The three Nilgiris townships of Ooty, Coonoor and Wellington (in Tamil Nadu), collectively make a picturesque hill-station, first discovered in the early 1820s. Seth Pestonji Nusserwanji Bottlewalla, the first Parsi to reach Ooty in 1829, along with brothers Jehangirji and Framji, established a general provision store, ‘Europe Shop’, which catered to the British Army. In 1831, Seth Edulji Maneckji relocated to Ooty, setting up a bakery and wine shop, marking the steady inflow of Parsis into the Nilgiris area.
Prosperous businessman, landlord, and owner of several tea and coffee plantations, Seth Pestonji Bottlewalla, owned properties across the entire Nilgiris, Calicut, Cannanore, Coimbatore and Mysore. The picturesque Aaramgah property in Ooty was originally donated by Seth Pestonji N. Bottlewalla in 1840. The extent of the Parsi population that once existed in Ooty can be gauged from the number of graves at the Parsi Aaramgah!
Seth Burjorji Dadabhoy Billimoria set up a liquor business in 1870 and also a general store selling watches, clocks, eucalyptus oil and honey. In 1894, Seth Hormusji Nowroji Hazary and his close friend Seth Kekobad Hormusji Rao came to Mettupalayam, at the foothills of the Nilgiris, as railway contractors for the Mountain Railway project, commissioned in 1897. Hormusji Hazary later owned the showroom, ‘Lampware House’, selling imported goods besides renting oil lamps and oil chandeliers, as Nilgiris still lacked electricity.
In May 1862, Framjee & Co started the daily newspaper, ‘The Neilgherry Star’, which ran for a year before being relaunched as ‘The Neilgherry Excelsior’ for the next eight years till it was taken over by its rival, ‘The South of India Observer’ in 1871. In the 1890s, Seth Rustomji Tehmulji Patel set up a dairy in Wellington to supply milk and dairy products to the British Army. It was eventually taken over by the Military. In 1912 Seth Edulji Pirojsha Sakhidas started the celebrated Cecil Hotel in Ooty, a prominent landmark for almost sixty years.
Due to absence of Parsi priests in the Nilgiris, Khan Bahadur Maneckshaw Ruttonji Dastur, a retired District and Sessions Judge of erstwhile Central Provinces, officiated as priest, serving the community from 1919 till his demise in 1945. While Behdins often performed the ‘geh-sarvanu’ rituals, Navjote and wedding ceremonies were performed by priests invited from Bombay. In the absence of a suitable hall, ceremonies were performed at different Parsi bungalows, till Seth Phiroj Muncherji Clubwala, a prosperous businessman from Madras, built a strikingly Prayer Hall at the Ooty Aaramgah in 1907, in memory of his son, Jal, who died prematurely the previous year.
Nilgiris was also home to several Parsi personalities, the most prominent being the three Parsi Commandants of the Defense Staff College – Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, Lt. Gen. Adi M. Sethna and Lt. Gen. Faridoon R. Billimoria. In addition, Admiral Jal Cursetjee also served for many years as head of ‘The Hydrographic Survey’ in Coonoor.
In 1913, Sir Ratan Tata, father of JRD Tata, bequeathed his sprawling bungalow, ‘Harrow-on-the-Hill’, along with the surrounding expansive garden, to the military to be used as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, during World War I. The refurbished bungalow today serves as the Ratan Tata Officers Holiday Home, indeed a boon to budget-conscious civilian and military travelers.
MYSORE
It was during the early 1860s that the first trickle of Parsi settlers, mainly from Calicut, Coorg, Bombay and Gujarat, started to colonize the cities of Mysore and Bangalore. The Parsi burial ground in Mysore, located at the foothills of Chamundi Hill, dates back to the 1860s. Though some of the older graves have lost their markings and remain unidentifiable, the oldest distinguishable Parsi grave is that of Seth Pestonjee N. Bottlewalla of Ooty, who died in Mysore, in December 1881, and was laid to rest close to the earliest grave.
One of the most unusual and distinct Parsi cemeteries in the world, every grave built in the 19th century resembles a Dokhma structure, a round, 4-feet high circular wall built over each grave, kept open to the sky! A similar kind of Aaramgah, with circular graves, also exists in Bhuj (Kutch), perhaps to emotionally satisfy the community’s prerequisite religious canon of Dokhmenishini.
The likes of Seth Framji Mirza, Dr. D.K. Darasha (first Parsi medical practitioner in Mysore), Seth P. Pallonji (mail contractor), Dr. Hormusji Jehangirji Bhabha (first native Inspector-General of Education and paternal grandfather of Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha), Seth Jehangir M. Mysorewalla & Seth Jehangir Writer (Hoteliers), and Seth Mancherji Cooverjee, were some of the first Parsi migrants to arrive in the Mysore and establish a Parsi Aaramgah on a small plot of land. In May 1903, the Mysore City Municipality granted additional land surrounding the first walled-in property with a total land-mass now measuring 5.125 acres for exclusive use of Parsi burial.
Seth Farrokh Irani, founder of M/s Ideal, was one of the last Sethias of Mysore, closely associated with the royal family of Mysore. His son Seth Raian F. Irani is the current President of the Mysore Parsi Anjuman, overseeing and maintaining the divine Aaramgah property.
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