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KARACHI: The aroma of sizzling Patra Ni Machi — fish wrapped in banana leaf and slathered with green chutney — drifted through a quiet home in Karachi’s Parsi Colony earlier this month. 

Inside the kitchen, 63-year-old Gulnar Cowasjee moved with the precision of memory, wrapping and plating each piece just as her grandmother had once done. 

“When I started cooking at home properly, my kids said, ‘Mom, you’ve got good taste. Why don’t you think of this as a business for Parsi cuisine?’” she recalled with a smile, flipping the fish on a pan.

Her home venture, aptly named “Ghar Se,” was born in the stillness of the COVID-19 lockdown, a small act of preservation for the food of Karachi’s vanishing Parsi community, followers of Zoroastrianism who migrated from Iran centuries ago.

“We never changed our niche to any other cuisine,” she said. “Mashallah, it hit off.”

Once a vibrant presence in Karachi’s civic and cultural life, Parsis have dwindled to just a few hundred in Pakistan. The 2023 national census recorded only 2,348 Parsis across the country.

And in Karachi, there are now only two main Parsi colonies, neighborhoods that once bustled with children cycling and families gathering for communal prayers. 

Many of the homes now stand silent.

“People have gone away. The parents are not alive anymore,” she said softly. 

The Parsi Colony near M.A. Jinnah Road where Cowasjee grew up has also emptied out over the years. 

“The houses have been looted blatantly, Burma teak staircases, doors, windows, artifacts. People have ripped old people apart. They have scared old people to get out of their houses so that the mafia can take over.”

In her own kitchen, though, tradition endures. Cowasjee has never cooked from books.

“I learned from my grandmother by seeing… She used to just pick up masalas and put it. And we never stopped eating her food because it was so delicious,” she said, remembering how recipes were passed down by sight, sound and scent rather than the written word.

From her grandmother’s hands to hers, the recipes have traveled through generations, each carrying the story of faith and community.

Take Dhansak, for instance, a slow-cooked blend of lentils, meat and spices served with caramelized brown rice. 

“In the olden days in Iran, when somebody used to die, the women folk used to cook the dhansak,” Cowasjee said. 

When the men returned from taking the body to the mountains, “they would return after a few days and eat a meal, a mixture of lentils and meat. So that became something which now people serve it.”

Over the centuries, Dhansak evolved into the community’s signature dish.

Other recipes mark different moments in life. 

Dhandal appears at weddings and Navjote ceremonies, the Parsi initiation ritual in which a child is formally inducted into the Zoroastrian faith. Ravo and sev — sweet puddings and vermicelli — also bring joy to festive tables. 

“Every dish has a sort of affiliation with an occasion,” Cowasjee explained. “In our community Dhandal, Lagan Sera Patia (wedding-style fish), it’s a very ceremonial dish.”

She remembers when food brought families together around long tables. 

“We used to have a table of 25–28 people,” she said. “Today, we don’t even have a table of two people.”

VANISHING LEGACY

Migration and modern life have thinned families and scattered communities. Younger Parsis have grown up distant from their ancestral cuisine, though they still feel its pull.

Cowasjee’s daughter Myra, a young lawyer, sees the gap but tries to bridge it in her own way. 

“If I speak personally for myself, I perhaps have Parsi food once in two weeks,” she said. “If I have to cook for myself, then I make something more on the Western side.”

Still, she finds subtle ways to keep the culture alive.

“I often tell my mom to send a bit extra to the office. I feed it to my colleagues, so they get awareness about how the food tastes,” Myra said. “They even order from my mom.”

For her, food has become a link between fading identity and everyday life. 

“I also try as much as possible to promote the culture and history that Parsis have left behind,” she said. 

“If I’m ever coming back with my colleagues from court, I try to let them know that this is something of cultural significance to Parsis,” she added, pointing out places such as the fire temple in Saddar and NED University — landmarks built by the community.

Indeed, generations ago, Karachi’s Parsis built some of the city’s best-known schools and civic spaces — from the Mama Parsi Girls’ School to parks and charitable trusts. They once gathered at Jahangir Bagh, their green enclave in the heart of the city, to celebrate festivals and weddings.

“Those places are gone, finished,” said Cowasjee. “That togetherness is not there anymore.”

As the caramel scent of Dhansak filled her kitchen, she admitted that with each family leaving, a piece of the culture disappeared. 

“It will vanish,” she said quietly. “There is no two ways about it, it will vanish.”