he world knows of the Magi as the wise men of the East who following a star, carried exotic gifts with them to baby Jesus in Bethlehem. I should know. I went to a Christian school and learnt it in the New Testament. I was more familiar with the Bible than the Avesta. My granduncle Maneck kaka explained to me who these Magi were; ancestors of our dasturjis, priests. This closely-knit priestly tribe were called Magi in Latin, from the Iranian word magus.

          Until Zarathustra's teachings were first committed to writing, it was the priests who had orally passed down His words faithfully from generation to generation. His teachings exist in today's world because of the priestly tradition. Without their dogged persistence in the face of all odds, there would be no trace of the Zoroastrian religion. That it still exists today is a testimony to their faith.

          In the nineteenth century, when Macaulay's grand plan was making rationalists of many Parsi men and Christians of some, the community clamoured for a more educated priesthood. The first religious school was founded, the Sir Jamsetji Jijibhai Zarthushti Madressa, 'to teach Avestan, Pahlavi, Sanskrit, English and other languages to the sons of Parsi priests, to enable them to understand thoroughly the Zoroastrian religion.' That tradition continued into the twentieth century. The Dadar Athornan Boarding Madressa was founded in 1918, and is as old, or as young as Ervad Rustomji N. Panthaki who was born a year before, in 1917.

          He was a boy of seven when he saw for the first time, the school that was to be intertwined with his life forever. He had come to Bombay from Nargol with his father to enroll his elder brother in the religious school in Dadar. "Something stirred within me," he recounted at the felicitation held to honour him on his retirement as the madressa's Principal; "I wanted to join."

          As a boy of eleven he did join, trained in the madressa and became a fully ordained priest. After he graduated he practised as a priest first in Nargol, then like a homing pigeon he was back in Dadar at the neighbourhood Rustom Faram Agiary. Every evening would find him in his old school where he would spend his evenings talking with the students. At thirty-five he joined the madressa again, as a teacher, then as principal for twenty-nine years until his retirement in 1996.

          Principal of the madressa is not the only pugdi, (turban), Ervad Panthaki has worn. For thirty years he also conducted religious classes, wildly popular and oversubscribed, in the city's Parsi baugs (housing colonies). He was a teacher by vocation, not just by profession, who made a mark on every student who had the good fortune to encounter him. He enjoyed being with the young and.....