
A Bid to Maintain One of the World’s Oldest Culinary Traditions - rmason
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/t-magazine/parsi-food.html
======
sandGorgon
It's a beautiful article. Most Parsi food joints in Mumbai are in the old
colonial area called "Fort". It is an area that you can walk around unlike
most of Mumbai.

Incidentally it is also India's financial capital with the main offices of the
Reserve Bank of India in that area.

If you are ever in Mumbai, I strongly recommend walking around in Fort and
taking in the sights and just eating your way through the place.

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somberi
For some context on how close to vanishing the community is (granted, by their
own strict definition on who a Parsi is), please see:

[https://www.economist.com/node/21561946/all-
comments?page=1](https://www.economist.com/node/21561946/all-comments?page=1)
(Archive link - [https://archive.is/S9pkF](https://archive.is/S9pkF) )

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9nGQluzmnq3M
Unpopular opinion: the value of a culture is largely in the novelty it can
offer to others. (This is explained in the article itself with the "adding
sugar to milk" parable.)

So the worthwhile parts of Parsi culture, such as the food, will be preserved
by other non-Parsis, and despite the doomsday tones of the article this is
already happening with chains like Sodabottleopenerwala [1] carrying the
torch. Sure, it will be mutated and transformed in the process, but it will
still enrich the fabric of the world, in the way that austere Japanese sushi
has paved the way for crispy tiger rolls in the United States.

[1]
[https://www.sodabottleopenerwala.in/](https://www.sodabottleopenerwala.in/)

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nimbius
>you must come on a Wednesday, and you must be invited. Only members and their
guests are permitted to enter, and membership is granted only to Parsis.

I for one am not moved to preserve such an exclusionary cuisine. Crap like
this is why creative commons, copyleft, and the GPL came into existence.

~~~
bruth
My comment adds no value to the thread but are you really applying the concept
of software licenses to an eatery? This is a classic technique for generating
buzz and demand. Many many restaurants do it. People are fine with it, no harm
is done. It does not violate any rights. Owners can choose to serve whom they
please.

~~~
rayiner
If a restaurant did it in the US, it would be illegal discrimination on the
basis of national origin. This particular restaurant would only fly depending
on whether they could qualify as a private club exempt from the Civil Rights
Act.

~~~
yumraj
> Only members and their guests are permitted to enter, and membership is
> granted only to Parsis.

Implies that it is very much a private club.

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jgust
Not related to the article, so feel free to downvote.

I had to open this in Safari and "capture" it in reading mode before the page
loaded fully to read the full article. Sort of anti-user.

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dr_dshiv
Parsis are amazing. Zoroaster! Incredible.

I can't believe how much cultural destruction occurs today -- simply through
forces of homogenisation.

~~~
tathougies
The idea that any culture is in and of itself worth preserving despite members
of that culture not reproducing or passing that on morally questionable. It
finds its greatest support today (in America at least) in the form of white
supremacist groups responding to 'white genocide'. I'll pass, thanks. If the
farsis do not preserve their culture, we do not owe it to them to do so.
They'll join the ranks of thousands, if not millions, of respectable cultures
that no longer exist today.

Oh well... thus is the nature of time and impermanence.

~~~
iak8god
Hasn't white supremacy been a leading cause of cultural extinctions at least
since the age of imperialism?

> If the farsis do not preserve their culture, we do not owe it to them to do
> so.

I don't feel I owe anything to this group, but we owe it to humanity to
preserve a diversity of ways to be in and think about this world.

~~~
tathougies
Yes and before that it was Mongolian supremacy and before that parsi
supremacy. In other words, cultures die and new ones form. We do not owe it to
the world to preserve existing diversity. Sure take down artificial barriers
to societal continuity for those who want it. That's human rights not
particular to any group of people. But diversity is not something to be
preserved. That's a regressively conservative approach to diversity and stems
from a lack of appreciation of the true source of diversity: having a shit ton
of people

~~~
iak8god
> We do not owe it to the world to preserve existing diversity.

How about if we compromise and just stop actively destroying it?

> But diversity is not something to be preserved.

Well, I want it to be preserved. The world becomes a much sadder and less
interesting place if we all think and behave the same.

~~~
tathougies
> Well, I want it to be preserved. The world becomes a much sadder and less
> interesting place if we all think and behave the same.

You misunderstand. You dont want diversity. You cannot advocate for diversity
when you simultaneously advocate for differences to remain the same. The world
is naturally diverse because there are 7 billion people with 7 billion unique
personalities. Attempting to artificially keep a dying culture alive does not
cultivate diversity but rather outdated customs.

~~~
dr_dshiv
On principle, monocultures are not desirable as compared to diverse cultures.
Resilience. Thus, bias towards preservation of diversity.

~~~
tathougies
The idea that the United States (or substitute any other large country, such
as China, India, Brazil, etc), for example, is a monoculture is laughable. The
death of a no- longer-significant culture signals neither a lack of external
diversity nor an inability for diversity to arise again.

I've already said it... the way you get diversity is by having more people. In
that regard, we're doing just fine. In the unlikely event that literally every
person ends up following the same culture (which again, is not going to
happen, despite the false dichotomy you are trying really hard to set up), I
can guarantee you that in a few years, people's ideas will begin to diverge,
and in a few decades, there will once again be factions, and in a few
centuries, there will be mutually unintelligible cultures.

That is how the world works. It worked when zoroastrianism was the predominant
religion for a large portion of the world, when its monoculture arguably gave
rise to things like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and it will work in the
future. In the meantime, we need not take any drastic action to ensure the
survival of a culture that not even its inhabitants want to keep alive in any
practical sense.

~~~
dr_dshiv
We aren't discussing "drastic action to ensure the survival of a culture". We
are discussing principles of value -- and I assert that functional diversity
is intrinsically valuable (unless and until the diversity tears the broader
system apart, resulting in less functional diversity).

On the face of it, more people does not automatically equal more cultural
diversity. What's your argument?

To be clear: Walmart is a monoculture when it destroys diverse town centers in
favour of standardized parking-malls.

But the argument is subtle -- why isn't the diversity of product offerings at
Walmart sufficient to offset the diversity of town centers? I don't have a
ready answer, but I intuitively believe that a nation of Walmarts isnt as
strong a nation of main streets.

~~~
tathougies
> To be clear: Walmart is a monoculture when it destroys diverse town centers
> in favour of standardized parking-malls.

Apples and oranges. Walmart is not a culture. Walmart is a company. Last I
checked, Zoroastrianism and parsi culture is a human culture, not a for-profit
entity.

> We are discussing principles of value -- and I assert that functional
> diversity is intrinsically valuable (unless and until the diversity tears
> the broader system apart, resulting in less functional diversity).

I highly disagree. Individuals are valuable. Cultures are valuable and should
be respected as long as individuals subscribe to it (and they are within
reason). However, cultures as a whole do not have any rights in aggregate that
individuals do not have. Attempting to maintain cultural diversity is a form
of totalitarianism, basically fascism by another name.

If no individual can sustain their culture, no one owes it to them to try.

Look, I belong to a cultural group that is dying out due to a diaspora and
intermarriage (see the documentary bottle masala in moile). I like people with
my customs, but other than the fact that I feel more familiar with people like
my family, I recognize there is no inherent value in my culture, and I
actually oppose things like coercing children to marry within the group out of
some notion of group identity. Of course, in our case, there are a few
governmental barriers that ought to be taken down. But, if no one wants to
marry or continue the customs, no one should be forced to and it's insanely
weird to have outsiders who were not raised in it to all of a sudden decide
they want to take part. Anyway, it's not like any culture completely dies out.
As groups intermingle, ideas are mixed, and good ones continued. New cultures
will form and new identities forged. That's called dynamic society, and should
be the goal. A society in which all cultures stay the same is basically an
overly traditionalistic, totalitarian one.

Anyway, I'm kinda done pontificating here. It's clear we value different
things. I value dynamicism, creation, and cultural progress, and you want all
cultural divisions to remain the same for the foreseeable future and view any
intermingling as a form of cultural destruction. I'm afraid the viewpoints
can't really be harmonized.

~~~
dr_dshiv
>"you want all cultural divisions to remain the same for the foreseeable
future and view any intermingling as a form of cultural destruction."

You have deceived yourself, good sir. I don't know why, but I'd reflect on it
for your sake.

------
Iwan-Zotow
Cannibalism?

"You two fight to the death and I'll cook the loser."

