While visiting Hua Hin, a coastal city, south of Bangkok, I attended a seminar conducted by a Bhikkhuni (Buddhist nun) who spoke on why human beings are different from each other. Here is a gist of what she explained… The gross body of each human being is composed of five elements and since everybody has…
In all religions and cultures, there’s the belief of a specific deity behind the rains. In the Vedic tradition, yagnas are performed to invoke the rain-God. In our Zoroastrianism, we invoke Teshtar Tir Yazad. Similarly, while we were touring South Africa, a few years ago, a lady who was a mystic, told us about a…
The first beat of the heart means life and its last beat means death. The medium that the heart uses to act upon our body is blood, which combines with the breath to carry the life-principal, or prana, building up and maintaining the body in its endless circulations throughout life. Physiologically, the heart is the…
A shocking head-line in the Hindustan Times of August 28, 2016 reads, “Most divorces among Parsis due to adultery.” Parsis never fail to amaze! The report goes on to say, “Adultery is the most common reason for divorce.” This report is based on a thorough examination of statistics and facts pertaining to the Parsi Matrimonial…
Last week, our External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj criticised Bollywood celebrities like Amir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan who opted for ‘surrogacy’ for making this procedure ‘fashionable’. This article is neither for nor against surrogacy – who are we to judge other people’s needs and compulsions? What is worrying is that surrogacy has become a…
Previous generations had a somewhat shorter life-expectancy compared to today’s but they led happy and contended lives compared to today’s stressed-out-in the lap-of- luxury generation. We live longer since science has pulled back the barriers of death but what is the quality of those extra years of life? What modern science cannot cure, it merely…
Before I start this article, I must say that ‘Reincarnation’ has been a rather controversial subject with the Zoroastrians. Why so? Because our Priest-class and some scholars say there is no reincarnation in Zoroastrianism. Some base their dissent on actual study of the scriptures whereas many just go along because the priests says so. However,…
And so it came to pass (sounds Biblical) that our dear Meherbai received an invitation to her old girls’ association from her school. The invite was for the ex-students along with their respective spouses. Meherbai was overjoyed while her bitter-half, Meherwanji said, “Your friends will die with envy when they see you. You have the…
Hindi films have evolved over the last fifty to sixty years. Old Hindi films had lots of court scenes in which the real hero was the judge with his famous prop – the ‘hammer’. The heroine would faint in the witness-box (remember Suchitra Sen in ‘Mamta’?) and everyone would panic loudly. All that the judge…
Remember the good old days when eating a huge Birthday cake over two days, all by yourself, was not a cardinal sin? Why one cake? Fifty years ago, during the last trimester of my first pregnancy, I could polish off two over two to three days. Those fantastic days of childhood, when breakfast with bapaiji…
Is there any form of life beyond our planet Earth? And if there is, are those forms, creatures and people, more advanced and evolved than us? A fascinating lecture on extra-terrestrial life was organised in the city of Pune some time ago by the ‘Inter City University Centre of Astrophysics’. The main speaker was the…