Khujand

In Khujand, the small core group of persons led by Prof. Rustom Kasimjon Fuzaylov is working very hard to promote the revival of Zarathushti Din amongst the College students. From this group there are 5-6 persons who are very keen to come to India to Zoroastrian College to study here for 2-3 months.

Thanks to your good support we can manage the hospitality arrangements for their visit, here locally in India. What I do not have funds for is the cost of their air-tickets, visas and travel expenses in India. It comes to about US $950-1000 per person. I can manage for giving for one person but not for 5 persons. I am attaching the e-mails [*] from the following persons who are very keen to come from 20^th June to about 20^th August for 2 months. Would it be possible for you through any way to send them the cost of 4 persons air-tickets amount? I am giving their names and addresses and e-mails in a separate page so that if you wish you can send prepaid ticket advice to them or send them ticket and visa money through Western Union or any other method so that they can proceed with their ticketing / visa work. They are very keen to come to India but very disappointed that I could not sponsor their travel cost for air-ticket / visa. Although they are University professors, as you know their salary scale is so low — ranging from US $ 40-80 per month that they barely enough to live on for their own family maintenance. The discussion about their visit to India to Zoroastrian College has been going on since last August. 3 of the girls want their Navjotes to be done after coming to India by our mobeds here. They all belong to very ancient Zoroastrian stock.

Voroh village

Voroh village in Penjikant district is a very ancient Zoroastrian village. Our delegation had stayed there last year. I invited 3 of them to visit India and stay at Zoroastrian College for 2-6 months. But these villagers are hard working and conscientious. They want to go to Australia or Middle-East or Iran and work and earn there for 16-18 months and then go home with their earnings and send another group after them.

Five of them sent me e-mails requesting me to help them to get Australian work permit visas. They are only interested in hard work and good earnings to take home. My idea is that if you can arrange for some sponsors to give them the same salary level that they would earn in Australia, instead of sending them to Australia I would be happy to keep them in Zoroastrian College in India. There is plenty of work in College, both in the gardens and in the Library and also the building extension construction work is going on just now.

College building extensions

Zoroastrian College construction work for College building extensions to build rooms for all these Tajik and other persons to stay is going on just now. If there are any persons known to you who would like to contribute for corpus building funds, I would be thankful for their names and addresses.

Avesta books in Russian

Moscow State University has signed an agreement with Zoroastrian College to translate / transliterate our Avesta books into Russian. The work is going on at present starting with Khordeh Avesta.