Pappa's day, by our calendar
Our calendar has no leap years, so Pappa's anniversary creeps a little earlier through the English calendar every few years. This year it fell yesterday.
The proper ceremonies were done for him by a priest at the Zoroastrian Centre in London, and I watched on my phone propped against the bread bin, scarf over my hair. At home I did what I know. Fresh oil in the divo (steel thali, nowhere near the curtains, as ever), a jar of white tuberoses, a cup of tea made the way he took it, far too sweet, and the Ashem Vohu and Yatha Ahu Vairyo for him, slowly, the way he taught me when I was six and fidgeting.
He used to say prayers aren't for asking. They're for keeping the line open. So I kept the line open for an hour. Then I drank his tea, because he would have been offended if I'd poured it away.
Watching the divo
We Zoroastrians don't really have 'meditation' the way my yoga friends mean it. But we do have fire, and we do have quiet.
In the evenings I light the divo: a little glass of water with a layer of oil floating on top and a cotton wick in a tin float. It sits on a steel thali on the kitchen shelf, nowhere near the curtains, and I never leave the room while it's lit. The cat has been informed.
Then I simply sit and look at it while my tea cools. For us, fire is a symbol of Ahura Mazda's light and of asha, truth and right order. Ten minutes with the flame and I remember which side I'm trying to be on.
Kusti before the kettle
Before the kettle goes on, before the phone, before anything: wash hands and face, stand facing the light (the sun if Leicester allows, which is rarely, otherwise the little divo lamp on its steel tray), untie my kusti and tie it again while I say the prayers. The cord goes three times around the waist, for good thoughts, good words, good deeds. Two knots in front, two at the back.
My mother taught me when I was seven, at my navjote. Mostly I was worried about getting my new white sudreh stained. Thirty-four years later the whole thing takes three minutes and it is the only time of day nobody asks me for anything.
The kettle, as always, can wait.
Chalk on the doorstep
Every morning, after kusti and before work, I do the chalk. Parsi women have drawn designs on the doorstep for generations: you fill a little tin punched with holes with white chalk powder, tap it along the threshold, and the pattern falls through. Fish for good luck, flowers, neat rows of dots.
My mother did hers in Bombay on a stone step polished by eighty years of feet. I do mine on a concrete step in Leicester that the postman walks through by half nine. It doesn't matter. It's a welcome, a blessing on whoever crosses, and a reminder to start the day with something beautiful, even if it only lasts until the first delivery.
My neighbour's boy thinks it's for hopscotch. I've decided not to correct him.