The city's newest Zoroarastrian fire temple, the Shapoorji Fakirji Jokhi Agiary at Godrej Baug, Nepean Sea Road, is celebrating its 25th anniversary

The fire temple, built by the Jokhi family, serves more than 500 families staying at Godrej Baug, one of the newest Parsi colonies in the city.

The fire enshrined at the temple was brought to Mumbai in December 1999 from Navsari in Gujarat where it was worshipped after being shifted from a closed shrine in Tavri village in the 1960s. The night-time ceremony from the Khareghat Colony agiary, Hughes Road, where the fire rested for a day, to the new shrine on Malabar Hill, had not been witnessed for generations.

Viraf Mehta, Chairman of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP), the apex community trust that manages Godrej Baug and the Jokhi fire temple, remembers joining the procession that brought the sacred fire from the Vatcha Gandhi agiary at Khareghat Colony to the new shrine near the Tower of Silence cemetery.

"I was in college and my father (Dinshaw Mehta) was a sitting trustee (in the BPP). We walked in a procession of between 4000 and 5000 people. It was night and the street lights had been switched off by the BMC as a mark of respect to the fire. It was a beautiful ceremony; it was surreal," said Mehta.

Fires at Zoroastrian shrines are consecrated after elaborate ceremonies and can never be extinguished. When a fire temple is shut down or renovated, the fire is shifted to another shrine or merged with another fire. The Jokhi temple fire was originally enshrined at an agiary in Tavri and was moved to Navsari, the hometown of the Tata family. Thus, there were two fires at the Navsari fire temple and it was decided to bring one of the fires to the new temple in Mumbai.

According to Zoroastrian religious customs, sacred fires can be moved only at night. So a convoy carrying the fire travelled from Navsari to Mumbai after sunset to protect the flame from exposure to the sun. Accompanying the van was a convoy of cars carrying priests and community members. "Priests accompanied the fire, constantly tending to it. As the sacred fire always has to be connected to the earth, a metal chain touching the road ensured that its connection to the earth was unbroken," said Mehta.Shahrukh Bilimoria, General Secretary of the Godrej Baug Residents Welfare Association, said they had a religious celebration on Saturday.

"We had the trustees of the BPP and the Jokhi family who donated magnanimously to get the fire here and build the fire temple," said Bilimoria.Godrej Baug, which provides community housing for Parsi-Zoroastrians, was built in the 1980s.

Dr Viraf Kapadia, a resident of Godrej Baug, said that before the Jokhi fire temple was built, residents had to go to agiaries in Walkeshwar, Fort, Grant Road, or Hughes Road for prayers. To mark the occasion, a commemorative silver coin embossed with an image of the fire temple was released on the day.