Growing up
Roshan was born in India in 1924 in the state of Hyderabap (now called Andhra Pradesh). The second eldest of six children, Roshan’s family included both of her parents mother Phiroza and father J. Edulji, older brother Edulji, older sister Perin (who died at the age of nine due to pneumonia), twin sisters Alice and Amy, and her youngest brother Aspi.
At the time of Roshan’s birth, India was still a colony of the British Empire. Roshan’s parents were descendents of ancestors who immigrated to India from Persia. Roshan’s family was relatively well-off by Indian standards. Most Indians were of the Hindu or Muslim faiths. However, Roshan and her family belonged to the Persian minority whose members were of the Zoroastrian faith- a religion based on the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster. Zoroastrians came to India from the region of Persia (now Iran) in ancient times. Over the centuries Iran had become predominantly Islamic forcing many Zoroastrians to immigrate to Western India. Once in India, those who fled Iran became known as Parsis, the ethno-cultural group to which Roshan and her family belonged.
Roshan’s father. J. Edulji, served in the British army when he was 15 years of age. At the age of 18 he left the British Army and found work as a train locomotive engineer with the Great India Peninsula Railway Company. His career as a train engineer would last for nearly four decades. Because of his position with the railway, Roshan and her family often took their vacations by train and travelled extensively throughout India. Riding the steel rails of the train, Roshan was able to visit and learn about the many regions in her vast homeland of India.
Roshan’s mother, Phiroza, was the daughter of a well-respected family that founded the first wine-merchant business in the capital city of Secunderabad. As was common at the time, Roshan’s mother married at the young age of 16. The marriage had been arranged by the couple’s parents. It was common for an older man who had an established career to marry a younger woman.
Roshan’s family home was large and employed a number of servants, nannies and cooks who helped her mother run the growing household. The family moved often to different cities as the railway company required her father to transfer his job every two years.
Roshan’s childhood was filled with adventure and family vacations that took her to different parts of India. Roshan loved going to school and learning. Her early years of school were spent attending a Parsi language school. Later, Roshan attended an all-girls high school that was modeled after the traditional British school system called J. N. Tata Parsi School. Roshan excelled in her studies. She hoped to one day become a teacher. Roshan completed her studies and received a diploma in Home Sciences at the insistence of her father who wanted her to be well prepared as a future wife and mother. After completing highschool, Roshan would soon begin a new role as a wife and a mother with a young family of her own.
