Growing up in a cosmopolitan neighborhood resulted
in an awareness of traditions and taboos of all communities
Farrukh Dhondy
I spent my childhood and teenage years in Poona in what was a very mixed, cosmopolitan neighborhood with a very dominant Parsi or Zoroastrian presence. On our Sachapir Street, every second house was inhabited on either side by a Parsi or "Irani” family. My mamawaji’s (maternal grandfather) house, a tiled roof bungalow, divided through its length, from street to backyard, into two houses, mirror reflections of each other, was inhabited on one side by my grandad and two maiden aunts, masis — my mother’s sisters — and on the other by the Mehta family.
On the other side of our tiled......