Bawas have the last laugh

Sooni Taraporevala and Meher Marfatia’s Parsi Bol 2, a lexicon of endearments, advice and jabs is an ode to the idiosyncrasies of the Gujarati Parsi community.

What started as an exchange of quirky Parsi idioms between two friends has now turned into a one-of-a-kind crowd-sourced archive. Parsi Bol 2, the second book by screenwriter and photographer Sooni Taraporevala and her journalist friend Meher Marfatia has just hit the shelves and laughter continues. Egged on by the success of their first book, the Parsi ladies have come up with their second chronicle of everyday phrases, idioms and insults used by the bawa community. “It was a book waiting to happen,” Sooni says, even though they had never planned on it. Way back in 2012, when the two were working on Meher’s coffee table book, Laughter In The House, that features photographs taken by Sooni, the idea for Parsi Bol was born. It was during a discussion the two were having at that time, that Sooni used an unusual Parsi phrase. It was at that moment that they actually began to toy with the idea of a book on Parsi colloquialisms.

“We simply thought of taking these idioms beyond our everyday exchanges,” says Meher. Parsi Bol 2, which was released only last week, comes with an audio CD recorded by Boman Irani, Bomi and Dolly Dottiwala to help acquaint the readers to the nuances of the pronunciations. This book also contains idioms from the first book that was published in 2013. Meher says, “We didn’t expect the first book to get so popular. In fact, we ran out of print in the first six months. So, it made sense to collate the first book into the second since we were still getting requests for the first volume.”

While compiling the first book, the authors had created an email ID for fellow Parsis to send in their contributions. They retained the method for the second book too. Add to that, Parsi publications such as Parsiana, Jam-e-Jamshed and Hamazor put the word out. Both Sooni and Meher even shared their postal addresses and personal phone numbers for people to send in contributions through hand-written snail mail and WhatsApp texts. Meher says, “The community has played a huge role in making the book a reality. We added whatever we could remember through our conversations. And once we spread the word, we received a massive response from others in our community.”

Parsi Bol 2 includes some amusing colloquialisms such furniture bahr, which means to the show of cleavage, nuseeb ma doodhee or to achieve nothing in life, surrah chhuh noh kato that stands for impotent and the curious Kemps Corner ver avee guya which means ‘near death’. Putting together the book was a Herculean task, Sooni says. The book takes a Parsi Gujarati idiom and adds English translation, transliteration, and finally the figurative meaning. Sifting through the phrases, culling out the repeat idioms — as the crowd-sourced affair often meant various interpretation of the same idiom — dissecting the Gujarati idiom into English were large challenges to overcome. Sooni says, “What helped is the fact that we were always laughing while working on it.” And if there was a category of terms that was consciously chucked out of the list, it was the list of sexist terms, Meher adds. “We can always do away with them,” she says.

They were not the only ones working on the book. Sooni’s aunt Rutty Manekshaw had a large role to play in improvising on the text. Her vast knowledge helped them translate and verify many idiomatic expressions. Sooni says, “By the time we finished working on the book, Rutty Aunty had two nieces — Meher and me. Having her with us helped us immensely as we could make sure that only authentic phrases find a place in the book.” The quirky illustrations by Hemant Morparia and Farzana Cooper keep the text good company, or else it would have been a “completely flat book of idioms” in Sooni’s words. The book is co-published by both Sooni’s imprint Good Books and Meher’s imprint, 49/50 Books.

What has helped the book the most, Meher believes, is their everyday observations of the mundane, which makes the language as hilarious as it is today. And for this, she says, the elders in the Zorastrian community need to be thanked. “We Parsis have helped evolve the language with time. We came across this phrase, Pontiac jehvoo nakh, which means ‘nose like the front of a Pontiac’, or a nose that resembles a beak. It has been a few decades that the car has phased out. The youth may not even find it relevant today. But the phrase conveys what it has to aptly,” Meher says.

So how has the city, the home of the Parsis influenced them, we ask. Both reply with a resounding ‘no’. Meher adds, “I think the Parsis have influenced the city inherently in ways more than one. I don’t think the community is acknowledged more than it should. For us Parsis, Mumbai is our native place. How many communities can boast about that ”