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the PNC Financial Services Group Inc. PNC Bank,

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National Association, Member FTIC. This

1:07

is 99% Invisible. I'm

1:09

Roman Mars. Here's

1:13

something you probably didn't know about Mumbai,

1:15

India. There are

1:17

about 55 acres of dense,

1:19

overgrown forest right downtown.

1:22

In one of the most populous cities in the world,

1:25

this is a place where peacocks

1:27

roam freely. A place

1:29

that seems to peel back centuries.

1:32

This forest is protected by a

1:34

religious community. It has survived undeveloped

1:37

in the middle of this gargantuan

1:39

city. Importantly, it's also home to

1:41

an ancient tradition that's in crisis.

1:44

One of our producers, Leshma Dawn,

1:46

traveled there in September. I

1:57

turned off a busy road to get here,

1:59

stepped through a large large, iron archway

2:01

and up a small hill. The

2:03

monsoon's long gone, but the air still

2:05

feels heavy with moisture. Behind

2:08

me, tall buildings shimmer in a haze

2:11

of pollution. And up ahead, I

2:13

see a sprawling expanse of green.

2:16

This forest is called Dungarvadi.

2:20

As you step in from the

2:22

harsh, sun-lightened road

2:24

outside, you just step

2:26

into an extremely quiet

2:29

place. This is Roshneh

2:31

Pardiwala, someone who grew up in

2:33

Mumbai and knows this place intimately.

2:36

You can hear the

2:38

dry leaves rustling below your

2:40

footsteps. The forest

2:42

has darkened me. There

2:44

are different trees in bloom,

2:47

wild banana, mango, jackfruit, tamarind.

2:50

I saw one whole tree just

2:52

covered with fruit bats, chittering away.

2:54

The vegetation here is dense. You're

2:57

so thick, you've got to bend, you've got to see

3:00

where you're stepping. But

3:03

there's a certain point in this forest beyond

3:05

which almost no one can step. Not

3:07

Roshneh, and certainly not me. Only

3:10

special caretakers of these grounds can go

3:13

any further. They go by many

3:15

names. Candia, Naseh Salar,

3:17

Paul Bearer, Corpse Bearer.

3:20

Regardless of title, their work here

3:22

is holy. They carry dead

3:25

bodies to their final resting place atop

3:27

stone structures that stand gray against

3:30

the lush green. These

3:32

buildings are called Towers of

3:34

Silence, and this forest

3:36

exists to protect them. The

3:42

Towers of Silence are part of a death

3:44

ritual carried out by Parsis, a small

3:47

but prosperous community in India.

3:50

Parsis practiced Zoroastrianism, a

3:52

monotheistic religion originally from

3:54

Iran. Zoroastrians

3:56

in Iran were persecuted in the 7th century during

3:58

the rise of the Middle of the Islamic

4:01

Empire, and Muslim armies

4:03

gave surviving Zoroastrians a choice,

4:05

conversion or exile. Eventually,

4:08

a small group of Zoroastrians fled

4:10

Iran for the shores of western

4:13

India, bringing with them

4:15

any surviving fragments of tradition.

4:19

The Parsis arrived, it is said, men,

4:23

women, and children by with one

4:25

boatload. This is Zoroastrian

4:27

religious scholar Kojeste Mystery. He's

4:30

been teaching Zoroastrian theology for the last 45

4:33

years. There's a popular legend

4:35

that describes how Zoroastrians arrived in

4:37

India. When this milk

4:40

and sugar story began, nobody knows,

4:42

but it's the most famous story

4:45

that the Parsis have been

4:47

told from little children upwards.

4:50

The story goes like this. When the

4:52

boatful of Zoroastrians landed in India, the king

4:55

showed them a bowl that was full to

4:57

the rim with milk. Kojeste

4:59

says the intention was to convey

5:01

that India was already too full,

5:04

no room for new arrivals. And

5:07

the Zoroastrian priest,

5:09

the Dastur, asked for crystals

5:12

of sugar, and he was

5:15

given crystals of sugar, and he gently

5:17

lowered the crystals of sugar into this

5:19

bowl full of milk, and

5:21

obviously the milk did not overflow from

5:23

the bowl. It suggested that

5:25

not only was there room for his

5:28

people in India, but that Zoroastrians would

5:30

enrich Indian society if permitted to settle.

5:33

And the symbolism there was that

5:35

the Parsis would integrate so well

5:38

that they would bring sweetness to the

5:40

land that was giving them sanctuary. From

5:43

then on, Zoroastrians who settled all

5:45

over India came to be known

5:47

as Parsis. Eventually, in the 1600s,

5:51

Mumbai became their epicenter. This

5:53

was back when the city was

5:56

still a collection of swampy, mosquito-infested

5:58

islands, seemingly far from the top. enough

6:00

away from the civilized world. A

6:02

few wealthy Parsis bought a vast expanse

6:05

of land here and they gave it

6:07

to the community for one specific purpose.

6:10

All this land was gifted specifically

6:14

for purposes of having a Tower of

6:16

Silence. The

6:21

Towers of Silence are where Parsis place

6:23

their dead. And despite

6:26

its imposing Gothic era name

6:28

that's used by Parsis and non-Parsis

6:30

alike, Towers of Silence

6:32

aren't actually all that towering at

6:35

all. These structures got that

6:37

name by the British, who wanted

6:39

an English term to describe them.

6:41

And in doing so, they made

6:43

them sound perhaps a bit more

6:45

grandiose than they actually are. These

6:49

towers, also known simply as

6:51

dakmas, are built of stone,

6:53

usually up to 50 feet tall and up

6:55

to about 100 feet wide. Imagine

6:58

something more like an open-aired

7:00

amphitheater. Each tower is circular

7:02

and roofless. There are

7:05

markers indicating where bodies should be placed. And

7:07

in the very center, there's a deep well,

7:10

storage for the bones of Parsi

7:12

bodies. Wherever

7:15

large clusters of Parsis settled,

7:17

they would cultivate forests, or

7:20

dungarvadis, and build dakmas inside

7:22

them. Five dakmas were

7:24

built here in Mumbai, which in total

7:26

are able to handle over a thousand

7:29

corpses a year. Zoroastrians

7:31

have practiced this ritual of

7:33

sky burial in Mumbai for

7:35

centuries. According to the faith,

7:38

as soon as we die, our bodies

7:40

become contaminated with evil. And

7:42

this evil must not, under

7:45

any circumstance, make contact with

7:47

the sacred elements of fire,

7:50

water, and earth. Fire

8:00

Piracy the the son of

8:02

God. So restrooms have always

8:04

had this unusual method. Of

8:07

giving back to nature. By.

8:10

Giving back to nature what could just

8:12

a means is that after priests have

8:14

said their final prayers, the corpse bearers

8:16

will place a body a top one

8:19

of these towers. Then they

8:21

will wait. For the vultures to can.

8:26

Rush Nobody. While I grew up in

8:29

a Parsi family minutes from the Mumbai

8:31

dump your Body forest where the Towers

8:33

of Silence stand, she remembers the first

8:35

time she learned about the vultures and

8:38

their role. In consuming parsi

8:40

corpses. We. Were on

8:42

the family holiday in good job

8:44

and v were driving and I

8:47

must have been all of publicize

8:49

the six years old. Out

8:52

of their car window rustiness families saw

8:54

a dead horse on the roadside. They

8:56

pulled over out of curiosity just to

8:58

take a closer look rest near members

9:00

her father pointing to the sky in

9:02

our said all of those are the

9:04

bird those of us as of the

9:07

surplus and then thought nothing of it.

9:09

got that into the thought and be

9:11

drove off. Twenty or

9:13

so minutes later, Russian and her family

9:15

drove back down that same. Road.

9:17

And that is when

9:19

all of us are

9:22

absolutely shocked. Remember? Dad just

9:24

slamming on the brakes and stop me

9:26

because a whole set we had seen.

9:29

Dead Fifteen Twenty minutes ago

9:31

had been some. Need

9:33

to be like been. In

9:37

fifteen minutes that passes.

9:39

Was. Lean down

9:41

to the born. A

9:44

few voters were actually still sitting

9:46

there, perched right next to the

9:49

skeleton. their bellies too heavy with

9:51

horsemeat to fly, but to Russian

9:53

his family. The scene wasn't grim,

9:56

And I remember my mother using

9:58

that opportunity as a. The think,

10:00

oh you know, This is

10:02

why they say are of mode

10:04

of disposal of the dead in

10:06

the policy communities the best most

10:09

because it's such a sweet clean.

10:11

Efficient system. This

10:14

interdependent system between the restaurants and the

10:16

birds who consume the flesh of their

10:18

dead. It's called Doc

10:20

Ministry Knee and it is ancient.

10:23

That. The relationship between Vultures and Sir

10:25

Parsee's It goes back thousands of

10:28

years. This is writer Mira Subramanian

10:30

to has written at length about

10:32

voters in South Asia. She says

10:34

that according to some estimates, they

10:36

were once well over forty million

10:38

voters throughout India, but no one

10:41

will ever really know. They were

10:43

so plentiful in fact, that no

10:45

scientific efforts were ever made to

10:47

do a population talent for kids

10:49

Growing up in India my own

10:51

parents included. There were far. Less

10:54

dogs supposedly eating homework and many

10:56

more voters to blame in the

10:58

classroom and said. As in

11:00

sorry I'm late to school. Vultures

11:02

were mid seat on a roadside

11:04

carcass, blocking traffic Again, India.

11:06

Civil Aviation Department would even hire

11:08

people to shoot Voser as around

11:10

airports because they pose such a

11:13

hazard to air traffic. He. How

11:15

they were just always there. They were always there.

11:17

And there were so many of them. In

11:19

this story were mostly referring to a

11:21

genius of vultures. Called chip filters.

11:24

And these birds. They just have

11:26

this look about them. To

11:29

look you know? Ah, not

11:31

the best. Of

11:34

would say argued for the don't look very

11:36

attractive as a book. In. The

11:39

sky vultures loom large, casting

11:41

an eight foot shadow with

11:43

their massive wingspan. And

11:45

on the ground sometimes you can

11:47

only see their bodies, their bald

11:49

heads off and buried deep inside

11:51

of fresh carcass. Nobody really believes

11:53

this on Isis, but they're like

11:55

they're very beautiful and him at

11:57

least Mira think they're pretty. They

12:00

have this ring of puffy

12:02

feathers around their neck that

12:04

reminds me of a Victorian lady. While

12:07

vultures are scavengers often associated with

12:10

greediness and death, they're

12:12

actually very shy around people. These

12:15

are birds that just don't

12:17

like interacting with humans. The

12:20

most common response if they are disturbed

12:23

by humans is that they vomit and they

12:25

fly away. And yet

12:27

for centuries a very specific

12:29

symbiosis played out here in

12:31

Mumbai between these vultures, this

12:33

forest, and the parses. Time

12:36

passed, wars came and went,

12:39

cities grew, trees fell. But

12:41

this practice survived. In

12:43

Mumbai approximately three new bodies were

12:45

carried up every day. It

12:48

was an efficient send-off, one in which your

12:50

body became your final offering to the natural

12:53

world. First of all, it

12:55

was tradition. But

12:58

this tradition would begin to unravel. Aspi

13:07

Ghadiali, Aspi Fira Ghadiali. I

13:10

met Aspi a few hours north of

13:12

Mumbai in a small town with a

13:14

large parsi population. Aspi

13:17

wore a bright pink and orange blouse that

13:19

he had hand-sewn with a large orange

13:21

heart embroidered onto the front. For

13:24

more than four decades Aspi has

13:26

done the work that goes by many names,

13:29

the work that takes him deep into the

13:31

Dungarvadi forest where few others can

13:33

go. I

13:39

am a NASA salon in the Parsi religion.

13:42

In Gujarati Aspi describes it as the

13:45

work of giving shoulder because a large

13:47

part of his work involves carrying bodies

13:49

of the deceased on his shoulders. Parsis

13:53

are actually widely known and stereotyped

13:55

in India as being a fairly

13:57

wealthy minority community. But those

13:59

who who work as corpse-bearers are often

14:01

spoken of in hushed tones. Many

14:05

khandiyas live right on dungarvadi grounds,

14:08

and because in zorastrianism corpses are

14:10

believed to have been contaminated with

14:12

evil, those who handle

14:14

corpses are often treated as if

14:16

they're contaminated too. I

14:19

thought nothing of this when I reached out to

14:21

shake Aspi's hand, but then I felt

14:23

his flinch. Would

14:25

you be able to hear my

14:27

voice in this mic you brought?

14:29

Otherwise, I brought my own portable

14:31

mic. As we sat

14:34

down, Aspi excitedly pulled out what looked

14:36

like a large toy microphone out of

14:38

his pocket. It was

14:40

golden and battery-powered, and it

14:42

immediately started playing the radio. Aspi

14:45

said he'd brought it in case mine wasn't up to

14:48

par. I

14:57

told Aspi that I wanted to talk to

14:59

him about the vultures. His

15:01

blue eyes went wide. I

15:06

hope you're not in a hurry, he said. I

15:16

had time, but I didn't exactly

15:18

have space. The room

15:20

Aspi and I were in was full

15:22

of Parsi elders, and there was nothing

15:24

I could say to convince them to

15:26

leave, especially since it's

15:28

unusual for khandiyas to speak publicly

15:30

like this. I

15:32

grew up around several nosy Indian aunties,

15:35

though, not to mention I live in

15:37

fear of becoming one. So

15:39

I get it. With a little

15:41

coaxing, I got each uncle to please

15:44

mute their WhatsApp notifications. Then

15:46

Aspi started to speak, and I

15:48

swear I could feel everyone around

15:50

us lean in. When

16:00

I was 12 or 13, my

16:02

grandmother died, and one of the

16:04

four corpse bearers in our town

16:07

had fallen sick. So I

16:09

was asked, son, will

16:11

you come help? I

16:13

had never been before. My

16:16

father initially refused. He

16:18

said, Aspi is only a child.

16:21

He will get scared. But there

16:23

was a need, so Aspi stepped in to

16:26

help give his grandmother a proper send-off. Typically,

16:29

after a Parsi dies, there are four

16:31

days of prayers held at the closest

16:33

dungarvadi, the forest where the towers are

16:35

built. First, the body is

16:38

ritually bathed and then carried to one

16:40

of the towers. One

16:44

person opens the door, and

16:46

then we take the body inside. Once

16:48

inside, they lay the body to rest on

16:51

a stone slab. When

16:55

I went inside, all these birds

16:57

were looking like trustees in a board

16:59

meeting. They

17:01

were just watching us, staring. Based

17:04

on that description, it seems apt

17:06

that the collective noun for a

17:08

group of vultures is called a

17:10

committee. And they

17:12

were making sounds like this. Sometimes

17:17

Aspi and his fellow corpse bearers would

17:20

have to stave off the vultures with

17:22

iron rods until all the rituals were

17:24

complete. And

17:27

once the body is placed inside, they

17:29

pounce and eat. That's it.

17:33

The vultures would set to their task, often

17:36

taking just 30 minutes to get from

17:38

body to bone. Then

17:40

the corpse bearers would sweep the bones

17:42

into the central well. Three

17:46

or four days later, someone else

17:48

expired. And

17:54

again, my uncle asked

17:57

me, Aspi Gadiali, will

17:59

you come with us? I

18:01

said yes. The next time I entered

18:04

the towers to carry the second body,

18:07

we laid it right next to my

18:09

grandmother's and I saw that

18:12

my grandmother's body was totally

18:15

finished. As in

18:17

everything was eaten, not

18:19

one thing was left of her, only

18:22

bones. When

18:26

I tried to sleep that night, my mind kept playing those

18:28

images like a tape

18:33

recorder on repeat. It was

18:36

like a horror movie in my mind

18:38

on replay.

18:41

But then Aspi

18:43

got quiet and he looked at

18:45

me apologetically. I can't tell you anything

18:49

more about what happens inside. If

18:52

I share in any more detail, I will

18:55

have to pay for it in my next

18:57

life. After

19:00

all, this is a sacred ritual and

19:03

when it comes to death, there are some

19:05

things that are just not spoken. Eventually

19:09

Aspi began working full-time as

19:11

a Candia and he took great

19:14

pride in this role. Day after

19:16

day, Parsi corpse bearers like Aspi

19:18

would carry a body atop a

19:20

dakma while vultures would watch from

19:22

their perch. Then they'd step

19:24

back and the vultures would swoop in.

19:27

This was how it worked for centuries. A

19:30

seamless cycle of life and death passed

19:33

on from one generation to the next

19:36

until one thing changed

19:38

or rather disappeared and

19:40

then everything started to topple. It was

19:43

a very ecological

19:46

and beautiful process in so

19:48

many ways and that just came

19:51

crashing to a halt. In

19:56

The early 80s Aspi noticed that there were

19:58

fewer and fewer vultures. There's sitting and

20:01

waiting at the usual perch. It

20:03

on a given different ways get

20:06

roman in effect then what? we

20:08

thought that it is a bird.

20:10

Maybe it has moved somewhere else.

20:13

May be their lifespan was short and

20:15

they were towards the end of it.

20:18

We. Could not understand why

20:20

their population had decreased. Candy.

20:24

Is all over India seem to

20:26

be noticing this mysterious trend a

20:28

top their respective towers. Inside their

20:30

respective them grew bodies. They would

20:33

carry a few new bodies into

20:35

the towers only to find that

20:37

yesterday's bodies were still untouched by

20:40

soldiers. Then. It

20:42

seem like all the vultures had

20:44

disappeared altogether. Their. Absence to

20:46

sell to outside the party community

20:48

to vultures have scoured the countryside

20:50

and cleaned up dead cattle and

20:53

road kill for all of human

20:55

history. So eventually more people across

20:57

the country began to notice that

20:59

they were gone. In

21:04

the late nineteen nineties, a group

21:06

of villagers in Rajasthan observed that

21:08

when cows would die in the

21:10

fields, their carcasses would sit and

21:12

write for days, which was extremely

21:14

unusual, Luckily they knew

21:16

exactly who to contact. The

21:18

said though as to the declining and they

21:21

were video but it's because there are dead

21:23

cases would have been disposed of. This.

21:25

Is Doctor Vid Looper costs

21:28

India's leading vulture biologist and

21:30

conservationists. People were telling

21:32

Xibu that the vultures had disappeared

21:34

like too. Many

21:36

thought they were stolen or poisoned.

21:39

The villagers were like maybe it

21:41

was the Americans was. Gonna.

21:44

So. When village are stored me that this

21:46

is what is happening I did he

21:48

stuttered looking for visitors and then I

21:50

found it was his own in the

21:52

bushes on the to he's in. The

21:55

reality was that voters were us and

21:57

dying. not on the ground, but up

21:59

and. trees and bushes where it was hard

22:01

to spot them. So it did

22:03

kind of look like they'd vanished. But

22:06

you didn't have to see the dead

22:08

vultures to know that something was very

22:10

wrong. The strength

22:12

itself was a problem. Then you see the

22:14

increase in flies, the macarates.

22:17

And by 2000, we realized that

22:19

this problem is

22:23

much bigger than we can handle on our own. Desperate

22:26

to save off extinction, Vibhu sounded

22:29

the alarm. And because

22:31

vulture populations were declining across all

22:33

of South Asia, he

22:35

turned to the international scientific community for

22:37

help. Together, they ran

22:39

through theories from food shortage to

22:41

habitat loss. They looked into the

22:44

possibility of contagious disease, but

22:46

nothing was conclusive. Then,

22:48

finally, in 2003, they made a shocking discovery.

22:53

The vultures had been dying of

22:55

kidney failure, and the culprit was

22:57

a prescription painkiller, similar

22:59

to ibuprofen, called diclofenac.

23:08

Diclofenac is a cheap drug that was

23:10

first introduced in the 1970s for the

23:12

treatment of arthritis and pain management in

23:15

humans. By the early 1990s, diclofenac

23:17

became a

23:19

veterinary painkiller. And because of

23:22

its recently expired patent, it

23:24

ended up being the cheapest and most

23:26

popular livestock drug on the market. Hinduism's

23:29

reverence for cows means that in

23:31

India, most cattle are left

23:34

to die naturally in the fields,

23:36

where vultures would reliably finish the

23:38

job. Farmers would give

23:40

diclofenac to cows. And then when

23:42

those cows died with diclofenac in

23:44

their system, vultures would eat them

23:46

and get poisoned by the drug.

23:49

Because India has the largest cattle population

23:52

in the world, this was happening at

23:54

an enormous scale. And

23:56

this is when the vulture deaths became a

23:59

national. crisis. The

24:02

irony of an over-the-counter ibuprofen

24:04

knockoff decimating the vulture population

24:06

is that this bird is

24:09

uniquely known for its biological

24:11

resilience. The vulture has

24:13

a superb digestion system

24:16

and it can actually even survive

24:18

doses of arsenic. Their incredibly

24:21

strong stomach acids have allowed

24:23

them to consume diseases like

24:26

tuberculosis, rabies, even anthrax, and

24:28

face no consequence. But

24:31

this diclophanic was

24:33

the knockoff thing. Ultimately,

24:35

what killed them was a drug

24:38

humans created to relieve us of

24:40

our pains. In less

24:42

than a decade since Vibhu was first

24:44

contacted by those villagers, India

24:46

had lost up to 99% of its chip's vultures.

24:50

It was probably the steepest decline

24:52

ever recorded anywhere in the world

24:54

of any species which I know

24:56

of. It was astonishing. Three

24:59

years after the mystery had been

25:01

solved, India banned the veterinary use

25:04

of diclophanac. But banning

25:06

the drug outright is really hard

25:08

to put into practice. The

25:10

fact of the matter is that the

25:12

black market is really thriving in India,

25:14

so you had illegal production of diclophanac

25:17

that continues to this day.

25:20

In addition to diclophanac, there are now

25:22

four more livestock drugs in circulation in

25:24

India today that have been found to

25:27

be just as deadly to vultures. And

25:29

even though the Indian government finally banned two of

25:32

these drugs in 2023, it

25:34

doesn't undo the damage done years

25:36

ago. Today, the number of

25:39

gyps, vultures, and Indian skies are nowhere

25:41

near what they once were. Even

25:48

before the vulture die-off began, every

25:51

now and again, some parsees would

25:53

question the ancient ritual of dokmanashini

25:56

in the way that people always do with old

25:58

traditions. But now,

26:00

with this mass vulture death, Parsis were

26:02

grappling with the fate of their corpses

26:05

in a new and urgent way. Welcome

26:07

back to the debate between dignity versus

26:10

tradition sparked by the tar of silence

26:12

controversy. Well, the controversy really began to

26:14

rage when the tar stopped working. In

26:17

other words, when the vultures disappeared. No

26:19

one for many years had an answer

26:21

to that mystery until the mystery began

26:24

to unravel, and it was linked to

26:26

the wider disappearance of vultures, not just

26:28

in Bombay, but across India. In

26:31

Mumbai, about three Parsis were dying

26:33

a day. So, Khandias,

26:35

like Aspi, continued to lay

26:37

bodies atop their towers, this

26:40

time for vultures that would no longer

26:42

come. Now

26:45

they do not come at all. It

26:48

has completely stopped. They

26:50

all stopped coming, and now

26:53

there is not even one. How

26:56

will they come back? Where

26:58

do I go and call them from? Much

27:02

smaller birds of prey now descend

27:04

on the towers, but when it

27:06

comes to consuming corpses, they're inefficient

27:09

and messy. There are black kites

27:11

in Mumbai. You go to the

27:13

grounds today, and there's tons of

27:16

birds flying around, but black kites,

27:19

let's just say they have different eating habits. They like

27:21

the little tender tasty bits, and then they leave

27:23

the rest. So it's very, it doesn't

27:26

do what the vultures did in terms

27:28

of cleaning up a body

27:30

completely. And so maybe just

27:33

the fact that there were like big black

27:35

birds flying around, that was enough to make people

27:37

think, oh, everything's fine. But everything

27:39

wasn't fine. All you had to

27:41

do was ask their neighbors. These

27:43

smaller birds of prey would sometimes

27:46

leave them disturbing little treats. This

27:48

is a really nice, Tony

27:51

part of town, and there are luxury

27:53

high-rises, and I heard more than one

27:55

Parsi joke about fingers showing up while

27:57

you're having your avocado toast in the

27:59

morning on your balcony. The

28:01

neighborhood adjacent to the Mumbai Dungarvadi

28:03

today, Malabar Hill, it's one

28:05

of the wealthiest and most exclusive in the

28:07

city and it's home to many

28:10

rich Parsis. Realtors actually

28:12

advertise the proximity to the lush

28:14

Dungarvadi forest as a major value

28:16

add. And I mean, it is

28:19

so rare in Mumbai to get to be

28:21

so close to green space, to

28:23

get to look out your window and see a forest.

28:26

But these neighbors would complain about getting a

28:28

view and a smell that they

28:30

didn't quite sign up for. One

28:34

day in the late 1990s,

28:36

a handful of residents from a

28:39

nearby apartment building wrote an angry

28:41

letter. This letter made its

28:43

way to the Bombay Parsi Panchayat,

28:45

which is the leadership committee that

28:48

oversees Parsi community affairs in Mumbai.

28:50

My name is Dinsha Tamboli. I'm 79 years

28:52

of age, but

28:55

feeling more like 39. Dinsha

28:58

was a member of the Panchayat at

29:00

the time and he was in charge

29:02

of all things Bhokmanasheeni. Here, you

29:04

have to speak loud. I'm a little bit

29:06

tired of hearing. Okay. I've been hearing it

29:09

so. Okay. First, first, first things first. Take

29:11

off. Over a

29:13

cup of chai, Dinsha told me

29:15

about this angry letter. They wrote to

29:18

us that awful stench is

29:20

emanating from there and they

29:22

are not able to keep the windows

29:24

open. They have to keep the windows

29:26

shut, keep the air conditioners on 24

29:28

hours and something should

29:30

be done. This letter

29:32

is from over 20 years ago, but

29:35

Dinsha still has a crisp paper copy

29:37

in his office drawer and he

29:39

handed it to me silently. It

29:43

says, dear trustees, these pictures are

29:45

taken from the top floor of

29:47

new skyscraper that is under construction

29:49

and are taken with special telescopic

29:51

photosensor lenses that are used for

29:54

photographing far off objects. Can

29:56

bodies be allowed to lie like this? We

29:59

Demand that the system that is, oh,

30:01

it must be changed immediately. We're sending

30:03

copies of these pictures to Delhi. I

30:05

Minister: Home minister, environmental ministry

30:07

and Mumbai Chief minister, Health

30:10

minister, mayor, Municipal commissioner, health

30:12

officer. It is

30:14

shocking that parties are forced to follow. This outdated

30:16

says and. Now. Because.

30:19

Of the absence of vultures, the

30:22

body the top the towers were

30:24

barely being consumed. To be clear,

30:26

these bodies were piling up and

30:28

mostly just rotting. And from

30:30

a distance the apartment residents could see

30:33

and smell them. It was

30:35

then says responsibility to figure out what

30:37

to do. First

30:39

be decided to do some fact checking.

30:42

Vince. I wanted to see for himself

30:44

whether the complaints about the site and

30:46

the smell held up. So

30:48

even though it was against the rules, he asked

30:50

the com the out to let him into one

30:52

of the towers. And were was anybody

30:55

surprised that you were asking to do that

30:57

because. This is the asperger three broader

30:59

that for. What you're

31:01

asking? I do like you couldn't say no

31:03

to me. But the beer. Absolute

31:06

me I'm in the committed absolutely

31:08

lot of people for does good.

31:10

You're not supposed to look inside.

31:13

As a crime. I wandered

31:16

in my duty. Of I

31:18

saw was horrific. And.

31:21

That's. All that dense I would tell me. Because.

31:23

Again, this is a sacred ritual.

31:26

And when it comes to desks, there

31:28

are some things that are just not

31:30

spoken. Denser turned to

31:32

the com dia and asked him basically.

31:35

How did this happen? And

31:37

did you ever ask them? How

31:40

come you didn't share this? I

31:42

did ask them this had that the

31:44

Korea Advanced or the Trustees for through.

31:48

The surf another and this and rubbish. the

31:50

are talking robbers. This.

31:52

Get a read through. And through

31:55

forces for making this new law you

31:57

lose their jobs. He said,

31:59

what for. We had to look after

32:01

our own life. We

32:04

started telling them what they wanted to hear from

32:06

us. A few days

32:08

later, Dinsha told his colleagues in the panchayat,

32:11

Look, we have a serious issue, and

32:13

I know because I saw it with my own

32:15

eyes. What was their reaction?

32:18

You shouldn't have done that. I said I just wanted

32:20

to get to understand the reality

32:22

of it because of the complaints that we

32:24

are receiving. Dinsha knew

32:26

that the system was gradually

32:29

deteriorating, going down because

32:31

of the lack of bolters. What

32:35

was not known was

32:37

the extent to which it had collapsed.

32:39

The system had collapsed. According

32:42

to Dinsha, Dokk Minashini has

32:44

fallen apart. He'd say this

32:46

matter-of-factly more than a few times. Often,

32:49

he'd quickly follow that up with an

32:51

even gloomier statement. The future

32:53

of the Parsis as a people is

32:55

also in trouble. Our numbers

32:58

have been declining since 1941. As

33:00

per the 1941 census, there were 114,000 Parsis in

33:02

India. Since

33:07

that time, every 10

33:10

years, there has been a decline. The

33:12

government figures are there. With

33:14

a near-permanent shrug in his

33:16

shoulders, Dinsha explained the strict

33:18

rules around conversion and intermarriage,

33:21

the trend of fewer Parsis having children. Their

33:24

population has been shrinking too, alongside

33:26

the vultures. You

33:34

know how sometimes there'll be a word in

33:36

the English language that seems simple but has

33:38

just a stupid amount of different meanings? I've

33:41

been thinking a lot about this one particular

33:44

word, wake, as

33:46

in W-A-K-E, wake.

33:49

And yes, I was a spelling bee kid who was

33:52

made to spell this word, and yes,

33:54

I will give you a definition. To

33:56

wake from something can mean to make a

33:59

realization or to after

34:01

a period of being asleep or unaware.

34:04

Awake is also a vigil for someone who

34:06

has just died, a form of

34:08

honoring or celebrating the life of the

34:10

deceased. And awake, it

34:13

also happens to be the collective noun

34:15

for a group of vultures who are

34:17

mid-feet on a forest. Back

34:37

in Mumbai, Vin Shah still needed to make

34:39

a plan. By this point, by the way,

34:41

it's 2001, and

34:43

there are two clusters of tall apartment

34:45

buildings peering over Dungurvadi. Some

34:48

towers were going unused at the time, and

34:50

they wanted to figure out if people were

34:52

getting a view of those towers too. So

34:55

Vin Shah laid down on each stone

34:58

slab of the empty towers, and he

35:00

asked residents on the top floors of

35:02

the surrounding apartment buildings if they could

35:04

see him. So basically, you

35:06

were on the phone while laying down

35:08

on one of these labs, and somebody

35:10

else was as well. And

35:14

your friend would tell you, oh,

35:16

I'm not going to see you. Well,

35:19

so it really factored into your

35:22

decision-making in a big way. One

35:24

of the few living Parsis has slept and just

35:26

slept. Wow,

35:28

that's pretty funny. Ultimately,

35:32

Vin Shah found that two of the

35:34

five towers at Dungurvadi could be seen

35:36

from apartment windows. As a

35:38

result, they stopped using those two towers.

35:41

Atop the remaining towers, the panchayat,

35:44

the Parsi Leadership Council, agreed

35:46

to begin conducting a series

35:48

of experiments. Their goal

35:50

was to find a way to speed up decomposition,

35:53

or at the very least, to hide the

35:56

view and smell of the rotting bodies. First,

36:02

they tried lining the outer rim

36:04

of the towers with a particular flower

36:07

called gevra that smells sick and

36:09

perfumey. If you have

36:11

urgent pots outside

36:13

the walls and put

36:15

in that flower and add water, it will

36:18

give out a very pungent smell, which

36:20

will mask the smell.

36:23

But it wasn't doing quite enough. Then

36:26

there was brief excitement about a special

36:28

mixture of herbs and chemicals. The

36:31

idea being that when stuffed into orifices

36:33

of the dead, maybe this mixture could

36:35

speed up decomposition before the smell of

36:38

rotting flesh kicks in. It

36:40

accelerated the process of decomposition, but

36:44

it had a counter effect. The

36:47

whole area inside became very sludgy. The

36:50

chemicals were almost too effective.

36:53

The floor atop the towers became a

36:55

kind of human slurry. And

36:58

a couple of pallbearers flipped, fell

37:00

into the central wells there to be brought

37:02

out. The pallbearers had

37:05

trouble moving the bodies. And

37:07

the worst thing was the pallbearers refused

37:10

to use this composition

37:12

because they said that when they lift the

37:14

bodies to put them in the central well,

37:18

it was very messy thing. The arms would come out,

37:20

the legs would come out that way. From

37:23

behind closed doors at weekly panchayat board

37:26

meetings and on the forums of community

37:28

newspapers, Parsis discussed any possible

37:30

solutions they could think of. Parsis

37:33

living in diaspora all over the world

37:35

started to write in with suggestions. There

37:38

was so much internal dialogue going on

37:40

within the Parsi community. The Orissodocs ones

37:43

who said, no, this is the only way

37:45

we can dispose of the dead. Those

37:47

who were pro-adaptation who already acknowledged that

37:49

Parsis were all over the world and

37:51

were not doing sky burials.

37:54

And so many of the diaspora that was

37:56

all over the place that they weren't in

37:58

Mumbai, where the towers were. So

38:00

all these questions came

38:02

up about adaptation and

38:05

survival. Some suggested

38:07

they use gasification, which involves

38:09

high heat, or permission,

38:11

a technique in Sweden that uses liquid

38:13

nitrogen to deep-freeze a body

38:15

before vibrating it into a fine powder.

38:18

One entomologist in Germany suggested

38:21

they try flesh-eating insects. But

38:23

no one could agree on any one solution.

38:26

Nothing compared to the efficiency,

38:29

cleanliness, and theological alignment of

38:31

the vultures. Eventually,

38:33

though, the Bombay Parsi Panchayat landed

38:36

on a plan. They would

38:38

install solar panels on the towers.

38:41

Solar panels, or solar concentrators

38:43

as they're often called, would

38:45

essentially look like giant mirrors.

38:48

Asvi Gaddialli remembers working as

38:50

a corpse bearer during this transition. The

38:53

rays of the sun fall

38:55

on the mirror, and then they reflect back to the

38:57

body. So

39:06

when the heat of the sun falls on the

39:08

body, the body melts. You know,

39:11

like how you put the butter in a

39:13

frying pan to make pao bhaji, the butter

39:16

melts. And this is how the

39:18

body diffuses. The Panchayat hoped

39:20

that the solar panels would speed

39:23

up decomposition without involving contact with

39:25

fire, water, or earth,

39:27

perzorastrian tradition. Solar

39:29

panels were installed first in Mumbai's Dungar

39:32

Vadi, and then atop towers of silence,

39:34

all over India. It

39:36

might sound gruesome, but bodies

39:38

melting or dehydrating is far

39:40

better than just rotting. And

39:43

although some had misgivings about the

39:45

change, calling it backdoor cremation, it

39:48

mostly seemed like a massive relief that

39:50

some sort of a solution had finally

39:52

been found, instead of leaving a

39:55

body to rot for months. The

40:00

solar concentrators felt like a

40:02

collective exhale, a triumph

40:04

of human engineering, a cause

40:07

for celebration. But

40:10

all that changed when one woman's

40:12

grief and rage propelled the Parsi

40:15

community into a new level of

40:17

reckoning. And then five

40:19

years later, Van Varya

40:23

comes into the picture. And

40:26

turns the world around, tops it away. We'll

40:31

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the smartest way to hire. We're

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back with producer Lasha Madan. In

45:23

2005, four years after

45:25

construction began on the solar

45:27

panels, a Parsi woman named

45:29

Dan Varya laid her 85-year-old

45:31

mother Nargis Varya to

45:34

rest at the Mumbai Dungarvadi.

45:37

Dan had cut short her career as a

45:39

touring folk singer to look after her bedridden

45:41

mother, whom she had lived with for 56 years.

45:45

After her mom died, Dan felt

45:47

lonely and utterly bereft, and

45:50

she took to spending long hours at Dungarvadi,

45:52

praying. Dan

45:55

was a very pious

45:58

devote type of... She used

46:01

to pray every day from the book, etc. And

46:05

she used to go quite often to the

46:07

Dungarwai to pray before that tower in which

46:09

her mother was confined. On

46:12

her visits, Dunne would make small talk with

46:14

the staff. One afternoon,

46:16

almost a year after her mother's

46:18

death, Dunne had an unusual interaction

46:20

with one of the Khandiyas on

46:22

duty. She was going

46:24

back to the towers to pay her respects

46:26

and do her prayers. She

46:29

just asked the Khandiyas, like, oh, so my mother's

46:31

gone, right? And they're like, ha, no, she's still

46:33

up there. There's no vultures. Where would she go?

46:36

And this nickel gets her. And this

46:38

laughed and they said, your mom is still inside. If

46:40

you are dead, we can show you. So

46:44

that was the trigger for her. Like

46:47

everyone else, Dunne knew that the vultures

46:49

were gone. But she

46:51

believed, like most in her community,

46:53

that the solar panel technology had

46:55

fully decomposed her mother's body. And

46:58

she was understandably horrified thinking about

47:00

her mother naked up on top

47:02

of this tower, slowly rotting. Dunne

47:05

wasn't just thinking about her mother. She

47:08

was thinking about all the mothers. She

47:11

wasn't a person to just sit on her

47:13

heels and complain about something or stew about

47:15

it or write a nice letter of complaint.

47:18

That just wasn't her style. Dunne wanted

47:20

the Parsi community to know that these

47:23

solar panels weren't working as well as

47:25

people thought they were, especially

47:27

during India's four-month-long monsoon season, when

47:29

there isn't enough sunlight for the

47:32

solar panels to really work. Dunne

47:35

wanted to tell people that their

47:37

deceased loved ones were decomposing slowly,

47:39

that their souls weren't free. Photographs

47:44

from inside the towers of silence, where

47:46

the Parsi community in Mumbai disposes

47:49

of its death. These forbidden photographs

47:51

are creating big ripples in the

47:53

small community. This is from

47:55

an old CNN report. Dunne had

47:57

hired a photographer to sneak into the towers of

47:59

silence. of silence and capture images

48:02

of the decomposing bodies. 65-year-old

48:05

Dan Bariapan signed her mother to the

48:07

towers almost a year ago, so she

48:09

was shocked to hear from insiders that

48:12

the body was still walking slowly. Years

48:19

earlier, photos had been taken from a

48:21

faraway telescopic lens and sent privately to

48:23

Dinsha and the rest of the Panchayat.

48:26

This time, though, Dan wanted to get photos

48:28

from up close, and she wanted to go

48:31

public with them. Everything was

48:33

about to go up a notch. Awful

48:36

images made the rounds, on flyers,

48:38

slipped under doors, and into mailboxes.

48:41

A 15-minute video circulating

48:43

online showed bodies in

48:45

various stages of decomposition,

48:48

images of loved ones with their eyes

48:50

hollowed out, their mouths gaping at the

48:52

sky. In

48:56

the news clip, Dan goes on to say in Hindi,

48:59

I'm not scared. I'm ready to fight. And

49:02

just as I imagined Dan might have predicted,

49:05

what she did was met with a lot

49:07

of anger, not only at her

49:09

claims, but also that she broke into

49:11

a sacred area, took photos and videos,

49:13

and spread them far and wide. Their

49:16

anger extended to Dinshot Damboli, too,

49:18

who was on the board of the

49:20

Bombay Parsi Panchayat at the time. People

49:23

wanted to ostracize us, that

49:26

we are ready-gauged, we

49:28

are down, we are out

49:30

to destroy the religion, etc.

49:34

Dangbadiya's actions became the inflection point

49:36

in a decades-long friction that had

49:38

been building internally within the community.

49:42

In response to Dan's protest, Dinshot

49:44

urged the rest of the Panchayat

49:46

to build an electric crematorium within

49:48

Dungarvadi. But the high priests

49:50

decided instead to ban anyone who

49:53

chose alternate methods from receiving prayers

49:55

at all. When this controversy

49:57

started and people started, started

50:00

taking to cremation. The

50:02

high priests of Bombay passed

50:04

an edict. No prayer should be performed

50:08

for those who get consigned to

50:11

alternate methods, barriers or layers.

50:14

So people were feeling very

50:16

upset about that. Then

50:22

in 2009, the panchayat discovered that

50:24

two Parsi priests had been offering

50:26

funerary rituals to some Parsis who

50:28

had secretly opted for cremation. They

50:31

tried to ban those priests. It

50:33

was a conflict that made its way all the

50:35

way up to the Supreme Court. Dunn

50:42

passed away in 2022. I

50:45

found an obituary about her that described her as

50:47

a firebrand with low

50:50

tolerance for fools and liars. Some

50:53

Parsis used Dunn's claims to

50:55

continue advocating for burial and

50:57

cremation to be considered religiously

50:59

okay. They wanted to push

51:01

past the bounds set by the orthodoxy.

51:04

And then there were others, people who

51:07

thought her accusations were completely made

51:09

up. The photographs

51:11

were doctored. This

51:13

was doctored. This

51:16

is Kojaste mystery again, Zoroastrian religious

51:18

scholar and former trustee of the

51:20

Bombay Parsi panchayat, the council for

51:23

the Parsi community in Mumbai. Kojaste

51:26

and many other traditionalists want

51:28

desperately to preserve Zoroastrian ritual

51:31

in its purest form. So

51:34

cremation is an absolute no-no

51:37

as far as

51:39

Zoroastrianism is concerned. You

51:41

would be foolish to say, I don't want to

51:43

take the tower of silence route. I

51:47

mean, you'd have to have your brains examined. I'm

51:51

sorry to be so brutal and honest

51:53

with you, but that's

51:56

exactly the truth. conversations,

52:00

it felt a little like I was

52:02

speaking to a lawyer representing his client,

52:04

the Towers of Silence. For

52:07

Kojaste, it all started back when he was

52:09

a student and on a trip to Iran.

52:12

He had heard of a story about

52:14

a mysterious Zoroastrian man who lived in

52:16

the mountains there, close to a village

52:18

called Cham. I was very

52:20

keen to meet that man. I

52:23

went to the village where this man

52:25

used to occasionally appear and

52:28

his name was Morbid Hormuz. Kojaste

52:31

said to the man, you seem so

52:33

wise. Please, tell me

52:35

what I need to know about our religion. Ani

52:38

said Kojaste, your

52:40

job has to be to look after

52:42

the Tower of Silence. Kojaste

52:45

was studying to become a chartered accountant

52:47

at the time, but this man was

52:49

telling him that he needed to drop

52:51

everything, go to Mumbai and protect

52:53

the towers there. I remember

52:55

being angry with him and saying, tell

52:57

me about things that are

53:00

relevant for the living, not the dead. As

53:02

an 18, 19 year old, I didn't

53:05

want to know what you have to do

53:07

with the Tower of Silence because I'd never

53:09

ever been to a funeral at

53:12

that point. I'd never ever lived in Bombay

53:14

at that point either. I was a Poona

53:16

boy. So as far as

53:18

the Towers of Silence were concerned, it was

53:20

alien to me. But

53:23

decades later, in the early 80s,

53:25

Kojaste moved to Mumbai. And over

53:27

the years, Kojaste watched the happenings

53:30

at Dungur Vadi closely. He

53:32

heard about Diklofenak and the fact that the

53:34

vultures were mostly gone. He

53:36

heard about the complaints, the subsequent experiments

53:39

at the towers, Dunn's photos

53:41

and the shame it brought to the community.

53:44

And he heard the cries for a

53:46

Parsi crematorium. The panchad

53:48

then got

53:50

into a very awkward situation that

53:52

the movers and shakers of the

53:55

community wanted a crematorium

53:57

in Dungur Vadi where

53:59

we have our towers of sands, all

54:02

pushing for stopping the

54:04

tower of sands' mode of disposal

54:06

because the vultures had disappeared. There

54:08

were no vultures. By

54:10

this time, these towers, or dakhmas,

54:12

had been banned in Iran. Sky

54:15

burials had been declared a health hazard

54:17

there in the 1970s. Without

54:20

other options, most Zoroastrians outside

54:22

of India get buried or

54:24

cremated. And that's when

54:26

I slowly had to jump in and

54:30

start talking about the dakhmas,

54:33

having to take interest in

54:35

vultures, and that's how my

54:37

vulture story began. At

54:39

this point, it seemed like there was widespread

54:42

acceptance that the birds were gone and not

54:44

coming back. But Kojasse was

54:46

like, no. The

54:48

vultures have to come back. They

54:52

simply have to. I

54:55

felt that this was an excellent system

54:57

that had to be preserved despite

54:59

all the sort of negative

55:01

publicity that began to germinate

55:04

because the vultures had disappeared.

55:07

Kojasse set his eyes on a

55:09

specific mission, to turn the Mumbai

55:11

Towers of Silence into a giant

55:13

vulture aviary. The

55:15

idea was, let's bring the vultures back

55:18

to feed on Parsi dead, but

55:20

protect them in an enclosure, away from

55:22

Diclofenac and any other drugs that would

55:24

kill them. So shortly

55:27

after Dunne made those photos

55:29

public, Kojasse got to work. Kojasse

55:32

has a beautiful voice. This is a very

55:34

loud voice. This

55:36

is raptor breeder and conservationist

55:38

Jemima Perry-Jones. Jemima runs

55:40

the oldest breeding center for birds of

55:42

prey in the world. So

55:45

naturally, Kojasse went to the UK

55:47

to meet her. Jemima described

55:49

to me the first time she met Kojasse

55:51

at the cafe of her breeding center in

55:53

the UK. And you could have had

55:56

a pin-dop in my cafe, literally. People

56:00

like me, you know, we haven't had people come

56:02

and sit down and say, well, the

56:05

vultures aren't coming in to eat our dead and

56:07

the kites are coming in and they're picking up bits

56:09

of our dead and then they're flying out of

56:11

Mumbai and they're dropping them on people and people

56:13

don't like it. You know,

56:15

it's an extraordinary conversation. Kojasse

56:18

was there to ask Jemima for

56:20

advice. What would it take

56:22

to bring the vultures back and to house

56:24

them at the towers of silence? The

56:29

problem was there wasn't really an answer

56:32

that they wanted that I could give

56:34

them because their idea was you could

56:36

just put a big net over the top

56:38

of each of the towers and lob in some vultures

56:40

and it would be fine and

56:43

you couldn't do that. Jemima was like,

56:45

it's going to be much more complicated than

56:47

that. So I designed

56:49

an aviary with the towers within

56:51

the aviary that would have worked

56:53

possibly. Jemima's proposal outlined

56:56

some specific criteria. She

56:58

said to Kojasse, you need to supplement

57:00

the human food with enough additional meat,

57:02

probably goat. You'd have to create

57:04

places for the vultures to bathe. It

57:07

need to be a huge aviary. You'd

57:09

have to clean the aviaries, which would have

57:12

been a nightmare because if you upset the

57:14

vultures, they have a habit of vomiting

57:16

and you know, you don't really want

57:18

them vomiting up somebody's grandmother in front

57:20

of you. So

57:22

there were all sorts of things that made

57:25

it a very difficult proposition. Without

57:27

a clear consensus on the aviary plan,

57:29

Kojasse then ran for a seat on

57:32

the Bombay Parsi Panchayat and got elected

57:34

in 2008. Now

57:37

he was in charge of all things

57:39

Bhakmanishini, the same position that Dinsha had

57:41

been in a decade before. This

57:44

time in 2010, Kojasse got

57:46

a swanky architecture studio to make

57:48

a 3D model of a vulture

57:50

aviary at Dungarvadi, a

57:52

geometric structure of tension cables and

57:54

netting supported by columns. The

57:57

photos are online and they're honestly kind

57:59

of beautiful. The idea

58:01

for an aviary, it turned into

58:03

a whole thing. There were countless

58:06

meetings, news articles, and presentations about

58:08

it over several decades. But

58:10

ultimately, it has remained simply an

58:12

idea. At one point, 19 Parsi

58:15

physicians signed a letter of concern

58:17

about the aviary project because

58:20

the painkiller Diclofenac was and

58:22

still is administered to humans,

58:24

and especially to end-of-life patients.

58:27

There's no way a doctor can guarantee

58:29

that when somebody dies, they are Diclofenac

58:32

free. That's journalist Mira Subramanian again. You

58:34

know, somebody could be taking Diclofenac for

58:36

plant rewards and then have a heart

58:38

attack. Like, there's just no way

58:41

to make sure that the human

58:43

bodies would be safe. Diclofenac is

58:45

literally in thousands of pharmaceutical formulations.

58:48

It's really hard to isolate. If

58:50

Diclofenac was in a Parsi person's

58:53

bloodstream, the already endangered vultures in

58:55

the aviary would just die,

58:58

just like before. On with

59:00

four more drugs on the market today that

59:02

have been tested to be just as killer

59:04

to Gyp's vultures, the Panchayat's

59:06

plan was met with a good deal

59:09

of apprehension. All

59:11

this made it hard to reach consensus

59:13

on the aviary project. So

59:15

ultimately, Kojaste's plan

59:18

fizzled out. The

59:20

aviary project died the natural death? How

59:23

does it feel to

59:26

have tried so

59:28

hard and the

59:31

vultures are not back?

59:34

My time to go to Dungarwadi is

59:36

also coming round.

59:40

You begin to think about mortality as

59:42

you get older. It's

59:45

certainly something one thinks about. Now

59:49

as far as I'm concerned, when I

59:51

die, certainly I'll be able

59:53

to meet Maudit Hormuz upstairs in

59:56

the spiritual world and say, I did

59:58

my best. Despite

1:00:03

the very obvious logistical barriers,

1:00:05

every couple years it seems

1:00:07

that the idea for an

1:00:09

aviary resurfaces with new fervor.

1:00:13

The latest article is from just a few months

1:00:15

ago, January 2024, announcing a new plan to build

1:00:20

a vulture aviary atop the towers.

1:00:22

This time though, it's not Kojaste

1:00:24

spearheading. This time on the

1:00:27

panchayat ended almost a decade ago. A

1:00:31

few months ago, I traveled with Dinsha

1:00:33

to a dungarvadi in another town, far

1:00:35

from the tension that's mostly centered around

1:00:38

the main dungarvadi in Mumbai. It

1:00:40

was lush and peaceful. I

1:00:43

was allowed to approach the base of one of

1:00:45

the towers, and when I craned

1:00:47

my neck, I could see one of the

1:00:49

solar panels hovering above the rim, held up

1:00:51

by what looked like a long telephone pole.

1:00:55

Despite the fact that Dhan exposed the

1:00:57

shortcomings of the solar concentrators, this is

1:00:59

the method still in use atop the

1:01:01

towers today. The

1:01:03

solar panels were small and uninspiring,

1:01:06

nothing like what I'd imagined. Most

1:01:09

of all, they were broken. The

1:01:11

mirrored glass was completely shattered,

1:01:14

leaving the panels useless. There

1:01:16

was this amazing moment when I saw

1:01:19

the culprit, a peacock, flying up to

1:01:21

the one intact mirror and pecking at

1:01:23

the glass. Oh

1:01:25

my god, wow. Yeah.

1:01:30

Wow, so they really do climb up to

1:01:32

the towers. That's

1:01:35

amazing. Wow. Okay,

1:01:39

so there's a peacock and it climbed

1:01:41

onto the solar panel in front of

1:01:43

us. It's looking at

1:01:46

its reflection and pecking its

1:01:48

peak into the glass. Have

1:01:53

you heard of the Mumbai Dunderwadi ever

1:01:55

having a peacock problem? Plenty. Yeah?

1:02:01

Imagine putting so much effort into finding a

1:02:03

solution, only to have a different type of

1:02:05

bird come in and mess it up. The

1:02:09

solar panels had once felt like a

1:02:11

viable alternative to dispose of the dead

1:02:13

in the absence of vultures, but

1:02:15

now you have peacocks pecking at

1:02:18

the remains of this failed experiment.

1:02:21

And for corpse-bearers, who already

1:02:23

face precarious labor conditions and

1:02:25

low wages, they sometimes

1:02:27

need to drag a body around

1:02:29

multiple times to keep relocating the

1:02:31

solar panels on different body parts

1:02:34

in order for the corpse to fully decompose.

1:02:37

Corpse-bearers in Mumbai unionized in

1:02:39

2003, and every so

1:02:41

often rumor spreads about a strike.

1:02:49

As Dinsha and I continued on through

1:02:52

the Dungarvadi, we walked the perimeter of

1:02:54

one of the towers. Our

1:02:56

guide told us that about 35 bodies

1:02:58

were currently up there. I

1:03:00

could smell a distinct rotting as I walked

1:03:03

the circumference of this tower, but if I

1:03:05

willed myself to believe it was fresh compost

1:03:07

I was smelling, I probably

1:03:09

could. A

1:03:11

couple days later, I brought this observation

1:03:14

up to Kojaste. Just

1:03:16

because people have the issue of

1:03:19

smell, do you

1:03:21

stop an entire system which

1:03:24

supports a forest? Do

1:03:28

you change the religion and

1:03:30

religious practices just because

1:03:32

of smell? Kojaste

1:03:35

thinks that focusing on smell

1:03:37

is misguided, but there is

1:03:39

something he feels increasingly concerned

1:03:41

about. We have

1:03:43

a problem now high-rise buildings coming

1:03:46

up around Dungarvadi. The

1:03:48

scale of development that Mumbai has seen

1:03:50

in the last few decades is colossal.

1:03:53

Back when Dinsha Thamboli received that threatening

1:03:55

letter from overlooking neighbors of Dungarvadi, there

1:03:57

were only two high-rises in the city.

1:04:00

in the area. Kojashe told me

1:04:02

that back then, even his home where

1:04:04

I met him was once Dungarvadi land

1:04:06

before it turned into a housing complex.

1:04:09

Till 123 years

1:04:11

ago panthers were roaming around where

1:04:13

you're sitting today. This

1:04:15

is part of Dungarvadi

1:04:18

land where this building

1:04:20

has come up. But

1:04:23

today, the Dungarvadi neighborhood looks like

1:04:25

a forest of skyscrapers surrounding the

1:04:27

actual forest. Next to

1:04:30

the Dungarvadi's main arched entranceway, a

1:04:32

tall billboard advertises the modern comforts

1:04:34

of life. Cars,

1:04:36

handbags, life insurance.

1:04:39

The industrial clang of luxury apartment

1:04:42

construction is constant. All

1:04:45

the time. This road, I think at the moment

1:04:47

there might be no less than

1:04:49

10 new projects. So possibly,

1:04:51

you know, 20, 30 buildings coming up. And

1:04:54

presumably there are going to be high rises. All

1:04:56

will be high rises because this being

1:04:59

one of the poshest areas

1:05:01

of Mumbai, Malabahil, it

1:05:03

is just going to be super

1:05:05

expensive, multi-storey buildings,

1:05:08

and all of them are

1:05:10

going to be overlooking Dungarvadi. That's

1:05:12

Roshneh Paradevala again. At

1:05:15

the moment we've got possibly seven

1:05:17

buildings overlooking. I think

1:05:19

in the next 10 years we will just

1:05:21

be surrounded 360 degrees. We will be surrounded

1:05:23

by tall towers. As an

1:05:25

ecologist, Roshneh has been planting trees around

1:05:28

the circumference of each tower. Trees

1:05:31

like bamboo that grow tall and fast

1:05:33

and can obscure the view from surrounding

1:05:35

buildings. But as Kojasse

1:05:37

once told me, Lasha,

1:05:39

the bottom line is that

1:05:42

as I now know, the

1:05:44

vultures are ancillary to the system. The

1:05:46

most important is the sun. With

1:05:49

the absence of vultures, the sun is

1:05:51

the only thing that can break down

1:05:53

the bodies of deceased Parsis. But

1:05:56

the taller these apartment buildings rise and

1:05:59

then in turn, to tolerate these trees that

1:06:01

are meant to obstruct their views rise, it

1:06:04

also means that it'll be harder for the

1:06:06

sun's rays to reach the bodies atop the

1:06:08

towers. And really, at

1:06:10

this point, sunlight is all there

1:06:12

is that's left to decompose these

1:06:14

bodies. The whole force

1:06:16

is going to be in darkness and in shadow. Is

1:06:18

that going to solve the purpose? That's

1:06:21

going to be counterproductive to the

1:06:23

Rukmishai system. So these

1:06:25

are tough, tough challenges.

1:06:32

In 2015, a Parsi crematorium

1:06:34

was finally established in Mumbai, though

1:06:37

not inside the Dungarvadi, and Dinshot

1:06:39

Damboli, former member of the Bombay

1:06:41

Parsi Panchayat, was one of the

1:06:44

key people behind setting it up.

1:06:47

Some Parsis are afraid that if

1:06:49

cremation and burial grow in popularity

1:06:51

and fewer and fewer people take

1:06:53

to the towers and in

1:06:55

the face of encroaching development, that the

1:06:57

Dungarvadi land might be taken away from

1:06:59

them. So once

1:07:01

we have buildings surrounding

1:07:04

us 360 degrees, what

1:07:06

is going to be the solution? Right now, one

1:07:08

person is complaining. Tomorrow, 10 people will complain.

1:07:11

Tomorrow if we've got thousands of

1:07:14

residents complaining to the municipal

1:07:16

corporation, the municipal corporation is going

1:07:19

to be forced to

1:07:21

address the issue. And

1:07:24

then are they going to

1:07:26

really weigh

1:07:28

the religious sentiments of a community

1:07:30

up against an entire, you

1:07:33

know, larger community that might take

1:07:35

objection? With real

1:07:37

estate in Malabar Hill priced around $800

1:07:40

per square foot, the Dungarvadi

1:07:42

could be worth about $2 billion. But

1:07:45

the Parsis own this land. It

1:07:48

belongs to them. So I

1:07:50

had to ask Roshna to lay out more

1:07:52

clearly why there seems to be

1:07:54

this vague but collective fear of the

1:07:56

land being taken away from them. So

1:08:01

let me answer the question this way. As

1:08:05

the Parsi community

1:08:07

has dwindled, as the numbers

1:08:09

have fallen, we have seen in other

1:08:11

parts of India where because

1:08:14

there is no Parsi population, the

1:08:19

local Parsi panchay has

1:08:21

been forced to sell the land because there are no

1:08:23

Parsi. And that's happened across

1:08:25

India. And so if there are no

1:08:27

Parsis left, the land will be taken over the land. This

1:08:31

is something Rushneh has seen herself. On

1:08:34

a recent work trip, she visited a

1:08:36

city called Jhana, which used to have

1:08:38

a big Parsi community. When

1:08:40

I visited Jhana, there

1:08:42

hadn't been a single Parsi in Jhana for the past

1:08:44

37 years. The

1:08:47

whole Parsi population had been wiped free.

1:08:51

Not only were there no Parsis left,

1:08:53

but there was also no functioning Dungarvadi.

1:08:55

What used to be the Dungarvadi is

1:08:57

now government land. When

1:09:00

I went there, he showed me a Dokma saying, I asked

1:09:02

him, what's that? He said, a well. I

1:09:04

said, what well? No, somebody said it's

1:09:06

a well. I said, it's not a well, it's

1:09:08

a Dokma. And

1:09:10

the locals said, oh, we don't know what that is. The

1:09:13

towers and their sacred role, it

1:09:15

had all been forgotten. I

1:09:20

had seen this too. In a

1:09:22

different town, I visited an abandoned

1:09:24

Dungarvadi with a couple defunct towers

1:09:26

of silence. Due

1:09:28

to the population loss of Parsis, there were

1:09:30

no more priests left to administer the death

1:09:33

rituals. So the Panchayat

1:09:35

in that town started leasing the land

1:09:37

to non-Parsi farmers. They had

1:09:39

been using one of the empty Dokmas to

1:09:41

store a giant pile of castor oil seeds.

1:09:44

One other abandoned tower had a

1:09:46

large solar panel above it, creating

1:09:49

solar energy to irrigate the land

1:09:51

for sandalwood farming. All

1:09:53

this on what used to be a

1:09:55

sacred Dungarvadi forest. They were

1:09:57

using solar panels, but not to die.

1:10:00

and investigate Parsi remains. There's

1:10:02

a very real fear that one day the

1:10:05

Parsis will completely fade into memory alongside

1:10:08

the vultures. It

1:10:10

is scary though, like how quickly we forget

1:10:13

things. Already there's been a

1:10:16

whole generation that has never seen a vulture, you

1:10:18

know, and so it's just this thing that, you

1:10:20

know, Patpa and Pati talk about, but it's not

1:10:23

something you've ever seen. And

1:10:26

so it becomes mythology.

1:10:29

As a species, the vultures were here

1:10:31

first. They've lived here for

1:10:33

millions of years, long before humans

1:10:36

and their ideas of religion and

1:10:38

ritual came into being. And

1:10:41

there's a chance that vultures might have

1:10:43

outlived us humans entirely had

1:10:45

we not been so competent at

1:10:48

devastating our planet. Conservationists

1:10:50

in India started breeding these

1:10:53

endangered vultures in captivity in 2004, these

1:10:57

vultures and their keepers alike are

1:10:59

in waiting. They're waiting

1:11:01

for safer skies. They're waiting

1:11:03

for the government to ban all vulture toxic

1:11:06

drugs from youth, waiting for

1:11:08

farmers to get used to using vulture

1:11:10

safe alternatives. The possibility

1:11:12

of seeing vultures return to the open

1:11:14

skies again in huge numbers, it's

1:11:17

all part of the dream, but it's

1:11:19

gonna take a lot of time. The

1:11:21

biology of a vulture is just,

1:11:25

they work on deep time. Vultures

1:11:28

only lay one egg a

1:11:30

year, which is a terrible

1:11:32

evolutionary strategy. But on top of

1:11:34

that, they then raise that chick for about 60

1:11:37

days. And then

1:11:39

it sits unable to fly for four

1:11:41

more months. It's just

1:11:43

a long, slow process. And

1:11:45

so their numbers

1:11:47

could come back and that's only after all

1:11:49

of these drugs

1:11:51

go away, but it could take

1:11:54

a very, very long time. It's

1:12:01

my last day here in Mumbai, and

1:12:03

I'm having breakfast at my hotel. This

1:12:06

hotel, by the way, yet another development

1:12:08

from which one could peer down into

1:12:11

the towers. A moment

1:12:13

ago, I caught myself looking up at the

1:12:15

sky, and I saw what I think was

1:12:17

a single black kite flying past a neighboring

1:12:20

high rise. I'm trying

1:12:22

to imagine what vultures must have looked

1:12:24

like in huge numbers up here, in this

1:12:26

sky right above Dungarvadi. I'm

1:12:31

an atheist, but I was raised

1:12:33

Hindu, and in my family, all

1:12:35

of our dead have followed a very

1:12:38

specific tradition. Bodies are

1:12:40

placed on an open-aired wooden pyre

1:12:42

and consumed by flames. Then,

1:12:44

the remaining bones and ashes

1:12:46

are tossed into River Ganga, or

1:12:49

the Ganges River. For

1:12:51

Hindus, it's one of the most sacred places

1:12:53

on earth, but it's also

1:12:55

one of the most polluted. This

1:12:58

river is a place where people bathe,

1:13:00

where carcasses and bodies are deposited, and

1:13:02

where almost half a billion people get

1:13:04

their drinking water. I've

1:13:07

had a hard time reckoning with

1:13:09

the idea that the river that's

1:13:11

thought to spiritually cleanse our souls

1:13:13

is so overrun with toxic waste

1:13:15

and sewage, and yet

1:13:17

all four of my grandparents' remains

1:13:19

have been sent off into Ganga.

1:13:23

I think when we stop being able to die together,

1:13:25

in the way our ancestors did,

1:13:28

we risk coming apart as a people. Keeping

1:13:31

the tradition is part of what makes

1:13:33

it all tolerable. Death, I mean,

1:13:36

and the grief that comes with it. And

1:13:40

sometimes, in the face of something that

1:13:42

threatens those inherited ways, all

1:13:44

we can do is find something to

1:13:46

hold onto. And

1:13:49

so, I think of Roshneh, how

1:13:51

she told me that every so often,

1:13:54

she'll meet a Parsi who will ask

1:13:56

her to plant specific trees inside Bhangarh

1:13:58

Vadi. they remembered

1:14:00

the vultures loved to roost in. Don't

1:14:03

forget the fish tail palm, they'd tell

1:14:05

her, or the pomira. And

1:14:09

so, Rushne started planting. This

1:14:12

way, she tells me, if

1:14:14

the vultures ever return, this

1:14:16

forest will be ready to accept them.

1:15:08

99% Invisible was reported this week

1:15:10

by Lashma Dawn and edited by

1:15:12

Christopher Johnson. Lashma's reporting was

1:15:15

supported by the International Women's Media

1:15:17

Foundation's Howard G. Buffett Fund for

1:15:19

Women Journalists. Mixed by

1:15:22

Martine Gonzalez music by Swann Real

1:15:24

and APM, fact checking by Graham

1:15:26

Hashe. Voiceover by Rashmi Kanatra. and

1:16:01

Peter Ayers. Thank you so much.

1:16:30

I'm Peter Ayers. Hey,

1:17:01

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