Tarapore: A Parsi heritage village?

My first thoughts on visiting Tarapore were, hey, I have to shoot my film on India’s dwindling Parsi population here. My very next thoughts were, why can’t someone preserve this place as a heritage village?

I had come to Tarapore after a month or two of exploring small towns and villages in the state of Maharashtra where Parsis had once flourished but lately had been reduced to insignificance. All of them were places where the Parsis had followed the British – either the army or the railways – in search of business and employment. In these places, I would find a fire-temple (usually with a lock on the door), one or two surviving Parsi businesses and little else.  But Tarapore was different.

Tarapore is just south of the Gujarat coast where the Parsis first landed in India. It probably was one of the early Parsi settlements (Sanjan, the site of the first landing, is barely 50 km away). What I found here was missing in the other places I visited – a Parsi character.

Tarapore was home to 300-400 Parsis till the 1930’s. In the 1970’s, the community there was still surviving, albeit in drastically reduced numbers. The 1980’s sounded its death-knell. The tower of silence fell into disuse. The fire-temple would function only sporadically. Older residents died, younger ones who had migrated to Mumbai and elsewhere has lesser reason to visit frequently. Houses remained locked up, either to crumble away or be encroached upon.

When I visited Tarapore in 2005, I found the Parsiwad, the village’s Parsi quarter, almost deserted. The tower of silence had been vandalized with lewd graffiti. The fire-temple and the dharamsala, the Parsi traveller’s rest-house, though had been renovated and were functioning.

It struck me then, that in a distance of a kilometre or two, the village had all the artefacts to showcase the traditional Parsi way of life to visitors. If a conservation group got together, restored the houses, the fire-temple, the tower of silence, the rest-house et al, it could become a living museum, and with Mumbai just a two-hour drive away, even a tourist attraction.

It was just a passing thought at that time. Four years later, I visited the Skansen museum in Stockholm, Sweden. Skansen is an open-air museum. On exhibit are Sweden’s traditional homes and villages, actual structures transported brick by brick before they are lost to posterity. A stroll through Skansen is a walk down centuries of Swedish culture.

Tarapore could easily become something similar.

Yes, it will take some effort. It will require the co-operation of community trusts in the village (they manage the community properties) and the heirs of deceased residents (they now own the homes). Restoration will be expensive. And making the heritage tour a memorable experience (like Skansen) will be a challenge. But Skansen shows us that it’s possible. All it needs is some will.

It’s now 10 years since I made my film on Tarapore. But one thought persists. Why can’t someone preserve it as a heritage village?