"Practical, not foolhardy"
The Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) chairman Yazdi Desai has stated the BPP will not sell the premises of the Godavara Agiary but will repair it instead ("Practical, not foolhardy," Events and Personalities, Parsiana, February 7, 2019).
When I was the BPP’s chief executive officer, I visited the Agiary (like any other property) every six weeks, and was repeatedly told over 10 years that barely three or four devotees visit daily.
Some years before I joined the BPP I had suggested that languishing fire temples should be merged with the fires of functional agiaries, the properties sold or rented and the proceeds used for education, medicare, the welfare of mobeds/their widows, amelioration of the indigent and to fund entrepreneurs.
There are a large number of such agiaries across India whose fires can be merged. One religious diehard told me, "The fire speaks to the devotee, is an entity by itself, and can’t be merged."
Dastur Khurshed Dastoor was very right in suggesting the shifting of the Godavara fire, selling the building and using the proceeds for mobeds’ welfare. We have to face economic realities and move with the times.
BEHRAM T. DASTUR
The editors reply:
The objection is to merging of fires. Shifting has been done in the past and more than one consecrated fire may burn in one agiary. The Jerbai Cowasjee Dinshaw Dar-e-meher (Adenwalla Agiary) in Lonavla is a case in point.