To Boman And Beyond: Exploring The Portrayal Of The Parsi Community In Bollywood

From the dikra-dikris to the ‘MC-BC’s, we’re all at least a little familiar with Parsi colloquialisms thanks to Bollywood and Boman Irani. Parsis have a long-standing relationship with Bollywood too, from directing the first-ever Indian sound film, Alam Ara, to introducing Fearless Nadia as Hunterwali to the world. But lately, there has been a subtle shift in the relationship between Bollywood and the Parsi community. In the 1978 movie Khatta Meetha, the makers of the film added a dedication to the Parsi community before the beginning of the film, albeit in a slightly ingratiating manner, while the 2020 movie Maska, the latest in a string of oddball Parsi-centric movies, there was nothing of the sort. This is not to say that the Parsi community deserves a dedication or a disclaimer at the beginning of a movie, but to simply acknowledge that a movie was made out of respect for the community and that we would rather laugh with you, than you at us.

Bollywood has always relied on predictable stereotypes of minority groups to get its point across. From the funny paaji to the uber-religious priest, these characterisations can be both hilarious and harmful in equal measure. They miss out on opportunities to layer their characters, whether it is a sidekick or the main character, they appear one-note when these stereotypes are played up too much. There is, of course, some truth to every stereotype, but once these are ingrained in us, it is near impossible to see anything different in real life as well as reel life.

Using characters from minority communities is a way to escape the usual Bollywood setting of a traditional Hindu joint family and bypass the cultural expectations that come with it. For example, in Khatta Meetha, director Basu Chatterjee used a Parsi widower to undercut the topic of widow remarriage, which would have caused havoc in a Hindu household at the time and used it to create a hilarious narrative around the universal themes of love, family, and acceptance; making the film extremely relatable to anyone watching, regardless of creed or religion.

On the other hand, Bela Segal’s Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi uses actors Boman Irani and Farah Khan to portray two slightly socially inept Parsis getting married in their middle ages, something that is becoming increasingly more common as the days go by. But this story was one that was uniquely Parsi. While it did have themes of parental relationships, love, and life, it was choc-full of Parsi jokes, most of them inside ones, as well as all the Parsi idiosyncrasies we have come to appreciate. The film is really an exploration of the insularity of the community, especially with the relationship between Farhad Pastakia (Boman Irani), and his mother Nargis (Daisy Irani).

Following this insularity, is Homi Adajania’s Being Cyrus. Released in 2006, this is not a very well-known movie, but it shows the downside of the community being so insular. An English thriller-drama that follows Cyrus (Saif Ali Khan), and the Sethna family, Dinshaw (Naseeruddin Shah), Katy (Dimple Kapadia), and Farrokh (Boman Irani). Through a tangled web of lies, secret affairs, and murder, we see just how dysfunctional a Parsi family can get.

Another film that is possibly the most oddball of them all, is Sooni Taraporevala’s Little Zizou, featuring the Pressvalas and the Khodaijis, who go through the trials and tribulations of being two warring baug (Parsi colony) families who eventually learn to come to terms with each other.

Maybe it is through these films that we have realised that the closeness and insularity of our community is the root cause that breeds the strange characters that we do in fact know in real life. Not quite on the level of Being Cyrus, but definitely climbing towards Little Zizou and Shirin-Farhad.

Apart from these examples of truly great portrayals, lies a slightly more insidious caricature of your regular run-of-the-mill Parsi. It is an exaggerated portrayal of clichéd stereotypes, with the character speaking in a terrible mix of Gujarati, English, Hindi, and on occasion, Marathi, with a slightly British-tinged accent for some reason. It is an oversimplification of our characteristics that hurts us more in the long run. I’m unsure if we should either be ‘grateful’ for the representation these films give us, or whether we should be greedy. Greedy for a more rich representation of not only the Parsi community but also other minority communities, stories that are told for them, by them, and of them. Because what even is art, if not the inclusion of everyone that contributes to making it?

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