Towering Silence

I remember when my dad told me that Freddy Mercury was a Zoroastrian. In the naivety of youth I had believed them to be an extinct entity. I remember him telling me in pretty much the same breath about their highly idiosyncratic funeral rites as practiced in Mumbai, home to 50,000 of the world's 200,000 Zoroastrians. Needless to say I felt as if one of my lower limbs were being well and truly tugged.

The practice of dokhmenashini, the Zoroastrian method of handling their dead - carrying the body to the Towers of Silence, circular structures of stone, placing the corpse in the open and allowing encircling vultures to scavenge the body thus completing the cycle - is now under serious threat as the vulture population plummets due to the use of anti-inflammatory drugs in cattle!

Read more here.

Nike does cricket

Mongol

The excitement cranks up another level in anicipation of the forthcoming Russian-made Genghis Khan bio-epic.



Check it out in the magic of HD here.

(Ab)original Menu

Last weekend we were treated to a meal at Behesht, an Iranian restaurant in West London. Somehow the establishment appears to have escaped scrutiny from Human Rights Watch and the UN. A cursory glance at the menu exposed a brutal practice that would embarrass even the most bigotted Australian in the Outback.

Both aubergine-based dishes on the menu, Baba Ghanouche and Mirza Ghasemi, were described as containing grilled Aborigine!