Tatas Fredie Mercury and Other Bawas

The Parsis are fast disappearing. There are now only around 50000 members of the community in all of India. But since their arrival here from Central Asia somewhere between the eighth and tenth centuries the Parsis' contribution to their adopted home has been extraordinary. The history of India over the last century or so is filigreed with such contributions in every field from nuclear physics to rock and roll by names such as Dadabhai Naoroji Dinshaw Petit Homi Bhabha Sam Manekshaw Jamsetji Tata Ardeshir Godrej Cyrus Poonawalla Zubin Mehta and Farrokh Bulsara (aka Freddie Mercury). This is a revised and updated new edition - engaging and accessible - making it as the most intimate history of the Parsis by senior journalist and columnist Coomi Kapoor herself a Parsi. The book pores through the names stories achievements and the continuing success of this tiny but extraordinary minority. She delves deep into both the question of what it means to be Parsi in India as well as how the community's contributions-from tanchoi silk to chikoos-became integral to what it meant to be Indian. In Kapoor's hands the story of the Parsis becomes a rip-roaring incident-filled adventure from dominating the trade with China to being synonymous with Bombay once arguably a city defined by its Parsis from the business success of the Tatas the Mistrys the Godrejs and the Wadias to such current contributions as the manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines by the Parsi-founded Serum Institute of India.