If there’s one community that fully understands the importance of living life king size, celebrating the small moments, the big ones, the inane ones, it’s got to us Parsis! We don’t simply welcome a New Year, we celebrate it, guns blazing, firing on all cylinders.
It doesn’t matter how the year started, it’s certainly not our problem at the halfway mark into the year, how the rest is going to unfold. What matters today is how to make our present epic, immaterial of the circumstances surrounding us. Our dreams may take longer, our plans may go unabashedly off-script. The stock market may crash, our long-term investments commodities, futures and opportunities may sink as disastrously and surprisingly as the Titanic… But, there’s nothing that resilience and a double shot of whiskey will not cure. So, keep your spirits up and flowing, cause every Navroz simply means a new beginning. Surprises that life keeps throwing our way are simply unexpected blessings disguised as inconveniences.
It’s Navroz and a day of gatherings, whether you choose to sit around the family table with friends or family, or prefer a meal at that fancy restaurant, the conversations will be the same. Whether you have an opinion on world politics or simply Baug politics, the arguments will decidedly, be passionate, heated and loud. We know no other way! We will debate for twenty minutes on the correct way to make dhansak, then spend another ten on Trump Baba and US policies, (be honest, his rankings far outnumber any conversations presently on our very own BPP!). Undoubtedly, we will once again discuss the BPP and their initiative of converting all Leave and Licenses to Tenancy, but the topic now as weary as a twice-told tale. We will talk and argue as ardently on the FIFA games as we do our ZPL (Zoroastrian Premiere League); Continue complaining about fuel cost, the shortage of water and the weather regardless of the season, and still end the day sharing desserts together. After all, there’s a certain comfort in knowing that friends or frenemies, when calories are shared, the cholesterol and guilt is too!
Navroz is not about perfection, it’s about celebration. Celebrating the big and the small, the moments, the days, the years that make this book of ours a bit more colourful, exciting. May each chapter in your book of life, be a page-turner. May we continue to cherish our traditions while embracing the new, the unknown, the future with our unique brand of ‘I will not mind my own business curiosity’. Let that lingering hope dwell in every beating Parsi heart, that someday somewhere, somehow some unknown relative may crawl out of the woodwork behesting his land and fortune to you, his sole survivor! It is your story, your life, your dream so who are we to judge?
On a more serious note, may good fortune follow you! May health, happiness and peace keep you warm all day, every day. May humour surround your days with gentle affection. Let your hearts be full and your plates fuller with Sali Boti, Sas-ni-Macchi, Palao Dal and more. Remember you are Parsi, so no matter how much food has already been served, there’s always room for lagan-nu-custard. Let choi and cheer punctuate the hours in your day.
Let this New Year be the year of possibilities. Possibilities do not usually arrive with fireworks or grand announcements, more often, they sneak in through the back door wearing bedroom slippers and hoping nobody notices! It hides in impulsive decisions, unexpected phone calls, wrong turns, delayed flights and those wonderfully inconvenient moments that completely rewrite our plans. If life unfolded exactly according to schedule, it would be about as exciting as watching paint dry. Instead, it delights in throwing us delightful curveballs. Many of our greatest blessings arrived disguised as setbacks, detours or downright disasters. Looking back, those twists often became our finest adventures. So, embrace the unexpected. After all, life’s best scriptwriter has always been surprise itself.
Everything around us continues to change at an astonishing pace. Artificial intelligence can create, write. Our watches tell us how many steps we need to complete. Our phones remind us about special days and how little sleep you’ve had. Luckily while the world took its time catching up, us Parsis already had a model who did it all – ‘The Wife’. Long before you had Siri, we had Shirin!
Let this New Year be the perfect season for endless possibilities. Regardless of what the past year has brought us – joy, success, chaos, war, destruction, a circus and a clown, it has served a purpose to make us more aware, wiser and a little less naïve about the truth of human nature. This Navroz, as we stand on the intersection of reflection and anticipation, let us look back with gratitude for the memories that made us smile, the lessons that made us stronger. As the horizon of possibilities stands before us, let us chart our way to a brighter and more amazing year ahead! Navroz Mubarak!
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