Parsis, the Zoroastrians of India : a photographic journey, 1980-2000

The result of a 20 year labor of love, photographer and screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala's Parsis: The Zoroastrians of India offers an insiders view of how the Parsis, a religious and ethnic minority of India and the South Asian diaspora who follow the religion of Zoroastrianism, endure today. UNESCO recently celebrated 3000 years of Zoroastrian culture. Today, the Parsis are a proud but often misunderstood religious minority, small in number but significant in influence - the community has produced many well-known leaders and artists, including the world-renowned conductor, Zubin Mehta; the late rock singer Freddy Mercury, of Queen; and the international award-winning author, Rohinton Mistry. As a people, the Parsis are highly literate and educated, comprising one of India's most wealthy and urbanized communities, yet they are also the smallest. They also follow what many would consider Stone Age rituals: perhaps most notably, leaving their dead out in specially designed open air towers for vultures to devour. The words and images in Taraporevala's unique book chronicle, for the first time, the faces, voices, and unique culture of the Parsis - a community of intense contradictions.