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As
is well known, the Parsi way of disposing of the dead is by keeping
the corpse on serrated platforms on terrace of the Towers of Silence
(known as the dokhnas) to be eaten away by vultures and other
carnivorous birds. This was the Parsi way of showing respect to the
environment, by not burying the cadaver which defiles earth, nor sully
the fire by cremating the dead. For Parsis, the fire is holy and is
revered in their temples. The community has been very insistent about
this mode of dealing with the departed over the years. But this
age-old custom received a jolt from a 65-year-old Parsi woman, Dhun
Baria, in August last year. Baria’s mother died six months ago and
was duly consigned to the dokhna at the Doongerwadi area of Mumbai,
near the elite locality of Malabar Hills. The distraught Baria,
mourning her mother, used to go to the dokhna and anxiously ask the
traditional pallbearers whether her mother’s body had been picked
clean by vultures. These attendants, who take the corpse to be kept
on the terrace of the dokhna, are known as khandiyas. Parsi customs
are so strict that only khandiyas are allowed in the dokhna and not
even the immediate family of the departed can accompany the final
walk. After a few weeks, the khandiyas got irritated with Baria’s
queries and told her, "It will take years before your mother’s
body is reduced to a bare skeleton. There are hundreds of bodies there
on the terrace, which are still rotting and your beloved mother is no
exception." Baria was shocked at this revelation. She had thought
that within days, if not hours of being kept on the platforms, her
mother’s body would have been picked clean by vultures, so that
other than bones nothing else would be left on the body. Shocked at
this disclosure, Baria somehow managed to get a video photographer to
accompany her inside the dokhna and what she found there was
disgusting. In was not a place of skeletons resting on the
cement-coated platforms, but a huge huddle of corpses (about one
thousand corpses are consigned to this particular dokhna every year).
"Naked bodies, eyes gouged out by crows, lying there, decomposing
for years. People from surrounding high-rises look into the tower and
comment about how a community that is otherwise forward thinking has
such a primitive custom of disposing their dead," said
Baria. Determined to change the system, to one of burying your
beloved, Baria is carrying on a single-person campaign in Mumbai and
the Parsi community is divided in its response. In fact many orthodox
Parsis resent the "video" taken inside the dokhna and want
Baria to be prosecuted for violating Parsi religious tenets. This
problem is not very new and is known to the realists among the Parsi
community. On such matters the decision-making body is the Bombay
Parsi Punjayat (BPP) which scrupulously ensures that the rituals of
the community are not changed. In 1973, the trustees of the BPP had
felt that this method of disposal of the bodies was not ideal and
their trustees, S.R. Vakil and Aspi Golwalla, had gone inside the
Tower of Silence to survey the situation and had agreed that the
bodies lay in a pathetic condition. Till the early 1990s this system
carried on tolerably, as there were thousands of vultures hovering
over these towers in Bombay, a location which is forbidden even for
aircraft to fly over. Then in the late nineties came the problem.
Suddenly there were no vultures to feed on the dead. Hurried studies
by the BPP revealed that 97 per cent of the vultures in India were
dead. Environmentalists said that the drug dielofenae used in
veterinary medicine had caused the decimation of vulture population.
The drug causes kidney failure in birds that eat carcasses of domestic
animals that have been treated with the drug. Then the BPP had toyed
with the idea of building a giant aviary to breed the birds. However,
the project has not taken off for various reasons, the main one being
as to how to keep these carnivorous vultures off their main feed of
dead cattle. That would have caused their death. Later, the BPP set
up a solar concentrator in some of the Towers of Silence to destroy
the bodies, by dehydrating them quickly. But the orthodox Parsis
objected, saying that the ‘dehydration and the solar panel are
another way of cremation" which is forbidden in Parsi religion.
So the use of solar panel was lessened. Now it takes four days to
dehydrate a body which otherwise used to take only four to five hours.
And during the monsoon, the panels are not very effective. But the
BPP is not willing to concede that the dokhnas should be converted
into cemeteries. This is not something new. We know that the lack of
vultures is leading to accumulation of bodies of dead persons for some
years now. But asking us to make radical changes like changing to
burial or cremation will not be easy for us conservative Parsis to
accept," says Meenu Shroff, chairperson Bombay Parsi
Panchayat. Now the divided, but normally progressive Parsi community,
will have to soon decide the matter. — MF
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