sandalwood-scented incense sticks for Hafiz, out of respect for my then Persian teacher, Dr Yunus Jaffrey of the Walled City of Delhi who taught me some verses from Hafiz. I would go for lessons to his teacher’s room in the 17th century Ghaziuddin Madrasa (alas, I have now lost most of what I learnt). When I showed the authorities the incense, they exclaimed “Oodh!” I recognised this word because incense sticks are called oodhvatti in Tamil.
Iran smelt sweet of apricot wood burning at the last remaining agiary or Zoroastrian fire temple in Yazd. I remembered the Parsis and Baha’is I had met over the years, and I honoured the memory of Dr Dastur, the Parsi doctor in Bombay who delivered my siblings into the world. I also thought of nice-looking Parsi classmates from middle school in Mumbai like Darius and Adil whose faces seemed all about me on the streets of Teheran, Shiraz and Isfahan.
We were briefed that we had to “dress modestly” and cover our heads in Iran. So, imagine my chagrin when we landed at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport and I saw beautiful Iranian women, elegant even in acutely modest close-fitting coats called manteau by the French word. I, on the other hand, in a long, shapeless Fabindia kurta, dupatta sliding all over my head since I am not from a purdah culture, looked like a frump. I am unlikely to ever return to Iran since I am wholly averse to mandatory hijab and ghunghat.
But the warmth and affection we encountered at every turn from everyday Iranians, made up somewhat for the torture of having to keep my head covered. “Pakistan?” they’d say, since we wore salwar-kameez. “Hindustan,” we’d answer at once. Huge smiles and cries of Khushamadeed (“Welcome!”) promptly lit their faces. They treated the non-vegetarians to fesanjan, a curry of chicken cooked in pomegranate juice and walnuts. Its cousin back home was jardaloo salli boti. The jardaloo were apricots, the salli were delicate, crunchy potato straws and the boti were chunks of mutton. It was a classic Parsi dish featuring dried fruit, Iranian-style. Iran was so humvatan or homeland. In fact, one of the quirkiest aspects of having been neighbours for millennia was to discover that you couldn’t have a private Hindi conversation in Iran. The taxi driver understood many keywords, which were Persian.Few words were needed though at Persepolis, when the dignified keeper of the site watched me stare up at the ruins of the library. Persepolis is so grand and beautiful, especially Apadana Palace, built by the Achaemenid king Darius and finished by King Xerxes. What a civilization to boast of, those winged lion pillars that influenced our own emblem, the Ashokan lion capital. Reflexively, I thought of a building on the Mahalakshmi end of Pedder Road, Mumbai, called ‘Persepolis’ and turned to smile at the Iranian gentleman by my side.
“He burnt it,” he said, just like that, without preamble, and I nodded, not needing an explanation. It was an ‘old universe’ moment, people from two ancient civilizations recalling something that had happened to both, in this case someone called Alexander of Macedonia, between 331 and 325 BCE.
How old our memories are, across the East. Especially the ancient racial memory of the spring equinox that became a collective cultural instinct called Navroze. It is “as old as spring”, this marrow-deep memory that stirs us even in our neon world of today, of how our old civilizations celebrated the end of the old year, based on the advent of spring. They wore bright colours (or threw them about), wished each other well and gathered around a bonfire, that many in India call Holi ka Dahan. Holi, by the way, falls on March 25 this year. They did so to symbolically burn the sorrows of the past year, to renew their earthly span with a fresh expression of faith in the Creator, in the forces of good, and in their better selves. No more than that, but certainly no less, for they honoured, and still do, the cycle of seasons attributed to a greater Power, who caused the skies to rain and the earth to be filled with fruit, grain and meat.
As Navroze dawns again in India, it’s “Happy New Year” to all my fellow Indians, for it will soon be ‘Navroze’ for others, too, up and down the land, be it as Yugadi, Gudi Padva, Vishu, Bihu and more. And let us also remember that in mid-April, right around Baisakhi, it’s Songkran (Sankaranti) in Thailand. But then, the East, perhaps unrealised by us, spans a very deep, long swathe.
Renuka Narayanan
(Views are personal)