24 Bombay train from Madras not nice around Dadar station area where it arrived. Found Iran Consulate from there through intuition. People kind and ambitious, Bombay open feeling with good food and monumental gothic dream building from the colonial era. Parsi (pre-Islamic Zoroastrain peoples who fled Iran for India in 700 when it was clear Arabic Islam had won the day) fire temples around town and forbid entry to non-Parsis.

Towers of Silence – where the Parsis ‘bury’ their dead by offering their ritually minced bodies to the vultures at a place in the heart of Bombay, a hilltop park refuge guarded and walled off in the heart of Malabar Hill. The atmosphere of this incongruous jungle surrounded by city is very holy and quiet (extremely spooky, lush, decaying, and overgrown). I got an illicit look down upon the Towers by bluffing my way into an adjacent building and cluelessly charging into the private penthouse terrace where workmen were fixing things up. The Towers are really just circular concrete buildings with a platform around the inside edge of their squat top and a deep black well plunging into darkness in their center (I guess that is where the cleaned bones go). Evidently the vultures have been dying off and there is barely enough of them now to consume the 300 bodies a year which are set out for them each year here.

Parsi people themselves are very Western-European looking and their food is excellent. They seem rather private and removed – even frequenting their establishments it was a bit difficult to strike up a conversation with them and get anywhere.

I stumbled across a synagog near the national museum and met the caretaker there. He is a member of the Bene-Israel community, a group of ethnically Indian Jews discovered to have immigrated to India from the middle east some thousand plus years ago. Now most of them have moved abroad and the congregation here is made up mostly of Askenazi Jewish merchants.

With tears of joy I finally got the Iran Visa in my passport – I feel so close to the dream of meeting up with my parents in Iran in October that I can hardly breathe. The fellow that helped me at the Consulate was named Ali Akbar and was so kind and uplifting, he himself being half Iranian and encouraging my journey to learn more about Iran.

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an email I received way after the fact in December of 2004:

"I stumbled on your website. I was there in 1941 as third mate on an American ship named the Exiria. I spent a couple of nights in a fancy hotel but went back to the ship when I had to work. The ship was unbearably hot. One night, unable to sleep, I took my slightly heavy counterpane and pillow, went up to the monkey bridge and lay down in the open air. In the early dawn, I was awakened by the rustle of feathers and there on the rail some 4-5 feet away were to two greedy-looking birds who seemed to have breakfast on their minds. I hadn't given a thought to the Parsi's burial practice before that. I never repeated that rash act. I'm writing my memoirs and am unable to remember the color of those birds--which accounts for my finding you. I do recall that they are smaller than vultures I've seen in this country. Jack Ragsdale SF/CA"