Why talk about the Parsi new year 4 days after it is over?

Parsi Navroze feast ordered from the Hungry Cat Kitchen.

Sunday (16th August) was the Parsi new year. Which makes it rather late to write about what we ate on that day from a SEO point of view. So why bother?

Well, during our Soka Buddhist study that morning we learnt that the key to life is continuous self improvement or working on one’s ‘human revolution.’ That each day allows one to make a fresh start, no matter what happened the previous day. Or did not happen. That there is no need to rue missed opportunities. That life is about progress.That what matters at the end is if we could advance today from where we were yesterday.

I am going to use that excellent reasoning as a segway to explain why we should treat each day as new year’s day and justify my writing about our Parsi new year feast today. Four days after the happy occasion.

I am not Parsi myself, but as you might know I am a Bengali married to one. There are two Parsi festivals on which our family gets together. One is Jamshedi Navroze/ Nowruj which is the spring equinox. The other is referred to as Navroze too and is the Parsi new year which falls in August usually. It is my wife Kainaz’s birthday month as well, so we often have two celebratory gatherings during this month.  Celebrations for us means meeting over good food and the gifts that we get from the family elders. We wear new clothes too. My mother in law goes to the fire temple near her house in the morning. The rest of the day is very secular.

Things have changed over the years. We would meet at restaurants for Navroze in the initial period after our marriage. By ‘we,’ I mean my mother in law and her brother and her sister now, with my father in law having unfortunately passed on a few years back. When daddy was around we had gone for Chinese at Mainland China, Bengali at Oh Calcutta, ‘Continental’ at places such as Mocambo, Pot Pourri, Indigo Deli, Cafe Royal, Restaurant 5 and Gaylord and a couple of times for Parsi food at the Parsi Gymkhana and Elphinstone Club.

K and I have been married for 18 years. The centre of our meets shifted to our apartment instead of restaurants as the years passed by. We order in some good food now in accord with health imposed restrictions of family elders. We spend as ‘relaxed’ an afternoon as one can in a family get together. A very lively and and cheerful one for sure. The exception being one year when mummy and masi were travelling and K, Mama and I went the ITC Grand Central for a lovely Navroze lunch as a guest of the then GM, Mr Kerman Lalkaka.

Everything changed this year thanks to the Covid Pandemic. 


Jamshedi Navroze was the first significant festival for us that fell after the lockdown was declared. For the first time since I remember, the family could not get together on this day. Mama, masi and mummy stayed in their respective apartments. K and I in ours.

K and I managed to observe one family Navroze tradition. The food that we ordered in that day was from Katy’s Kitchen which is run by Dr Kurush Dalal, son of its founder the late Dr Katy Dalal, and his wife, Rhea Mitra Dalal. They are a fellow Bengali Parsi couple and close friends of ours. Our Navroze feast over the past few years has come from their kitchen in Mazgaon.

Kurush and Rhea had most kindly sent us a crate-full of K’s favourite raspberry soda drink with the food. From Pallonji in this case. K & I sipped on these through the lockdown. Fondly remembering our friends, even hough kept away from them because of social distancing.

Kurush and Rhea shut Katy’s after Navroze because of the lockdown restrictions.

Five months passed since then and it was time for the Parsi new year. 

While there have been some relaxations, we are still in lockdown. The blasted corona virus has not gone anywhere. Nor has a knight in shining armour arrived with a vaccine.

No-one had thought that the lockdown would stretch on for so long when it was first declared. Yet, here we are still. Even the PM has stopped giving the pep talk that he would at the start of each new lockdown.

This is our life for now. The new normal, as they say. Count your blessings and soldier on seems to be the mood of the moment.

Things were a bit different on this Navroze compared to the one in spring. We were not entirely alone this time. Thanks to relaxations in the lockdown, we could drive down and bring my mom in law over and she stayed with us during the period covering K’s roj nu birthday (birthday according the Parsi calendar) and Navroze. Mama and masi stayed put in their respective houses though as travel is not really viable for senior citizens.

At least the three of us spent this special occasion together.

I still say ‘smile please’ while clicking pics. Masked and ready to drop Mummy.

There was no Katy’s Kitchen food this time. Kurush and Rhea have decided to close the business for now. The existing business model has served its time they feel and they plan to introspect and decide on what next.

Well, the lockdown has been the time for new beginnings for many. Creating an opportunity ‘poison into medicine’ as my favourite Buddhist saying goes. Kurush and Rhea will do so too, I know.

We spoke on Navroze as Kurush and Rhea called to wish us. I asked them if they felt an emptiness on being closed in  Navroze. Both cheerfully told me on the phone, ‘nei re, we needed the break. We are enjoying our first Navroze holiday. The only thing we miss is our lunch at Ling’s Pavilion in between sending out lunch and dinner orders.’

Well, Katy mai (as Parsi mums are referred to) would be happy to know that we managed to eat well on Navroze while her son and daughter in law got a much deserved break.

Lagan nu custard from Hungry Cat Kitchen

We called in for lunch from Hungry Cat Kitchen run by Shubhasree Basu (a Bengali) and Manu Malwade (a Pathare Prabhu). They have a Parsi food brand called Apru Parsi Kitchen which belonged to founding partner, Perzen Patel, who had sold her stake and moved to New Zealand. Like Kurush and Rhea, they are our friends too and all thanks to the blog. We have ordered in some brilliant food from them in the past few months after they opened for deliveries again.

On our table this Navroze was a beautiful berry pulao with tultule mutton (Bengali for tender), with the rice subtly spiced in keeping with the Iranian origins of the dish. There were lovely prawn and cheese cutlets. Plus a very well balanced patra ni machhi. Slices of pomfret marinated with a green chutney which was neither too sweet not spicy thankfully, and steamed in banana leaves.

They did not have a vegetarian section in their festive menu at Hungry Cat but created one at my request for my mother in law who turned eggetarian after my father in law passed away. She enjoyed the vegetarian berry pulao which I ordered for her much to my surprise. Let me explain why I say so. Mummy likes her pulaos to be masaledar or spicy and I had thought she might find this too bland. She did not! I guess they had got the balance of spices and the tart of the zeresh berries right and the quality of rice had helped too in delivering a nice flavour punch. ‘Food should not be so spicy that you do not get the taste,’ said my mom in law when we discussed the food later. K’s mum’s side of the family who belong to Surat prefer food which is low on chilli heat while her father’s side loves the really hot stuff.

They had made a tangy sali paneer and a cheese, potato and corn croquette for her. The croquettes packed in a wallop of cheese in each bite. These should be called Parveen Special,’ I exclaimed after tasting one of the croquettes.  As I often jokingly say, my mom in law’s baseline when it comes to food should be, “cheesy joyechh, it should be cheesy.”

These sure were! I loved them too.

I once took her to a tasting at a new Chinese restaurant and at the end of everything she had said, ‘everything was good but no item had cheese!’

Adding sweetness to milk like a bowl of sugar added in as the legend goes and that is what Gia’s visit did to our afternoon

I had not ordered dessert though they had lagan nu custard at the Hungry Cat Kitchen. I thought K was too devoted to Kurush’s to try another to be honest. I saw K’s face fall when she saw there was dessert and made a SOS call to Bonnie of HCK and she sent me the last of the lagan nu custard with which I surprised K after her afternoon nap. K enjoyed the treat. “Bake it a tad bit more next time,” was her only request.

Gia’s Navroze treats for us

There was solace till this arrived thanks to our friendly neighbourhood dessert princess.

The bell rung just after lunch and it turned out to be a Navroze miracle! Our young neighbour Gia had come with individually made desserts for mum, K and me. Delightful chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting for K, icing and Smarties for mummy and a red velvet cupcake for me. In jars. Meticulously packed. We are lucky to have such wonderful souls in our lives.

She stayed on to play with Baby Loaf and little Nimki who love her. Seeing them bond, you would realise that not only is young Gia a brilliant student and a genius baker, but she is a cat whisperer too!

Oh, and what drink did we pair our lunch with?

We shared the last bottle of raspberry soda that Kurush and Rhea had sent us on Jamshedi Navroze and which we had saved up for this day.

No wine could could have felt and tasted more precious.

Our Navroze table clockwise: Mutton berry pulao, prawn and cheese cutlets, patra ni machhi, veg berry pulao, pav, potato and cheese Pervin croquettes. In the middle, raspberry and salli paneer.

Yes, this has been a weird year but it has taught us to treat each day as new year’s day and to make a fresh start everyday.

So saal mubarak as the Parsis say. Stay safe and happy. Eat well.

Saal Mubarak

The Jamshedi Navroze 2020 post