Soon after the turn of the 20th century young Naoroji Madon, a smart, ambitious and scrupulously honest Parsi, scion of a Navsari family, left Bombay and travelled to Rangoon to seek his fortune. A few years later he met and married Tehmina, a vivacious Bombay girl, daughter of Dr Pestonjee Pavri and Khorshedbai (née Marzban, an ancestor of the late playwright Adi Marzban), who had authored two books — Dukh Nivaaran (eradicating suffering) and Guthan Kalaa (art of knitting).
The couple, always Naval and Tehmy to each other, were very much in love and had two wonderful children, a daughter, Sarah, and a son, Pessie (named after his grandfather but he chose to spell his surname as Madan). They enjoyed a happy and peaceful family and social life in Rangoon together with a number of other resident Parsi, Burmese and British families.
Pessie was an exceptionally brilliant boy, having obtained BSc Honors degrees in physics and chemistry from Rangoon University. Sarah was a versatile and highly perceptive girl who became a medical doctor while simultaneously studying music, playing on the piano the compositions of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and other notables.
Dr Sarah Dastoor (l) and Brig Pessie Madan
Naoroji served in the Rangoon unit of M/s Latham Black and Co, the British wholesale trading firm where, as a confidential market adviser, he would gather information on retail traders who purchased bales of cloth from the company. Based on that, he would provide highly valued advice on the quantity to be supplied to them.
Naoroji built two houses in Rangoon — Kennedy House and Firdaus. The former was near the lovely Kandawgyi Lake (also known as the Royal Lake) and the famous Shwe Dagon Pagoda. Along with them at Kennedy House lived as tenants, the Nariman family. Sarah used to give piano lessons to Fali, their little boy who later became an outstanding legal legend.
Then in 1942 tragedy struck, unexpectedly, with the invasion of Burma by the Japanese who began to bomb Rangoon. The high-spirited and courageous Tehmina would lead the Parsi families into the trenches at the first wail of the cautionary air-raid sirens.
Pessie joined the then British army while Naoroji, Tehmina and Sarah left their beloved home and crossed over to India as refugees, traveling in bullock carts over the treacherous mountain passes along with a number of Parsi and other families. Things were not easy for them, with Naoroji dying of Hodgkin’s disease shortly after their arrival in Bombay.
Pessie continued in the army, by then the Indian Army, and was sent to England with his family shortly after his marriage to Shireen study radar and electronics. He later worked at the E.M.E. (Electrical and Mechanical Engineering) corps at Kirkee, Poona and at Secunderabad, then at the army workshops at Agra, and the Ministry of Defence Production, Delhi under defense minister V. K. Krishna Menon at the time of the great betrayal of India by China. He was later selected by the army to be the founder chairman and managing director of a public sector company, Gujarat Communications and Electronics (GCEL) and was based in Baroda for six years.
Clockwise from top l: Tehmina, Naoroji, Sarah and
Pessie Madon in Rangoon; Shireen and Pessie; Sarah
Pessie Madan with then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at the inauguration of the
Bharat Electronics Limited factory at Ghaziabad; l: cover of autobiography
The golden years were yet to come — Pessie was posted by the army as officer on special duty at Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Bangalore, and stayed on as general manager after retirement from the army with the rank of brigadier. He was entrusted with the responsibility of heading the project for the construction and commissioning of the second BEL factory at Ghaziabad. His hard-earned success was fittingly recognized when he was awarded the Padma Shri in 1975. During this time he met the senior management of Tata Electric Companies and after completion of the work at BEL was appointed electronics adviser at their manufacturing division at Bangalore, now known as Strategic Electronics Division, which specializes in the manufacture of equipment and machinery for defence. He was also a much sought after adviser to the Government of India in the electronics and telecommunications fields.
A splendid raconteur, Pessie had a spiritual streak in him which was often hidden by all the army and high-tech glamor of the world he lived in. He would come to Bombay from Bangalore on business trips and unfailingly drop in to meet his sister whom he loved dearly. On one such visit he asked his nephew a difficult question. Not knowing the answer, the latter colloquially replied, "God knows, mama (maternal uncle).” Pessie, with a mischievous grin responded: "Dikra (son), God knows, but He won’t tell!” It was only after the loud and appreciative laughter had died down that the nephew grasped the inner, quasi-mystical significance of Pessie’s words.
And Sarah? She worked at the Haffkine Institute for a while and then, one day Dr Keki Masani, one of the pioneers of psychiatry in India, son of Sir Rustom Masani and a good friend of her doctor husband, Gustad, met and asked: "Kem, Gustad, aaj kaal Sarah su karéch (Well, Gustad, what is Sarah doing these days)?” Masani knew she too was a qualified doctor. Gustad replied she was at home, looking after their four-year-old son. "I am starting a two-year postgraduate diploma program in psychiatry at Bombay University, the first such course in India. It is to be called Diploma in Psychological Medicine (DPM). Would she be interested?”
Gustad mulled over this and said: "I’ll ask her.” But he was genuinely excited and so was Sarah when he shared the information with her. She said "Yes!” reassured no doubt by the presence of her thoroughly capable mother Tehmina in the house to look after her little boy while she attended lectures and subsequently work.
Along with her good friend Dr Goolbanoo Damania, Sarah was part of the very first batch of India-qualified DPMs. They became probably the first women doctors in India to earn this distinction. Sarah enjoyed the wholehearted encouragement of Gustad, without whose constant and loving support she would perhaps have never ventured forth on her challenging journey.
After a few years at the J. J. Hospital’s Department of Psychiatry, Sarah joined the Bombay Samaritans at Sodality House (now Seva Niketan) in Byculla as its psychiatrist. Among its trustees were Najoo Bhabha and the late Nadir Dinshaw. In course of time, Sarah rose to be director. She was committed to counseling troubled people who often contemplated suicide. Agitated and disturbed people who approached the Samaritans for help were referred to her band of social workers and volunteers. She tended to those cases that needed psychiatric medication and/or psychotherapy. For many years Prof (Dr) Katy Gundevia of Jiyo Parsi was one of Sarah’s most staunch collaborators at the Samaritans.
Suicide prevention became a spiritual vocation that Sarah passionately espoused with all her mind, heart and soul. She was with the Samaritans for 40 years. The noble and selfless work of the organization was recognized and richly rewarded when the Dorab Tata Trust under the late Russi Lala granted the Samaritans a generous donation.
The Society of Jesus, Catholic priests at Sodality House were extraordinarily generous — they allowed the Samaritans to use the first floor without charging a penny by way of rent for at least three decades.
Despite her signal service to the Samaritans Sarah remained low key and self-effacing. She never developed much of a private practice as she was embarrassed to charge her very modest professional fees when she called patients home for treatment; she would instead direct them to go the Samaritans where they were treated free of charge. She just wanted to help people. She preferred psychotherapy to drugs and ECT (electroconvulsive therapy), and forged a warm human connect with her patients and their relatives. On one occasion a violent and feared maniac was brought in chains by the police for treatment. The man immediately became like a child when he saw Sarah and fell at her feet; onlookers at the Samartans were thunderstruck at witnessing the transformation.
With her uncanny perception she would immediately notice when a patient or relatives were engaged in splitting hairs as it were by distinguishing between two behavioral situations without any significant difference. They would often resort to this ploy to justify their actions. Sarah would dismiss this with a wave of the hand, saying: "Same sort, different kind.” Other commonly offered advice to patients and their families was: "Least said, soonest mended.” This was to smoothen and calm what could otherwise soon evolve into an unpleasant confrontation.
Such were Sarah and Pessie of the Madon family of Rangoon. And Gustad too, the best of the Dastoor family of Dadar, Bombay — my beloved late mother, maternal uncle and father!