Tales from Firozsha Baag

Rohinton Mistry

Rohinton Mistry (1952~)

Born in Bombay, Mistry lives in Canada now.

“His works portray diverse facets of Indian socioeconomic life; as well as Parsi Zoroastrian life, customs, and religion.” (source)

Suspected of being Muslim during the post-911 period.

The Good Parsi identified with the 'symbolic discourse of colonial authority'. They internalized the powerful side of colonial self-representation

to create an image of the 'Good Parsi' who, like his British role-model, was 'more truthful, more pure, more charitable, more pregressive, more rational and more masculine than the Hindu-of-the-masses'.

As with other elite Indians, the Parsis shaped their ideals and aesthetics around British values. However, their sense of self became frozen at a particular moment of communal ascendancy

Now there is a notion among the Parsis that they have themselves become ineffectual and emasculated, overtaken by the majority Hindu population who now manifest the qualities of a dominant group. (Morey 12)

Parsi: Homi Bhabha, Salman Rushdie, Bapsi Sidhwa.

Tales from Firozsha Baag

Auspicious Occasion One Sunday The Ghost of Firozsha

Baag

Condolence Visit The Collectors Of White Hairs and Cricket

The Paying Guests Squatter

Lend Me Your Light Exercisers Swimming Lessons

Isolation from the environment

Death. Change and loss Migration

as exile or escape

Home

Examples of Britishness or “Eurpoean/Western” cultures Rustom – nostalgia for Lifebuoy soap and Johnnie Walker (15)Najamai—the strains of “The Blue Danube” (32)Nariman:

-- fondness for introducing new English words into his stories, for exposing "young minds to as shimmering and varied a vocabulary as possible" (146)

-- owns a Mercedes-Benz, has cultivated a Clark Gable moustache, and likes to whistle the march from The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Kersi – My Fair Lady 175

Story Cycle

Definition: a set of stories linked to each other in such a way as to maintain a balance between the individuality of each of the stories and the necessities of the larger unit [...] [so] that the reader's successive experience in various levels of the pattern of the whole significantly modifies his experience of each of its component parts.

formal materialization of the trope of doubleness as the between-worlds condition is presented via a form that itself oscillates between two genres [novel and short story].(Davis)

Formal hybridity or fragmentation of identity Other examples: The Dubliners, The Woman Warrior

Tales from Firozsha Baag

The growth the artist Kersi from a boy to a young man.

Places

Firozsha Baag in Bombay// an apartment building in TorontoDolly in British Columbia, Vera in Alberta,

Kersi in Toronto, Ontario and Jamshed in New York

Narrative Hybridity

Nariman: unpredictability was the brush he used to paint his tales with, and ambiguity the palette he mixed his colours in [...] Nariman sometimes told a funny incident in a very serious way, or expressed a significant matter in a light and playful manner. And these were only two rough divisions, in between were lots of subtle gradations of tone and texture. Which, then, was the funny story and which the serious? Their opinions were divided, but ultimately, said Jehangir, it was up to the listener to decide.(147-48)

"Squatter"

Nariman’s stories about Savukshaw and Sarosh: How are the two set in contrast with each

other? What does “squatter” mean? Is Sarosh happy to be back to Bombay? What is the function of the narrative frame (of

Nariman)?

Savukshaw and Sarosh

Savukshaw 146-53A cricket player, a

hunter, a pole-vaulter and a bicyclist

Success does not mean happiness

SaroshEmigration a good choice?

10-year termAs Sid –wants complete

adaptation; Dependence on the old way Other related Problems:

wonder bread (158), CNI (160), fired (163)

Squatter vs. CNI 擅自佔用他人房子（或土地）的人 , but Sarosh’s

squatting is both literal/physical and symbolic. “And if the one outside could receive the fetor of Sarosh's

business wafting through the door, poor unhappy Sarosh too could detect something malodorous in the air: the presence of xenophobia and hostility”.(Tales 156)

Crappus Non Interruptus – once implanted, one can never pass a motion in the natural way—neither sitting nor squatting. // Canada’s Multiculturalism

Sarosh’s Return

Sense of Defeat 164 bowel movement “Must get off the plane”? calm “forlorn and woebegone” (167)

Nariman’s role: 1) comic-heroic A parody of Othello's last speech

The original here"I pray you, in your stories [...] When you shall these

unlucky deeds relate, speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice: tell them that in Toronto once there lived a Parsi boy as best as he could. Set you down this; and say, besides, that for some it was good and for some it was bad, but for me life in the land of milk and honey was just a pain in the posterior."(168)

Nariman’s role: 2) multiple perspectives He himself is Westernized Starts with indicating two examples of

successful migration. ambiguities and mixing of seriousness and

comic tone.

"Lend Me Your Light"

"your lights are all lit--then where do you go with your lamp? / My house is all dark and lonesome,--lend me your light.“ Tagore

Kersi-- in between two worlds: “I, Tiresias, blind and throbbing between two lives, the one in Bombay and the one to come in Toronto ...(179-80)” – examples of his in-betweenness?

Kersi’s in-betweenness

A. In-between Jamshed and Percy His responses to Jamshed’s letter (181-82) distanced from Percy’s actions ()Connected with the Parsi community in Toronto 183 Bombay—dirtier -- “It was disconcerting to discover

that I'd become unused to [Bombay]“; the drama of Reality (187)

"Swimming Lessons"

What does swimming lessons mean? What does Kersi learn here? How are the two parts of the story connected

to each other?

The parents’ views Sense of racial inferiority: "We've seen advertisements in newspapers from England,

where Canadian Immigration is encouraging people to come to Canada. Of course, they won't advertise in a country like India--who would want these bloody ghatis to come charging into their fine land?" (178).

Disappointed at Percy in “Lend me your Light” 188 after reading the first 5 stories –

she—sad; he must be unhappy there he – “all writers worked in the same way, they used their memories and experiences

and made stories out of them, changing some things, adding some, imagining some, all writers were very good at remembering details of their lives.” (243)

After reading all—hope that there are more Canadian stories, feel that they know their son better, wished there were many more stories. (245)

Kersi’s epiphanyFor me, it is already too late for snowmen

and snowball fights, and all I will have is thoughts about childhood thoughts and dreams, built around snows-capes and winter-wonderlands on the Christmas cards so popular in Bombay, my snowmen and snowball fights and Christmas trees are in the pages of Enid Blyton's books.(244)

"My snowflakes are even less forgettable than the old man's, for they never melt" (244).

References

Davis, Rocío G. "Paradigms of Postcolonial and Immigrant Doubleness: Rohinton Mistry's Tales from Firozsha Baag." Tricks with a Glass: Writing Ethnicity in Canada. Ed. Rocío G. Davis. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi, 2000. 71-92. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 196. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 14 Mar. 2010.

Morey, Peter. Rohinton Mistry. Manchester UP, 2004