Written and performed by actor Shadaan Felfeli
Ionad an Phiarsaig – THE PEARSE CENTRE The Ireland Institute, 27 Pearse Street, Dublin 2
23 & 24th August 2010

The Virgin and The Vulture

tells the tale of a Parsi storyteller who finds it difficult to get out of bed one sunny Indian afternoon.

Shadaan Felfeli is a member of the Parsi community whose numbers are fast dwindling. His play is the mode for the playwright to give back to the community that nurtured him and at the same time abdicating the inherited burden of 3000 years of history and culture. The play straddles an acute sense of obligation to the past and an urgent awareness of the here-and-now. It is a deeply personal journey of an individual discovering himself at a time when his community is on the verge of being forgotten forever.

The play uses the English language as inherited by a Parsi actor to re imagine the journey of ancestors, describe a personal spiritual odyssey and confront fears about the future. It uses words to document facts, transpose realities, imagine utopias, seek solidarity, to educate, share, entertain and inspire. The writing is at times deliberately structured in strict verse to make it worthy of both the ancestral and posterity, to describe spiritual journeys and nightmares. At other times it resorts to evocative and sensual prose to articulate various rituals and realities.

* The Parsis are a community whose ancestors inhabited the Zoroastrian Empire of ancient Persia until the Islamic conquest of Iran 10 centuries ago, at which point they fled to India to escape religious persecution, to preserve their liberty of conscience and their ancient faith. They were given refuge ––by the Hindu Raja of Gujarat located on the western shores of India–– on condition that they would never marry outside their own community or convert the local population. The Parsis further pledged to adopt the local language, dress and customs, in return for which they were guaranteed freedom of worship. With the arrival of the British in India the fortunes of the Parsis took a quantum leap and by the 19th century they had emerged as the foremost people in India in matters educational, industrial, and social. They came in the vanguard of progress, amassed vast fortunes, and munificently gave away large sums in charity (Dhalla, 1938). The fondness of the Parsis for the British was never at the expense of their loyalty to India. This contradiction was exemplified by Dadabhai Naoroji who in 1892 became the first Asian to be elected to the House of Commons in London, seven years after he helped found the Indian National Congress which would go on to spearhead the struggle for Indian independence. He wrote the book 'Poverty and Un-British Rule in India' which brought attention to the draining of India's wealth into Britain. Naoroji also strongly advocated for Irish Home Rule. Although he promised that his first duty would be to his constituents in Finsbury Central, he made no secret of the fact that he would also be representing 250 million of his fellow subjects in India. Naoroji declared, “Whether I am a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Parsi, a Christian, or of any other creed, I am above all an Indian. Our country is India; our nationality is Indian.”

His protégé Mahatma Gandhi said of the Parsis, “I am proud of my country, India, for having preserved the splendid Zoroastrian stock, in numbers beneath contempt, but in charity and philanthropy perhaps unequalled and certainly unsurpassed.”

The considerable impact of the miniscule Parsi community on the development of India is remarkable. In no city is this more visible than in Mumbai (erstwhile Bombay), a city strongly associated with Parsis. Even today Parsi charitable trusts in the city run leading public hospitals, schools for the disabled, asylums, animal rescues and venues for the arts. The pioneer first-families of Indian industry the Tatas, Petits, Godrejs, Wadias and Mehtas, all Parsi, thrive to this day. Every Parsi will remind you that the Mr. Faredoun Bulsara (a.k.a. Freddie Mercury from Queen) was Parsi, thank-you-very-much. As is the conductor Zubin Mehta and the writers Bapsi Sidhwa and Rohinton Mistry. As is the only man in independent India's history to achieve the rank of Field-Marshall, Sam Maneckshaw. He is credited with winning the 1971 Indo-Pak War, fought on two fronts, which resulted in the independence of Bangladesh. It is said that when then Indian Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi phoned him on the eve of the war to ask, "Are you ready?", he replied "Sweetie, I'm always ready". Interestingly the Gandhi in the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, derives from Feroze Gandhi, Indira Gandhi neé Nehru's Parsi husband and is no relation whatsoever to the Mahatma. Finally in a recent development a Parsi, Pallonji Mistry, is now ranked third in the list of the richest men in Ireland.

However the true battle for the Parsis, a fight for survival, is one that they seem perilously close to losing. Low birth-rates, high rates of emigration (principally to Canada, Australia, the U.S. and the U.K) and an unhealthy birth-to-death ratio (200 births a year to 1,000 deaths) indicate that by 2020 the Parsis will number a mere 23,000 or 0.002% of the population of India, a country which ironically is experiencing a catastrophic population explosion. The predicament is compounded by the non-proselytizing aspect of Zoroastrianism i.e, only children born to Parsi parents can be baptized into the faith.

The Parsis leave their dead in ‘Tower's of Silence’ to be consumed by vultures, so as not to defile the sacred elements of earth, fire and water. With the drastic urbanization of Indian cities the population of vultures has declined sharply to the point where they are now listed as an endangered species. It closely mirrors the fate of their Parsi benefactors and together they sit braced for extinction.

Shadaan Felfeli [087 316 3523] [shadaanf@gmail.com]
––was born in Pune, India into a Parsi family comprised of two highly educated parents; a very liberal mother Parichehr and a cinema-obsessed father Hormuzdyaar, and a talented sister, the pianist/broadcaster Karishemeh Felfeli.

Felfeli studied at the St. Cecilia’s School of Music run by an Australian missionary. Under the tutelage of Ferieda Postwalla, he achieved distinctions in various grade examinations through Trinity College London, culminating in a Performer’s Certificate in 2003. He graduated from the Gaiety School of Acting’s Full-Time Programme in 2006. Since then Felfeli has appeared on the Irish stage in Titus Andronicus (Directed by Selina Cartmell), The Miser (Wonderland Theatre) and The Unfortunate Machine-Gunning of Anwar Sadaat (Drected by David Horan), a performance for which he was praised in The Irish Times as “the excellent Shadaan Felfeli.” He has appeared on television in ‘Fair City’ (RTÉ), ‘The Take’ (Sky), ‘Father and Son’ (ITV) and in feature films The Fading Light (Park Films/I.F.B.) and Sensation (Blinder Films/ I.F.B.)

The Times of India said of Felfeli’s performance as Don Quixote/Cervantes in ‘The Man of La Mancha’ (Dir:Janine Misquitta, Pune, 2003) ––“A hidden talent and 17-year-old genius, a single actor who can hold an audience captive, even if everything around him were to fail. Complete in his role as a frail, eccentric man, from captivity to freedom of thought, Shadaan as the ever-optimistic Quixote is brilliant.”

Shadaan Felfeli

The Virgin
and the Vulture