Source: The Columbus Dispatch
Wire Service: AP
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/dispatch/content/national_world/stories/2007/06/12/zoroastrian.html
MUMBAI, India—Some might see the towering billboards that rise out of a centuries-old Mumbai funeral ground as a message from beyond the grave.
But the signs — which exhort motorists to "Rev up your night life" by buying a popular car — have bitterly divided the city's Parsi community since they were erected last week, with many people saying they desecrate the sanctity of the place.
Trustees of the funeral ground, who authorized the billboards, say they are needed to raise cash to maintain the Tower of Silence where Parsis, followers of the Bronze Age Persian prophet Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, have wrapped their dead in white muslin and left them to be devoured by vultures since 1673.