PT Writer Ruby In Demand!
Dear Editor,
Congratulations on giving us meaningful articles like the one on ‘Navratri’. Your writer, Ruby Lilaowala has even exceeded her high standards by this very beautiful article. Her language and knowledge is amazing.
Even my friends think that Ruby is Parsi media’s best writer. Now please tell her to write a humourous piece. ‘Meherbai’ has not appeared for a long time – gone on vacation?
God Bless you!
Dinaz Tantra

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In Support Of BPP
Dear Editor,
The BPP in the past was run more like an Estate Agency than a Trust. There were brokers who brokered BPP flats. If you had money you were offered a list of houses available but if you had no money they would get a thumbs down. After a long time, we witnessed flats being allotted without a having to pay a Crore of Rupees!! This is a welcome sign.
Trustees now work past midnight and you can, on Tuesdays, see people being allotted time to meet Trustees. The staff is very cooperative and don’t speak with attitude. To sum it up, BPP is now headed in the right direction with a good team of people and is run professionally by a Chairman who comes from a professional background. Visit the BPP and see the difference!
I therefore beseech all my humdins to act now and not allow the ongoing political and legal drama to put a wrench in the works. Let’s come together because if we don’t act and stop this drama now, we will be looking at yet another seven years ban on house allotments! Let’s get together and work towards the progress of our community and happiness of our community members.
Arzan J. Ghadially

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Community Advice
Dear Editor,
The statistics brought out by Mr. Dinshaw Tamboly in the Parsi Times dated 1st October, 2016, is indeed alarming. At various Forums of the community in particular and the Government at large, this matter has been deliberated. With the assistance of the Government of India, the community is fortunate to have a scheme like Jiyo Parsi for increasing our birth rate, for which we should be indeed grateful.
Having said the above, we as a community need to retrospect why the young married couples have just one child. This is the latest worrying phenomenon. There are a number of reasons, small houses, inflation, crèche, but above all the cost of education. Naturally, all parents would like to give the best for their children and education is the pivotal element for a better life to their kids…and why not! Over the many years, our community through the Bombay Parsi Panchayat (BPP) has put its many resources, rational to providing housing to our people. We now require to come together for generating our means, both intellectually and financially on educating our youngsters.

We are a small community and surely we can develop a database of our children, youth, middle-age and elders. This would not be difficult since we are a small community and births are recorded at BPP. We should try to utilize this data to find out more details on the children and youth. We should then follow their educational growth-nursery onwards to assist them to develop in their respective field/interest. Here I would mention that more help is required for average students rather than the rank holders. This process should be from nursery to professional academic, irrespective of status. In case this facility is not required for a child, the same could be recorded accordingly. The parents of our youth today are working professionals trying to make ends meet along with their own career growth. We are all aware of the cost of education both at school and University level, and more so at the professional level. The youth requires encouragement and assistance:
Financial assistance: We have number of Parsi Trusts (list is also available on Internet, which needs to be updated) who provide educational assistance. But when actually one tries to obtain assistance it is a nightmare. Even though the individuals run from pillar to post to get the forms collected, and filled with absurd information and then submit them along with plenty of documents, the Trust is still not satisfied and wants more meaningless documentation!

The worst criterion is for parents to attach their salary details. With both parents earning, they may be in high middle class category so they are rejected with a vague reason you can afford. An applicant is never aware of a Trust policy in giving financial assistance, one has to except the decision of the authority concerned. Above all, one should not forget the financial burden of tuitions and classes. Also there are working persons who would like to undertake further studies. They also require encouragement and support.

Therefore would suggest: Creating a proper database of existing Parsi Trusts who give educational benefits. With administrative help should be able to get further information on the Criteria / Policy of these Trusts. This will be useful for the applicant to discuss his case, as (sorry to say) most of these benefits are given to influential and highly referred persons. This is of course a very tedious process but a start needs to be taken. The funds and human energy are going to other irresponsible issues.

It may be that this exercise has been already initiated by an individual / organization, if so this should be publicized. The young parents require help to bring up their children in all aspects of life and in today’s competitive world, they require the Community’s backing.
Meher Edibam