The Parsis are a minority community in India of ancient Persian descent. They immigrated to India from Iran in the 10th century AD, to avoid persecution by Muslim invaders. The community has integrated itself into Indian society over the years, while also upholding its own distinct character. The Parsis are typically a fun-loving and vivacious lot. With the Parsis, there’s always reason to celebrate, to drink and dance, to twist and shout!

A little-known fact about the community is that they are also great connoisseurs of the body. One winter’s evening every year, hundreds of Parsis throng a dusty mid-town baug to celebrate the community’s most able, muscular bodies at the Annual Zoroastrian Power-Lifting and Bodybuilding Championship. In 2010, I visited this strange scene to find a vibrant, unselfconscious and very alive celebration of the Parsi life-force.

While the Championship is a fun-filled spectacle for everyone involved, it is underpinned by the dark irony of the community’s supposed decline. 2010 was sadly the last year that the Championship took place. “Bodybuilding within the Parsi community has died a natural death. It is not considered to be a competitive sport in India. The community is small, making it very difficult to find young boys enthusiastic about the sport,” says Mickey Mehta, a Parsi fitness guru. The organizers had to cancel the event in 2011 because there were too few entries, and the years ahead look equally bleak for the Parsi musclemen.