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"It seems like an extreme course of action, but to be honest, it is a much kinder measure than enduring a barren life…They are my greatest little miracles,” Tanaz Noble told Parsiana about the twin children, a boy and a girl, she delivered on June 21, 2022 via in vitro fertilization (IVF). The 37-year-old resident of Port Blair (Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal) and kayaking expert who was in Bombay for the happy event spoke to Parsiana a fortnight after the babies were born. She did not want the names of the children published as "our family is worried I am exposing them to negative energy… Those who love us and accept us know their names anyway,” Noble told us.
"Even though I’m surrounded with family and love, it’s been a long struggle to get here… It was difficult for me to just fold up who I am and move to the city ‘to start a family.’ It’s exactly the same for someone to give up who they are and move to the islands to be with me… I’ve seen this pattern constantly and realized it’s not practical. And I’ve wanted to have children for the longest time. In fact, when I was in college I would joke with my friends about how I wanted seven kids.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ten years ago someone from her family suggested IVF and gave her the number of specialist Dr Anahita Pandole. "Since then I’ve been in touch with her about this…asking questions, looking at options, thinking a lot about this… And understanding that this means I’m closing the door to the possibility of a Prince Charming.” That worried her slightly, "until the first time I saw the babies and held them in my arms and against my chest. I know that I could never love anyone as much or more than I love them… So I definitely made the right decision.”
Noble mentioned the crucial decisions she had to make. "Should I request the sperm donor to be someone I know, or someone anonymous; should I insist on the donor being a Zoroastrian or not?”  The biggest and most difficult decision was whether to have an induced delivery six weeks prior to her due date, or to wait. Having developed a medical condition that could have proved detrimental to her and the children she set aside her belief that 34 weeks was too premature. "I decided to do the surgery when my doctors felt it right, and to our surprise my baby girl had a knot in her umbilical cord and if it had tightened further, could have ended badly for her. So the premature emergency delivery was never really a choice. It was the only way. I just didn’t know it at the time.”
Noble acknowledged the support of her mother Dinaz through the process and that of Pandole. "It’s important to have a strong doctor, and a loving family. And the guiding hand we call God… Coming from a place where our family are the only Zoroastrian settlers, it was rather encouraging to learn that in the operating theater my two children were brought into this world by a Zoroastrian doctor whose strength is awe-inspiring, her Zoroastrian assistant Dr Shiraz Vazifdar, a Zoroastrian anesthetist Dr Karl Vazifdar who took great care of me, and a Zoroastrian neonatologist-pediatrician Dr Cyrus Contractor whose dedication towards babies is crystal clear… All that was left was for me to trust. And by the grace of God, and all those present in that tiny room, and all the prayers by my family, (my babies) are home with me now. 

 

 

 

 

 

"I chose an anonymous Zoroastrian sperm donor because I can’t think of a more liberal and beautiful religion to be born into. What if I had girls? There is no religion that gives more equal opportunity to women than ours.” She called herself a traditionalist and added, "I evolve and adapt. I am a survivalist. My situation called for this measure, and I took it.”
Tanaz detailed her thoughts in an email to Parsiana. "Even regarding talking or writing openly about this, I have been warned that there will be many opposed to it, especially within our community and I’d have to hear awful things said to me and my family with regard to my methods… When I speak and write, it is for the friends and family who want to experience this profoundly beautiful joy of children but couldn’t for some reason or the other. Let these children come from their wombs and drink their milk. Let this be a beacon of hope for those ladies who are afraid of a barren life because they’re unable to find a suitable match. I know a lot of women who wanted to have children but never found their Prince Charming to have them with.” To them, she says, "Do what makes you happy. They’re going to talk crap about you anyway. For the ladies who have contemplated IVF but been told lies about the science to keep them ‘traditional,’ there is hope.”
A kayaking tour guide, Tanaz graduated in mass media, specializing in journalism from K. C. College, Bombay after schooling at the Lawrence School in Lovedale. She worked as a journalist in Tehelka, India Today, The Free Press Journal, Light of Andamans for about four years. "I wanted to be an insurgency reporter bringing in stories from the Northeast and Kashmir regions of conflict.” But in 2007 she returned to the Andamans after her father Kersi passed away "because there were a few local vultures trying to take everything we had away from us,” she recalled. (Kersi had initially moved his young family to Port Blair in 1984.)
Dinaz and she received death threats, she stated. "At one point I was even given 24/7 police security outside my house and now in hindsight it all sounds very cool… To detox from the madness my life had become I started training in kayaking simply because I tried it once and couldn’t stop.” She bought a couple of kayaks and began her journey as an instructor and tour guide. Among her accomplishments is an 18-hour ride in 2020 through the Ten Degree Channel that separates the Andaman and Nicobar islands from each other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As Dinaz and brother Shiraz were working in Bombay at that time, "the only locals I knew were the ones I was filing first information reports against… To add to that, I was broke… Journalism doesn’t pay; at least it didn’t in those days… So I found myself completely isolated in this massive bungalow and looking after properties which weren’t earning but instead bleeding us dry.” That was when she decided "it was time to make everything we had earn for us… So I started with turning the bungalow into a homestay, marketing our organic farm produce to the guests who stayed at home with us.”
The homestay took off when her mother returned to the Andamans. Tanaz acknowledges she is "not the warm and welcoming person” Dinaz is. Since her mother "grew up on a chikoo wadi in Dahanu, she increased the growing of spices on the family’s plantation and that boomed too… After my brother returned, with his hospitality background, he managed to make more friends, network and establish our kayaking setup better than ever before. And he brought with him his lovely wife Bakhtawar and their son Jehan.”
And now the family has grown even larger!