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Dar-e-Meher, Karachi


Dar-e-Meher looks out over Daudpota Road, formerly known as Frere Street. Dadi Banaji is the manager of Dar-e-Meher. He has devoted all his life to serving the holy place. He does not think too much of the din and disturbance that the traffic outside causes, and keeps working hard to maintain the building clean. Cleanliness, for him, is a virtue. So is tenderness for a site where people come to offer prayers.

Jehangir Nausherwan Sidhwa is a priest at Dar-e-Meher and has been a regular here for no less than six decades. He's seen the city change in front of him like a slow cutting of scenes in a movie. He says, “There was a time when these roads outside were empty. Trams used to run and people commuted by them. There was a railway track here. Then things changed and today heavy traffic and ear-splitting noise have turned things topsy turvy.”

Banaji's son, 31-year-old Danishwar Dadi Banaji, also works at Dar-e-Meher. He is an ebullient young chap who knows how to make conversation. He says, “In 1948 there were 7,000 Parsis in Karachi. Then for various reasons people started moving abroad. Today the number has lessened and there are hardly 1,500 Parsis in the city. We try our best to keep our place of worship clean. At the start of Nauroz (Aug 9), devotees fill up the hall on the first floor in no time.”

Dar-e-Meher has an eclectic façade and if you look at it carefully you will notice that it has many Zoroastrian symbolic figures on it. “There is the Farohar on top, there are animal figures and even the pillars signify something sacred,” says Danishwar Dadi Banaji.

[Source: Karachi Legacies of Empires by Peerzada Salman]

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