I am 64 years old but if you were to ask my mother-in-law or my mother, or even grandmother, she’d say I am actually running 65. And in my last lap as it were, because by the middle of next February I will have completed 65 years and begun running my 66th . In our community , you are as old as the year you are currently living and your actual birthdate marks the end of the year you were ‘running’ in.

All this is too complicated for my brain which refuses to grow beyond 5 for as Prima Donna once told when she was 5 year’s old, those were all the fingers she could count on her hand. That probably explains why my sense of humour hasn’t developed beyond 5 and the inane jokes of susu and potty leave me in splits.

So when I read Adi Pocha’s novel ‘Behram’s Boat,’ I was in splits when I came to the part where Pilloo who was riding pillion on Behram’s bike decided he needed a really quick and effective solution to his sore bottom. Pilloo was accompanying Behram, on an absolutely absurd mission to build a boat as part of a wacky solution to increase the diminishing Parsi population.

And indeed, he is right about that because the Parsis are dwindling at a faster rate than other demographics are rising ! And that is something no one really wants – a world without Parsis. That is like cake without icing.

Undoubtedly, the Parsis who are known for their entrepreneurial spirit, their wild and wacky sense of humour, their willingness to laugh at themselves and make others laugh and their passion for life ought to be preserved if not for their own sakes , for the sake of humanity . So I am all for saving the Parsis.

So Behram in the twilight years of his life ( at 65 is the end just round the corner ?) he embarks on a unique scheme to encourage or stimulate a growth in their numbers .

Behram Rustomjee is a Parsi who lives in a Baug, one of the many housing colonies made by benevolent rich Parsis for their less fortunate brethren. And there are many baugs scattered a around the city of Mumbai – bearing names like Rustom , Kushroo, Ness and Godrej . Neat orderly well kept communities , well maintained roads and gardens, possibly a little grocery shop selling eggs and Dukes Raspberry soda, a fire temple sometimes, and of course lots of Parsis sitting out in the sun or polishing their already shiny motorbikes or old fashioned cars. On Sundays the smell of dhansak from every home will assail your nose and you can see the curtains part, ever so furtively as you, the stranger, enter their world.

He wants to build a boat, similar to the kind his ancestors came on and populate it with single, Parsis men and women of appropriate age and disposition and send them off on a trip from Sanjan to Iran. With this backward integration program. Behram hopes that the young people on board an old fashioned ship with nothing much to do will do the obvious out of boredom if not attraction and come back with a few Parsi babies in the making on the way.

However, the scheme is not without its opponents in the community who think this is just a hair-brained scheme of a dirty, old pervert .

Does Behram succeed ?

And is a the humour geared for 5 year olds ?

Find out for yourself . Arm yourself with ‘Behram’s Boat’ this weekend and chuckle away as you jump into Behram’s world .

Ciao