 What does it mean to be a passing? To me, I think it is God's gift to me that he has made me a passing. This community in India still stands for qualities that are good, that are honourable, that are decent and I'm proud to be one of those. What I love most about the community is our sense of humour and I feel if we lose that, then we lose everything. I love being a passing. I love the idea that I enjoy all kinds of food. I love the idea that the community is seen as a slightly eccentric, slightly weird, slightly strange community but very loved. For me, being a passing is really about a certain morality, about growing up with good words, good thoughts, good deeds. I think somewhere it seeps down in you. In Zoroastrianism, the religion is very optimistic. We believe that every moment, things are improving and our belief is that we have to generate good thoughts, words and deeds but importantly words and deeds to bring about an ethical awareness into the world and in doing so, being happy within and promoting harmony in the environment. That I would say to you is the Zoroastrian message. For most passies, Bombay is the only home we have. A lot of us don't have an ancestral village to go back to so Bombay is all we know. We've been here so long, we've been here practically since the beginnings of the city. We've helped to build it. We have such strong associations with it. We have such strong nostalgia about it. You know, we are really a very, very integral part of the city and the city is a very integral part of us. Always cracking jokes, making fun and they are very jovial but they are also very particular. Let me tell you one thing. If a Parsi comes on the cash counter, he wants a fresh note. You can't possibly give him a torn note or a soil note. That is the characteristic of a Parsi. Sometimes inadvertently, if I cross a red light and the policeman comes up to me, I said, ha ha, mistake hua, sorry sorry, I'm fine dega. So he says, tum Parsi hai na? I said, yaar, he says, jao. I said, kyu humko kyu jaane deta? He said to me in Hindi which is very bad where I speak. He said, you Parsi. He's the only one who will not only admit to what you've done wrong but will insist on paying a fine. Because there's very few of us so I'm like a rare thing, you know. I'm exotic in my school.