There’s an interesting blog where I came across these links about Kaevan Umrigar, a film-maker from FTII, Pune, India. He travelled around to numerous small towns and villages in Maharashtra and Gujarat as part of research for his film on Parsis. Its a real eye-opener to see these pictures, especially for urban Parsis like myself. There are, actually there were many Parsis in rural areas, but now there are barely a few families left, sometimes just one individual, or in some cases none at all. The houses have gone to disrepair, lying empty, and will be taken over by other poor families.
The fate of our fire-temples also hangs precariously in the balance, in these smaller places. In some places there is only one single priest left, who is dedicated to the agiary, even if there are no Parsis there. After that priest goes, who is going to look after these places?
You can see Kaevan Umrigar’s research here, its definitely worth a look:
http://www.geocities.com/naveak99/invisibleparsis1.html
http://www.geocities.com/naveak99/lastparsis1.html
Thanks for linking to my research notes.
You can see the films that emerged out of these researches here:
http://www.geocities.com/naveak99/films.html
Kaevan