Parsis to observe Navroz today

NT Correspondent

 Bengaluru

 The Parsi community in Bengaluru will be celebrating their new year ‘Navroz’ on Tuesday.

It is celebrated with religious services at the agiary, the Zoroastrian fire temple. The faithful say prayers for the dead in the last ten days of the old year in the lead up to the New Year.

 Roshan Nariman, a Bengaluru-based Parsi woman, said that she would be attending the religious services at an agiary located across the street from her place near Shivaji Nagar. “Well, the festival is the new year for Parsis. We call the last ten days leading up to the festival ‘Pateti.’ We offer prayers for the dead during these days,” she said.

“There will be a service at the agiary right across the street at 11 am. I will be attending it,” she added. “Apart from this, we have the Jamshedi Navroz, which was celebrated back in March this year,” Nariman said. She explained that worship of the sun and the moon made up much of the worship in her religious faith.

 There are estimated to be more than 700 Parsis based in Bengaluru. The Parsi migration to Bengaluru is said to have begun back in the 1930s. The Parsi Tower of Silence located near Hebbal is the place where they dispose of their dead