CHAPTER - I

INTRODUCTION

Literature is the reflection of the life in all its varied forms and dimensions.

Literature, most generically, is anybody of written works. More restrictively, literature

writing is considered to be an art form, or any single writing deemed to have artistic

or intellectual value, often due to deploying language in ways that differ from

ordinary usage. Literature can be classified according to whether it is fiction or non-

fiction, and whether distinguished according to major forms such as the novel, short

story or drama; and works are often categorized according to historical periods or

their adherence to certain aesthetic features or expectations.

A novel is a long, fictional narrative which describes intimate human

experiences. The term novel refers back to the production of short stories that

remained part of a European oral culture of storytelling in the late 19th century. The

novel is the modern era usually makes use of a literary prose style. The development

of the prose novel at this time was encouraged by innovation in printing. The novel in

the modern era usually makes use of a literary prose style, and the development of the

prose novel at this time was encouraged by innovations in printing, and the

introduction of cheap paper, in the 15th century. Novel emerges as a powerful medium

to present the age in a descriptive and analytical manner. It represents the social,

political, cultural and historical growth of society and people.

Canadian literature is literature originating from Canada. Collectively it is

often called Can Lit. Some criticism of Canadian literature has focused on

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nationalistic and regional themes, although this is only a small portion of Canadian

literary criticism. Critics against such thematic criticism in Canadian literature, such

as Frank Davey, have argued that a focus on theme diminishes the appreciation of

complexity of the literature produced in the country, and creates the impression that

Canadian literature is sociologically oriented. Canadian Literature evolved directly

from Victorian into Postmodern. Morley Callaghan went to Paris and met the modern

writers; he, for Canada experienced the real and symbolic encounter; he heroically

and successfully, resisted.

Canadian Literature written in Canada began as a continuation of what was

being produced in Great Britain had to define itself against the American tradition. It

developed in the United States and eventually evolved as a distinctive literature.

Obviously, Canada’s geography and her historical development were immensely

influential factors. But the concept of a Canadian tradition is not easily established. It

is neither an abstraction like a sense of identity nor a theme like ‘Survival.’ It evolves

gradually from the achieved work of literary art that have been written by its people.

Canadian Literature enjoys an international prestige today with its history that

started with the inhabitance of aboriginal peoples for thousands of years, evolving

from a group of French and British Colonies into bilingual, multicultural federation.

Like the literature of every country Canadian Literature is influenced by its socio-

political contexts. Therefore a variety of genres were produced by the Canadian

writers who were greatly influenced both geographically and historically with the

existing cultures of both French and British. So, Canadian literature has encountered a

number of obstacles in its growth like other colonial literatures. It has to overcome the

oppressive psyche of being dominated by the American and British literary traditions,

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and took decades of struggle to get persistent efforts to come into visibility in

reflecting Canadian experience. Canada’s experience appears frequently in its

literature and finally Canada’s position in the world. Atwood’s Survival: A Thematic

Guide to Canadian Literature, guarded a global identity and remains the standard

introduction to Canadian literature in Canadian studies program internationally.

Theme like ‘Survival’ and the Canadian traditional sense of identity gradually

evolved from the works of literary art that were written by its people. The country’s

present boundaries were not established until after the Second World War. So, to read

Canadian literature is to realize how diverse Canadian culture is, marked by politics

and religion, and influenced by differences of language and geography. It’s a country

with two official languages English and French and many other un-official, extending

almost as the second largest country in the world with a population more or less half

that of the United Kingdom.

Canada began as a continuation of what was being produced in Great Britain,

against the American tradition as it was developed in the United States. Eventually it

evolved as a distinctive literature of independence related to, both parent and

neighbor. So, the history of Canadian literature in Canada is an account of ways in

which the shaping of specific literary accomplishments is not restricted to Canadian

settings. Literature in Canada grows from the social attitudes held in common, as well

as from historical antecedents and explanation models. Their cultural plurality inside

the country fundamentally shaped the way Canadians define their political character

and dimensions of their literature.

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 Canada continues to address issues of social plurality and cultural difference

that inform a diverse and complex population. These works confronts the tensions and

convergences of French and English of north and south of indigenous settlers.

Canadian writing insists on investigating space and history, the ways territories are

inhabited, claimed, disputed and finally remained as the texts of people’s lives. Any

national literature depends for its survival on the social, emotional and cultural

factors. Canadian culture is also considered as a group of cultures interrelated with

two different cultural groups. Since culture ensembles, formalizes in varying degrees

of thinking, feeling and behaving, which once learned by the people in a particular

and distinct way collectively. There are numberless cultures and sub cultures both

regional and ethnic which Canada abounds in. So, Survival is one of its greatest

challenges and the expression of Canadian literature itself is complex, dependent on

combinations of variables. The question of homogeneity has been a mother of

controversy, where the first common theme deals with the experience of being caught

between two cultural worlds, and the second major theme deals with the importance

of learning about the values, attitudes, and beliefs of one’s cultural heritage, and

acquiring an appreciation of how culture influences identity.

As naming a place, person or a thing gives power, the central symbol of

Canada is based on its numerous instances of its occurrences in both English and

French in Canadian literature. The native Canadian people welcomed French

colonialism as they felt that the French was serving them in a constructive manner. To

welcome is to accept or to follow, so the natives used to follow different methods in

order to mingle with the French people and survive themselves.

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 Canadian cultural nationalist like D. Arcy McGee had been telling for the need

of national literature. As a land of immense geography, extreme climates and vast

resources, Canadian literature is broadly perceived in two inevitable divisions, intact

the French and the British cultures that exist side by side with ongoing foreign

influences. Therefore Canadian literature is a tree with two great roots and branches

of this tree are purely Canadian. But after the advent of the British in Canada a new

kind of literature cropped up and with the entry of missionaries, travelogues,

memories and diaries got published.

Canadian literature began to greatly expand with the turmoil of the Second

World War, the beginnings of industrialization in 1950s, and the Quiet Revolution in

1960s. It began to attract a great deal of attention globally with Arcadian novelist,

Antonine Maillet and formalist poet Nicole Brossard. Canadian novel, however, begin

to take off in the 1950s with Robertson Davies, Mordecai Richler, Maris Gallant and

Sheila Watson. By 1960s Canadian fiction came into its own and liberated from the

shackles of influence of other literatures. It is pre-occupied with culture and national

identity and marked by a spirit of self-confidence. As various factors affected the

territory of Canada from the colonial times, European Canadians were divided into

two districts. English and French speaking populations coupled with large number of

immigrants who spoke other languages proved to be divisive towards a single national

literature.

Throughout the history it has a peculiar problem of obliterated environment,

because of its empty spaces, unknown rivers, lakes and islands. So an imaginative

sense of locality and unity has become the character of Canadian literature. Canada’s

experience appears frequently in its literature as Canadian writers often emphasize on

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the effects of climate and geography of their people. Canada’s position in the world

profoundly affects many Canadian writers as English Canadians are frequently being

surrounded by the people and the culture of the United States. In 70s and 80s,

Canadian writing was stimulated by renaissance of interest in literature and culture

with a definition of Canadian identity that became a national obsession. In 1867, the

British North American Colonies of New Canadian national cultural identity.

Canadian writers have produced a variety of genres. Influences on Canadian

writers are broad, both geographically and historically. Before European contact and

the confederation of Canada, indigenous peoples in North America have occupied the

land and have maintained a rich and diverse history of culture, identity, language, art

and literature.

‘Indigenous Literature’ is a problematic term, as every cultural group has its

own distinct oral tradition, language, and cultural practices. Therefore, indigenous

literature in Canada is a more inclusive term for understanding the variety of

languages and traditions across communities. The colonization of Canada, the

dominant European cultures were originally English, French, and Gaelic. The

country’s literature has been strongly influenced by international immigration,

particularly in recent decades. Since the 1980s Canada’s ethnic and cultural diversity

have been openly reflected in its literature, with many of its most prominent writers

focusing on ethnic minority identity, duality and cultural differences. However,

Canadians have been less willing to acknowledge the diverse languages of Canada,

besides English and French. Canada is one nation and one state though it has two

‘home cultures’ viz., French and British. History reveals that it became vulnerable to

the domineering American culture as it had absorbed a large number of immigrants.

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Canadian Literature has shown a vitality of its own. Canadian writing is stimulated by

a renaissance of interest in literature and culture. In the nineteenth century, fiction

writers focused on society. But there is a shift in the twentieth century as writers

highlight the subject of ‘self’ or ‘identity’ in their writings. The word, Canada is

derived from the two Spanish words ‘aca’ and ‘nada’ which mean ‘nothing here’. The

idea of nothingness is reflected in the name of the country itself. The main concern of

the Canadian writers is the search for a recognizable and meaningful life.

Canada has gained a great significance in literary field among the

Commonwealth countries. Canadian Literature is reviewed as one of the world’s best

literature. Michael Ondaatje is the first Canadian to win the Booker Prize for his

literary work, The English Patient in 1992. Carol Shield’s The Stone Diaries has won

the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1995. Margaret Atwood has been awarded the Booker

Prize for her creative novel, The Blind Assassin in 2000.

Colonization has a great impact on most of the presently liberated countries.

Canada, being the colonized country did not dare to affirm its individual culture and

tradition. But it has its own uniquely inherited diaspora and discourses. The post-

colonial experiences give Canada considerable freedom to express its individuality.

Canada has absorbed a very large number of immigrants. It is considered a home for

more than one hundred ethnic groups and has eighty five languages. Canadian

Literature is an offspring of an expression of a multilingual, multicultural group of

humanity reflecting the impact of diverse ages, races, religions and influences. Like

other Colonial Literature, Canadian Literature developed slowly and steadily. It

started assuming significance in the early twentieth century. Canadian writings were

produced by cosmopolitan allegiances with native vitality and originality. The

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writings were chiefly based on Canadian way of living and language, portraying the

experience of an average man and woman tethered to a dull routine way of life.

The first efforts to write a “great Canadian novel,” and texts in other genres of

prose fiction are, not surprisingly, imitations of the genre forms already established in

the literary traditions of the mother country, that are gradually filled with new content,

pre-dominant with literary accounts of the authentic experience of the new settlers in

the colony, and of their impressions of the new environment, so radically different

from any of their previous experience. For these authors Canada was not yet a home,

but mainly a space for exploration, in the factual, as well as intellectual sense. Such

experience often creates conditions for sufficient critical distance from the artistically

approached material, and for the desired sharpness of vision.

In contrast to the parallel development in the neighboring United States, the

sense of the persistent appurtenance with the mother country is generally fostered, at

the expense, however, of creating a sufficiently strong sense of conclusive national

identity. Paradoxically, this moment becomes one of the national characteristics by

which Canada differs from the United States, if not necessarily in the direction

towards completely independent development

Whether the social structure called ‘colonial nation’ produces or is able to

produce an independent national literature had been a subject of the Canadian public,

as well as professional, debate until the twentieth century. Canadian poetry is poetry

of or typical of Canada. The term encompasses poetry written in Canada or by

Canadian people in other languages versus those written in English, French, Gaelic

and Aboriginal languages. Canadian Poetry charts the formation of Canadian poetry

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over a period of some 400 years, opening with the writings of colonists and reluctant

exiles and ending in the early 20th century.

Charles G.D Roberts was a Canadian poet and prose writer who known as

father of Canadian poetry. He was almost the first Canadian author to obtain

worldwide reputation and influence. Roberts’s first book, Orion and Other Poems

(1880), in which he expressed traditional poetic language and form, Roberts published

about 12 volumes of verse. He published numerous works on Canadian exploration

and natural history, travel books, and fiction. The first book of poetry published in

Canada following the formation of the new Domination of Canada in 1867 was

Dreamland by Charles Mair.

One of the most influential Canadian literary inheritors of the genre of story

cycle and contributors to the creation of the canon of contemporary Canadian

literature is Margaret Laurence (1926-1987). Her extensive work in prose fiction is

inspired by a number of different sources: among these it is particularly her own

childhood spent in a small provincial town in the prairies of southern Manitoba, her

lifelong interest in the history of her native province, as well as of Canada as a whole,

and her interest in the history of her own origin, the history of her people, cultivated

since childhood by her avid penchant for reading, nourished by early attempts at her

own writing. Of no smaller importance is the author’s seven years’ experience of

living in Africa in the 1950s, one of the results of which was the publication of her

first literary works: essays, a short story, a collection of Somali poetry and fiction, as

well as her first novel, This Side Jordan(1960).

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 There are numberless cultures and sub cultures both regional and ethnic which

Canada abounds in. So, ‘Survival’ is one of its greatest challenges and the expression

of Canadian literature itself is complex, dependent on combinations of variables. The

question of homogeneity has been a mother of controversy, where the first common

theme deals with the experience of being caught between two cultural worlds, and the

second major theme deals with the importance of learning about the values, attitudes,

and beliefs of one’s cultural heritage, and acquiring an appreciation of how culture

influences identity.

Margaret Laurence (1926-1987) was a writer of Canadian literature and

children's literature. A founding member of the Writers Trust of Canada, Laurence is

known for her progressive feminist stance and fervent endorsement of Pease. Her

short stories, essays, and memoirs display warmth, strength, and humor, and her

stories both about Canada and Africa are always written from a rural perspective. The

Stone Angel, a series of novel about a 90-year-old woman facing the reality of death

while looking back on her life. A Jest of God, 1966, which received the Governor

General’s Award, Lawrence fashioned A Bird in the House out of a series of

autobiographical strain continued with The Diviners, 1974.

Alice Munro (1931-2013) is a Canadian short story writer who won the Noble

Prize in Literature in 2013. Munro’s work has been described as having

revolutionized the architecture of short stories, especially in its tendency to move

forward and backward in time. Munro’s Dear Life, a rich collection of short stories

about social mores and gender roles. Munro’s first collection of stories was published

in 1968 as Dance of the Happy Shades; the collection achieved great success in

Munro’s native country, including her first Governor General’s Award for fiction.

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 Margaret Eleanor Atwood (1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic,

and environmental activist. She has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award

ten times, winning in 1966 for The Circle Game and 1985 for The Handmaid’s Tale.

One of the most important themes of The Handmaid’s Tale is the presence and

manipulation of power. In Power Politics (1973) and You Are Happy (1974) she

considers women’s lives as submissive territories colonized by men. Atwood’s short

story collection, Bluebeard’s Egg (1983) explores the women’s marginal position

within hegemonic discourse.

Kathleen Margaret (1945- ("Kit") Pearson is a Canadian children's novelist

who finds inspiration from the people and conversations she encounters. She looks to

her own childhood when developing ideas about characters, settings, and storylines.

Consequently, many of her novels are set in British Columbia, where she lived as a

child. Her work Guests of War Trilogy, a story about the adventures of two English

children who are sent to Canada for safety during the Blitz.

Eden Robinson (1968) is a novelist and short story writer who writes dark,

disturbing Gothic fiction. Intuitive in her writing, she explores the darkest impulses of

humanity in a frightening yet darkly funny way, often writing about drug dealers and

serial killers her greatest influences are Stephen King and David Cronenberg. Her

writing tends to link historical colonialism and contemporary pop culture. Robert

Munsch (1945) is perhaps one of the most famous Canadian children's authors. While

Munsch had always been an avid storyteller, he didn't start writing his stories down

until he felt he had gotten really good at crafting them. As a student teacher at a

nursery school, Munsch displayed a passion for telling stories. His style of storytelling

is exuberant and exaggerated, which is probably why it appealed and continues to

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appeal to so many children. The Paper Bag Princess is a Munsch best children’s

book. The story reverses the princess and dragon stereotype.

Rohinton Mistry is an Indian-born Canadian author whose fiction has a precise

writing style. He writes about the difficulties that Indian immigrants face when

coming to Canada, and his characters are usually on a mission to find self-worth while

dealing with difficult familial and social situations. His work is compassionate,

transparent, natural, direct, and honest. Mistry writes historical fiction, postcolonial

literature, realism, and Parsi literature. A Fine Balance, a novel about government

power and the crackdowns on civil liberties in India between 1975 and 1984. The

book will transport you to India and deepen your appreciation for family and

friendship.

Mistry was born in Bombay in 1952. He graduated with a degree in

Mathematics from the University of Bombay in 1974 and migrated to Canada with his

wife the following year, settling in Toronto, where he worked as a bank clerk and at

the same time studied English and Philosophy, part-time, at the University of Toronto.

In this way, he got his second degree in 1982. Mistry wrote his first short story, ‘One

Sunday’, in 1983 which won him First Prize in the Canadian Hart House Literary

Contest.

Rohinton Mistry is an important figure in contemporary Commonwealth

literature and he occupies a significant position among the writers in Indian Diaspora.

A glowing star in galaxy that contains luminaries such a V.S. Naipaul, Salman

Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Shashi Tharoor, Vikram Seth and Bharati Mukherjee, to

mention a few, Rohinton Mistry has drawn the attention of the world as an absorbing

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writer of human experiences. Having been born in a Parsi community, a minority

community in India, and having recorded the complex tradition of Parsi histry and

culture in his writings, Rohinton is also famous as a Parsi writer and is grouped along

with Bapsi Sidhwa, Dina Mehta, Firdaus Kanga, Keki Daruwalla and Boman Desai.

His scholarly insight into the Zoroastrian faith as well as his objective detachment and

capacity for self-analysis enabled him to be recorded as an authentic Parsi writer of

his time. An India born novelist settled in Canada, Rohinton Mistry has remarkable

capacity for capturing the crowded, throbbing life of India.

Rohinton was born on 3 July 1952 in the metropolitan city of Bombay. He

availed the opportunity of studying in Theresa Primary School and St. Xavier’s

School, the two famous institutions in the city. He graduated from St. Xavier’s

School, the two famous institutions in the city. He graduated from St. Xavier’s

College in Bombay, completing his degree in science (Mathematics) in 1974. He

emigrated to Canada in 1975 and studied English and philosophy as a part-time

student at the University of Toronto. In 1982 he received a second Bachelor’s degree.

It was in 1975 that he married Freny Elavia. He was interested in making a career in

music and even gave performances in Bombay to fulfil his ambition. Having arrived

in Toronto he tried to make name in the musical world. His own compositions of folk

songs were recorded in Canada in 1975; a disc Ronnie Mistry was released by

Polydor. There was however little progress in music, particularly after his joining as a

bank employee. During 1975 to 1985 he acted as a clerk and accountant in the

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

In the year 1983 He wrote his first short story “One Sunday” which won him

the Hart House prize. For another story, “Lend Me Your Light,” he received the same

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award. In 1985 he received the prestigious Contributor’s award of Canadian Fiction

for his “Auspicious Occasion.” Thanks to these prizes, the publishers got interested in

publishing a collection of his short stories. And the result was the publication of Tales

from Firozsha Baag in 1987 by Penguin Canada. The stories collected in this book

were set in Parsi Housing Estate in Bombay where he had not lived during his stay in

Bombay but of which he was well aware through his friends. His father was in the

fielding of advertising and he was brought up in an average middle class Parsi family.

That he never forgot the Parsi life in India after his settlement in Canada is manifest in

his stories; the dreams and desires, the sufferings of broken dreams, attempts to adjust

oneself in unwanted situations, the anxieties shared by the minorities in the rise of

fanaticism and a concern for corruption are examined and expressed in his writings

that demanded immediate attention all over the world. Being a Parsi himself,

Rohinton Mistry had an easy access to the glorious years of Parsi existence in India

during the British Raj when the Parsi enjoyed freedom, patronage and dignity. The

misrule and corruption in postcolonial India affected the Parsis no less than it affected

any common Indian, unprotected by the all powerful political leaders. Rohinton

Mistry experienced all these during the early Seventies and he also had the

opportunity to get detached from these after eight long years when he had settled in

Canada. The distance of time and space helped him to offer an objective rendering of

the situations that could defy all sorts of cheap emotions.

The collection of Rohinton Mistry’s stories was brought out later in Britain

and USA under a modified title, Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozsha

Baag. The book was short listed for Canadian Governor General’s Award. Firozsha

Baag is a fictional Parsi enclave in metropolitan Bombay. The stories differ from one

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another, but they are interwoven by the common setting that evokes a Parsi world the

customs, traditions, food habits and erotic details of a community that likes to remain

confined.

Such a Long Journey (1991) is the novel written by Rohinton Mistry, a writer

of Indian Diaspora, who settled in Canada. Though the novel was published sixteen

years after Rohinton Mistry had settled in Toronto, it has no trace of Canada. Rather,

it reveals the author’s deep concern for the Parsis in India in particulars, and for the

development of postcolonial India is general. This feeling may not be explained with

the word ‘nostalgia’ which is loosely associated with romantic feeling.

Rohinton Mistry’s second novel A Fine Balance (1995) set in ‘an unidentified

city’ in India, initially in 1975 and later in 1984 during the turmoil of The Emergency.

While A Fine Balance projects the Indian life its people, climate, cities, ethnicities,

classes and castes as found in cities as well as villages. The novel starts with Dina

Dalal, a Parsi woman, and her story in Bombay but soon enlarges its scope through

the inclusion of the characters such as Maneck Kohlah, Ishvar, and Omprakash who

came in contact with Dina in some way. The writer’s attention is still on the

pessimistic and sordid state of affairs as it was his first novel. The real situation of the

Indian political system beneath the high-sounding democracy and federalism is laid

bare. The wretched condition of the poor and the middle class people, tortured under

the brutal forces of corrupt rule, offer criticism of the postcolonial government and

reveals the writer’s sympathy for the subaltern. A Fine Balance ironically renders how

the marginalized and the powerless are forced to maintain a precarious ‘fine balance’

between life and the death-in-life existence while passing through the impossible

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ordeals of life. A Fine Balance won the 1995 Giller Prize and it was shortlisted for the

Booker Prize.

Rohinton Mistry’s third novel Family Matters (2002) goes back to Bombay

for its setting and for its characters it goes back exclusively to the Parsi community.

The city has been renamed Mumbai, though its old cosmopolitan look prevails.

Family Matters focus on personal and political vision. A nine year old boy Jehangir is

projected as a witness of family quarrels. The novel shows how the boy tries to

understand the quarrels and puzzles of the family and how he desperately wants to

bring peace and harmony. Much to his disappointment Jehangir finds that the grown

up people always fail to bring peace among them. The novel uses the flashback

method successfully. During the family get together politics intrudes into close family

circle as do other events like the Indo-Pak cricket matches. The topic of contemporary

problem among Parsis about inter-communal marriages also comes up. Rohinton

Mistry creates a close domestic and identifiable situation. Family Matters was

shortlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize for fiction.

Mistry’s latest book, The Scream (2008), has been illustrated by the famous

Canadian artist Tony Urquhart. It is 48 pages long and printed originally in a limited

edition of 150 copies that was sold exclusively by World Literacy of Canada to raise

funds for their organization. The protagonist of The scream is such a man who is

neglected and misunderstood by his family and society.

Rohinton Mistry’s first novel, Such a Long Journey (1991) won Governor

General’s Award for fiction in English in Canada in 1991 and the Commonwealth

Prize in 1992. It was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1991. Through the

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fluctuating fortunes of the protagonist, Gustad Noble, the writer projects the socio-

political turmoil in the Sixties and the early Seventies in India. The setting “Khodadad

Building” is an imaginary Parsi enclave in Bombay like the Firozsha Baag in his

short stories. Though imaginary, it is based on real experience of life. The backdrop

of the Indo-Pakistani war also helps the socio-cultural scenario appear real. The

protagonist’s remembrances of his childhood days of the time when his father was a

rich man and again when he was declared insolvent expose the rich past of the Parsis

in India. And his present experiences are closely linked to the contemporary political

crisis. The crisis in Gustad’s life is rendered as a part of the corrupt dynastic rule that

hardly bothered about the well-being of the common people. Gustad’s crisis was

somehow over, but his friend Major Bilimoria, who death. Gustad’s personal life is

also projected as a part of the Parsi community in India. The inhabitants of the

Khodadad Building are representatives of a cross-section of middle class Parsis who

express the anxieties of a minority class in multiracial India as well as the age old

superstitions and customs that have cornered them and have also alienated them from

the main stream. The novel is also rich in symbols. The title “Such a Long Journey,”

taken from Eliot’s poem “Journey of the Magi,” links Gustad’s journey of life to the

spiritual quest of the wise men from the east who witnessed new born Jesus. Though

the novel is written, apparently, in a simple narrative style, the writer has also adopted

postcolonial methodology and displacement experience.

Rohinton Mistry narrates the history of his community and country as it has

been in the Post-Independence era. It may not be an exaggeration to observe that the

Nagarwala incident was the basis of the novel. During the regime of 1971 in India,

one Parsi gentleman Mr.Nagarwala was accused of imitating Prime Minister voice

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while talking over the phone to the chief cashier of a nationalized bank from where he

took sixty lakh rupees presumably for the fighters in Bangaladesh. Mr.Nagarwala was

pronounced guilty by the court and the entire Parsi community, which had secured

and disgraced. Rohinton Mistry’s pride for his community, which had been

maintaining a high moral standard and which had secured a prestigious position in the

past, got hurt and he decided to take revenge on Government through his fiction.

No one has any doubt that Major Bilimoria in the novel, the Parsi gentleman

working for the RAW, is none but Mr.Nagarwala. Bilimoria has not lived long after

this confession. Through the entire world thinks him guilty, he feels relaxed that his

friend Gustad has learnt the truth. Some extracts from his confession may be quoted

to show how Mistry took revenge on Government for exploiting patriots and

humanists like Bilimoria.

Bilimoria uttered those fragments of sentences with much effort. He was very

ill and after he was injected, he could hardly utter any word. Gustad still had his doubt

as he could not understand how a worldly wise man like Jimmy could be so foolish.

He had been so upset at the revelation of the Government real nature that he wanted to

get everything exposed. But it was impossible to reveal the fact. Then, in a frenzied

mood, he decided to put aside ten lakh rupees which could be distributed among his

friends who were really needy. He thought that no one would bother about missing

ten lakh rupees after getting fifty lakh rupees. He had been arrested for ten lakh

rupees, though the charge against him was that he had taken the entire sixty lakh

rupees.

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 The novel deals with a good number of characters most of whom are the

residents of Khodadad Building, a Parsi enclave. All these characters are of varied

nature and are rendered as types. With the use of some bold strokes Mistry sketches

these characters which are life like and deserve to be remembered. Ms.Kutpitia with

her superstition and black magic, the idiot Tehmul with his child’s brain and an

adult’s body, Mr. Rabadi with his fascination for dog and old Cavasji with his

unending complaints against God are remarkable creations. All these characters may

be Parsis, but basically they are human beings having the peculiarities and shortfalls

which may be found in people all over the world.

The dissertation is divided into four chapters. The first chapter traces the

development of Canadian literature, history of the genre novel and some

contemporary Canadian novelists and their works. The second chapter pertains to the

theme of ethnocentrism of the Parsis who have come from Iran and settled in India.

The third chapter throws light on the application of Antonio Francesco Gramsi’s

theory of cultural hegemony in the novel Such a Long Journey. The final chapter

sums up the arguments and elaborations done in the previous chapters and discusses

the scope for further research in the novel Such a Long Journey.

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 CHAPTER - II

ETHNOCENTRISM IN SUCH A LONG JOURNEY

Ethnocentrism is judging another culture solely by the values and standards of

one’s own culture. Ethnocentric individuals judge other groups relative to their own

ethnic group or culture, especially with concern for language, behavior, customs and

religion. These ethnic distinctions and subdivisions serve to define each ethnicity’s

unique cultural identity. William G. Summer defined it as “the technical name for the

view of things in which one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are

scaled and rated with reference to it.” He further characterized ethnocentrism are the

social sciences and the genetics. In anthropology, cultural relativism is used as an

antithesis and an antonym to ethnocentrism. In biology, ethnocentrism is considered a

natural condition of mankind.

The term ‘ethnocentrism’ was coined by Ludwig Gumplowicz and

subsequently employed by William G. Summer. Gumplowicz defined ethnocentrism

as the reasons by virtue of which each people be lived it had always occupied the

highest point not only among contemporaneous peoples and nations but also in

relation to all peoples of the historical past. In 1996, Robert K. Merton commented

that “although the practice of seeing one’s own group as the center of things in

empirically correlated with a belief in superiority, centrality and superiority need to be

kept analytically distinct in order to deal with patterns of alienation from one’s

membership group and contempt for it.”

20
 Minority discourses in general, by specifically representing the pangs of

growth that a community undergoes in its tread to future call into question the

formalist construct of language and literature prevalent in mainstream literatures.

According to Edward’s said, the breach of the formalist construct of language was

initiated by the ethnic minority writers; the minority historical experience in them

“opens literatures to the claims of raw testimonials” that “cannot be dismissed as

irrelevant.” This is true of Firdaus Kanga’s Trying to Grow (1990), Farukh Dhondy’s

Bombay Duck (1977), Bapsi Sidhwa’s The Crow Eaters (1990), Rohinton Mistry’s

Tales from Firozsha Bagg (1977), Such a Long Journey (1991), A Fine Balance

(1996) and Family Matters (2000). All these Parsi writers expressed in their works

their community’s hopes and fears, aspirations and frustrations, struggles for survival

and identity crisis.

Ethnocentrism and the resultant penchant for giving voice to the marginality

of the community are probably strong motifs in The Post-Independence Indian Parsi

writing in English. Thus, their works can well be treated as instances of minority

discourse in Indian literature. As a discourse from the margins of broad spectrum of

Indian culture, Parsi fictional works in general and Rohinton Mistry’s works in

Particular present the agony of a cultural outsiders faced by Parsis in India. However,

it is to be noted that the of socio-cultural milieu with which Mistry’s Parsi characters

are part of may not be the one existing right now, especially in the present scenario of

globalization, But rather it is the one existed at certain important junctures in the

history of the country that posed difficulties in the smooth survival of Parsis in

Bombay. In fact, the misery of a cultural outsider as articulated by Gustad Noble and

other Parsi heroes of Mistry emanate basically from a feeling of insecurity, and the

21
fear of a possible merging with the dominant culture. Besides, the community as a

whole is found to be disturbed by their declining population, late-marriages, urban-

craze, high rate of divorce and so forth.

The Parsis are a very small ethno-religious minority in India, living in the west

coast of the subcontinent, especially in Bombay. In spite of their small number, Parsis

occupy a pivotal position in India’s social, cultural, political and economic history.

The name “Parsis” or “Parsees” refers to one of the places of their origin, in the

Persian province called “Fars”. As Kulke Wrote, “The epoch of Persian history still

relevant for the Parsees of today begins in the 6th century B.C. and ends with the

conquest of Persia by the Muslims in the 7th century A.D.” The beginning of this

epoch is characterized by the appearance of two personalities – Cyrus and Zoroaster –

who became determining factors in the Persian political and religious development.

“With these two names, Iran enters a period of history characterized in Greece, Israel,

India and China by an extraordinary intellectual upheaval”. The religion of the Parsis

is Zoroastrianism, founded by Zarathustra around 2000 B.C. The date is however

disputed, as some historians claim that it was founded in 7000 or 8000 B C while

others view that it was around 600 B C Whatever be the exact time of Zarathustra his

followers continued to practice the ancient monotheistic religion long after they had

been forced to leave their original land after the conquest of Iran by Arab A group of

Parsi refugee arrived on the western coast of Indian subcontinent in the eighth

century. They landed in the port of Sanjan in Gujarat which was then ruled by King

Jadhav Rana Their priest appealed to the king for permission to settle there They were

allowed to settle in Gujarat with five conditions imposed on them. They adopted the

Gujarati language; their women were to wear sari; their men were to handover

22
weapons; they were to venerate the cow and their marriage ceremonies were to be

performed at night only. Proselytizing was also strictly prohibited. The Parsis

followed these instructions and began to live in India as a secluded community though

they did not merge in the mainstream loyalty to the ruler of the day became a

characteristic trait of their community.

During the colonial period they were the first to learn English language and

could hold a prestigious position in the national scenario. The rise of Parsi novel is a

direct outcome of their English language education at an early stage. As the Parsis

could maintain their distinct identity in an alien land, thanks to their rich heritage, it

became obvious that they would project this distinctness in their fictions.

The Parsis are a ethno-religious minority in India who live mostly on the

western coast, and specifically in Bombay. In Pakistan the Parsis have settled mostly

in Karachi and Lahore. According to the 1997 census report given by the Government

of India, about 75-80,000 Parsis are living here. Though the total population of the

Parsis is insignificant, their active participation in the social, cultural, political and

economic life, particularly during the colonial period, is worth mentioning. Eminent

jurist Nani A. Palkiwala observes. “History affords no parallel to the role of Parsis in

India. There is no record of any other community so infinitesimally small as Parsis,

playing such a significant role in the life of a country so large.”

In several sectors such as shipping industry, aviation, banking, catering,

canning and dairy products, the Parsis have shown their excellence. Luminaries such

as Rustomji Jivanji Gorkhodu, a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi, K.F. Nariman,

Dadabhai Naoroji, Sir Dinshaw Eduljee Wacha, and Pherozeshah Mehta, to mention a

23
few, played prominent roles in Indian freedom movement. The Parsis are also marked

for their self-honour and that is why they have never demanded any reservation in

jobs or entrance examinations, though they have always maintained a strong sense of

group identity.

Mistry's Such a Long Journey views India of the 1970s through the vantage

point of Gustad Noble, a devout Parsi, living in Bombay. The novel showcases the

predicament of Parsis in modern India who experience the agony of a cultural outsider

as members of an ethnic minority. The novel is set against the background of the

Indo-Pak war of 1971Gustad Noble, the protagonist of the novel passes through heavy

odds amidst a series of political and social turmoil that India underwent during the

1970s.

Such a Long Journey is written in traditional method of novel writing. The

modernist method of experiments did not attract Mistry, as he has faith in his power

of presenting facts from the point of view of a social realist. Though he uses memory

in the construction of his plot, here is no flashback method and the development is

chronological rather than spatial.

Religiously, the title’s words also refer to the last long walk up the gravel path

of the hill to the Tower of Silence where the corpse will be left to the vultures.

Symbolically, however, the title refers to Everyman’s very long journey from cradle

to grave; it is the pilgrimage of Gustad from the traumatic experience of his father’s

bankruptcy, which in a way was worse than death, through the tests and trials of his

manhood and his loyalty towards the winning of wisdom and serenity. On one level,

the ‘journey’ the title suggests the ‘journey’ of the Parsis who had left Iran in the

24
eighth century and settled in India. They had to adjust themselves to the new

surroundings; they adopted Gujarati language, their women began to pout on saris and

their men surrendered their weapons. They were also ordered to venerate their cow

and strictly forbidden to proselytize. With these conditions the Parsis reminded

alienated in India.

On another level, ‘journey’ is the metaphor of life and the pavement artist, a

significant character in the novel, clarifies it through his activity and his reflection on

life. The pavement artist has no home of his own. Gustad asked him to paint the

compound wall of the Khodadad building and he did it. He painted pictures of gods,

goddesses and saints of different religions and the wall of the Khodadad building and

he did it. He painted pictures of gods, goddesses and saints of different religious and

the wall that caused stink, turned to be a holy place. But the municipality’s decision to

remove the wall came as a sudden blow. It was a coincidence that a ‘morcha’ that was

on its way to the municipality to protest against its corruption, faced the laborers of

the municipality engaged in breaking the wall and attacked them.

The metaphor of ‘journey’ may be applied to the life of Gustad, the protagonist

of the novel. Just as ‘journey’ in Eliot’s Journey of the Magi is not physical, journey

but man’s spiritual quest, so also ‘journey’ for Gustad, who is bound to the wheel of

destiny, is the continuous struggle for gaining the values of life. Thus, Gustad’s long

journey is to a kind of enlightenment on two levels; that of political reality, and that of

personal affections and mortality. The central image of the journey recalls that

paradigmatic journey of the Parsis in their flight from Iran to India in the eighth

century, alluded to in the novel and recorded in the talismanic seventeenth century

chronicle known as the Kisseh-i Sanjan.

25
 Gustad Noble is a bank clerk. His devotion to his family, his faith in

Zoroastrianism and his love for his friends and his community are continually tested

through a series of adverse

circumstances. The sad predicament of Gustad evokes pity in the readers as the

experience, fears, traumas and frustrations that he undergoes are those of a minority

community, and in a wider sense, of all ethnic minority communities. Problems that

come one after another dim his aspirations and make him distraught and helpless. He

displays a strange fear that he and his community are always targeted by others,

which seems to be symptomatic of a syndrome. He observes the complex political

cauldron of India with suspicion, and the anti-minority attitude of a section of the

dominant community raises in him fears of an impending, disastrous ethnic cleansing

awaiting his community.

Disappearance of Major Bilimoria from Khododad Building was the first blow

that Gustad felt. Bilimoria had been a loving brother for him and Gustad considered

him as "a second father" to his children. The second blow that deeply affected his

already disturbed mind was his first son, Sohrab's refusal to join IIT in spite of being

qualified with high rank in the entrance test, and his bad manners at the birthday party

of Roshan, both of which culminated in Sohrab's desertion of his home. Roshan's

enervating diarrhoea; the complex episodes of events that followed Gustad's receiving

a parcel despatched by Major Bilimoria containing ten lakh rupees; his bosom crony,

Dinshawji's illness and eventual death; the death of Tehmul Lungraa, a juvenile

delinquent inmate of Khododad building and the destruction of Gustad's sacred wall

by the city authorities - all these and more conspired against the normal course of

events in Gustad's life.

26
 Gustad’s long journey into the unknown commences with the abrupt and

mysterious disappearance of his intimate friend Jimmy Billimoria. Dilnavaz, ever

optimistic and trusting, believes firmly that Bilimoria would never have left without a

reason whatever that might be. But he is forcibly drawn into the concatenation of

events which follow the trail of the Nagarwala case. Gustad has to face many

difficulties, he survives without any despair or bitterness. His quest for order and

security in a corrupt society is a heroic but futile exercise. But he is highly optimistic.

Like other Parsi people who always dream of a new India with new hopes. Gustad’s

hardships do not end with Sohrab’s rejection of his father’s life -long dream. Darius

developed an infatuation for the daughter of their neighbour Mr. Rabadi who visited

Gustad’s flat repeatedly to complain against Darius. A notice from the Municipality

announces a proposal to demolish the 300 feet compound wall that offers a protective

shield to their building from the rest of the city. Almost simultaneously Gustad’s

daughter Roshan develops chronic dysentery and the frequent visits to Dr Paymaster’s

clinic in the red -light locality of the House of Cages, drills a hole in his pocket.

“The money from the sale of Gustad’s camera was swallowed by

the medicine bills. And the special diet was proving very

expensive, especially the Bovril, which could be bought only on

the black-market. He wondered whether to sell his watch or his

gold wedding cuff-links next”. (SLJ 219)

Gustad Noble, has been shaped as a classical tragic hero who is undergoing

from the path of joy to misery measuring it with almost placid serenity. Cherishing

the values of friend-ship, condemning the scourge of war, denouncing corrupt and

hypocritical political leaders, he is fighting for his personal and ethnic existence.

27
Being a Parsi he is responding with passion to the injustice being done with the Parsis

in any level. Though there are several references of resistance, but the very

conversation between Gustad and Dinshawji, reverberate their resentment towards the

very concept of nationalism. When Gustad states that nationalism has turned out to be

a big failure everywhere in the world.

Gustad's friend, Malcom used to remind him that "we are minorities in a

nation of Hindus". And according to him the existence of minorities completely

depends on the Hindus, although cow, the sacred animal of the Hindus, is the source

of protein for the minorities. The fear syndrome emanated from the growing Hindu

fundamentalism and sectarianism that gained momentum during the 1970s looms

large in Gustad's mind. He felt that the environment is so hostile as to inflict pain on

him. In spite of all the external onslaughts, Gustad remains true to himself and to his

faith. Religions for him were not like garment styles could be changed at whim or to

follow fashion, and he strongly believed that all religions were equal nevertheless one

had to remain true to one's own.

Gustad defended his religion against the general cynicism prevailing in India

about its rituals and practices such as the function of the Tower of Silence upon which

the dead Zoroastrians are thrown to the vultures. He uncompromisingly "preferred the

sense of peaceful mystery and undivided serenity that prevailed in the fire temple"

(SLJ 24). Mistry also gives the descriptions of Fire Temple as well as about the Tower

of Silence. The Parsi worship there and perform all holy ceremonies there. They go

there for prayer as Hindus go to temple. Muslims go to mosque. Without cap they

cannot enter in the Fire Temple. Gustad held that his religion had a superior claim

over Christianity and Islam. Malcom used to tease him often saying that it is

28
Christianity that had come first to India before Parsis came from Persia running away

from Muslims. But Gustad was never ready to bear with any belittling of the

importance of his religion.

"Our prophet Zarathustra lived more then fifteen hundred years

before your son of god was even born; a thousand years before

Buddha; two hundred years before Moses. And do you know

how much Zoroastrianism influenced Judaism, Christianity and

Islam" (SLJ 24).

Animals are prominent throughout Such a Long Journey. Sparrows cheer

Gustad as he rises at dawn for prayer. Swarming, cawing crows signal unmistakably

that he must undertake dangerous, illegal activities he wants to avoid, as do the

skillfully decapitated rat and cat, whose carcasses the crows devour. Tropical fish,

songbirds, and butterflies and moths entertain of Gustad’s sons as collectibles. The

chicken hovers between roles as pet and food, until the butcher’s knife decides the

question. Cattle are significant and divide religious communities. Parsis and other

religious minorities consume cattle, while Hindus worship them and long to deny

non-vegetarians their legal rights.

Gustad’s hesitation in buying beef from Crawford Market may be interpreted

in terms of the prohibitions imposed on the Parsis in the eighth century. The Parsis

were asked to venerate the cow and due to this condition, traditional Parsis still do not

eat beef, though there are no religious taboos against the eating of beef. Gustad would

eat beef but he did not like to be exposed as eater of beef outside his community. His

friend Malcolm, who had taught him how to buy beef, always said;

29
 “Lucky for us,’ Malcolm always said, ‘that we are minorities in a

nation of Hindus. Let them eat pulses and grams and beans,

spiced with their stinky asafetida-what they call hing. Let them

fart their lives away. The modernized Hindus eat mutton. Or

chicken, if they want to be more fashionable. But we will get our

protein from their sacred cow.” (SLJ 23)

There are also some Parsis interesting consideration which finds expression in

Such a Long Journey such as Parsi families never keep cats. They consider them bad

luck because cats hate water, they never take a bath. They do not kill spiders. They

only eat the female chicken, never a cock. Parsi uses the word, 'Sahab Ji' for the daily

greetings. They do not delay the funeral beyond twenty four hours from the time of

death, which was unbearable within the Zoroastrian rites, besides this Mistry also

points the picture of superstition beliefs of the Persian community. The orthodox

defense was the age old wisdom that it was a pure method, defiling non of God's good

creation earth, water, air and fire Every scientist local or foreign, who had taken the

trouble to examine the pro, using modern, hygienic standards, sang its praises.

The individual contribution to the fight between good and evil eventually also

entails a moral choice 'Asha' implies truth, honesty, loyalty, courage and charity.

Following the principle of 'Asha' is an ethical commitment Man is to care for himself

and his fellow human beings as creations of God The obligation for every Zoroastrian

to abide by ethically acceptable behaviour is summed up by the formula, manashai,

gavashni, kunashni, i.e. good thoughts good words, good deeds. The emphasis on

ethics also means that for a believing Zoroastrian deeds will always speak, louder than

words Man cannot help the world and himself to salvation through sacrifices on

30
magic prayer, through rites of atonement, but only through correct behavior. In other

words, for the Parsis whose reputation for honesty and propriety, is a by word,

truthfulness and charity are more important than regularly going to a Fire Temple to

worship. This explains why the role of energy within Zoroastrianism is on the whole

negligible priests, the theologians are seldom required as mediations between god and

man. With the exception of burial marriage and initiation rites, the majority of rituals

to be performed can be celebrated at home.

The most important of rituals to be performed can be celebrated at home. The

most important ritual Zoroastrianism is the Kusti' a prayer in the course of which, the

threads of praying belt (kusti) are tied and united in a special order. The writer's

concern for kusti is depicted through Gustad Noble in Such a Long Journey

(Genetsch, 179-80)

The differences in food habit, closely linked to different religious practices,

offer an inner picture of India where people belonging to different religious sects have

settled. Gustad’s tolerance of others’ religion while maintaining his faith in his own

becomes explicit. Gustad’s concern for his son is a part of the concern from which the

minority suffers. He was anxious because of the rise of the fascist politics and demand

for Marathi language. It was like the condition of the black people in America. There

was hardly any future for the minorities.

The traditional Parsi community prefers this system where as modernists are

in favour of burial or cremation. Gustad feels god never appear at the end of his

concerns to explain or to justice. Gustad’s life journey is in a malicious world in

which happiness and miseries are interwoven with the journey on the edge of life. His

31
long journey is an illustration of the universal truth with the conflict between good

and evil. He exhibits the consciousness of his community and demonstrates the

existing threats to Parsi family and community. Mistry himself agrees that the

politicians all over the world are always willing to exploit irrational feelings and fear

to the people. The political backdrop of the 1971 India-Pakistan war in Bangladesh

emerges behind in this fiction. The little girl Roshan asks her father, “why is west

Pakistan killing the people in East Pakistan?” (SLJ, 81) and Gustad replays:

Because it is wicked and selfish. East Pakistan is poor, they said

to west, we are always hungry, please give us a fair share. But

West said no. Then East said, in that case we don’t want to work

with you. So, as punishment, West Pakistan is killing and

burning East Pakistan. (SLJ, 81)

The central character Gustad Noble is designed as a common man having the

grandeur of a classical tragic hero. A god-fearing man of modest aspirations, Gustad

hoped that his eldest son Sohrab would join I.I.T. and would bring material prosperity

to the family. He was rudely shocked when Sohrab refused to enroll himself as an

I.I.T. student and chose arts steam instead. In a conventional family, the father is the

authoritarian head. Gustad assumes that role. But Sohrab belongs to the new

generation which cherishes independence of choice. He rejects the converted I.I.T.

admission in favor of an ordinary B.A Gustad, for whom higher education, academic

excellence and social superiority are the only possible ways of clinging to an elite

status and distinct religious identity, is horrified. Sohrab is compelled to leave home

as a prelude to redefining his relationship with his father. The rupture in the

relationship between father and son could be reader as one of the many casualties of

32
modernity, where tradition and individualism are in perpetual conflict. In the eyes of

Gustad,

“This was the bloody problem with modern education. In the name

of progress they discarded seemingly unimportant things without

knowing that what they were chucking out the window of

modernity was tradition. And if tradition was lost, then the loss of

respect for those who respected and loved tradition always

followed”. (SLJ 61)

In this novel the main protagonist Gustad’s eventual acceptance of his lot with

dignity is the triumph of Zoroastrian faith. His journey is from uncertainty to

certainty, from contemplation to pragmatism and from perplexity to perspicacity. The

main interest of the novel lies in the real life scandal involving Nagarwala, the State

Bank Cashier who was at the centre of 60 lakh rupees scam, which had shaken the

government.

Politics interferes and intrudes into the life of common people. It plays havoc

and even kills them like Major Bilimoria. He is an omnipresent reminder of the myth

of national unity which is more destructive than constructive. As a loyal citizen, he

leaves his community to join RAW. Which practically functions as a spying agency to

monitor the subversive actions of political parties. He is a victim of nationalistic

fervor reward for patriotism is betrayal and death.

Bilimoria’s life is an example of how an authoritative state uses its citizens as

dispensable and exploitable pawns to further its own interests. It also mocks the blind

nationalistic patriotism of ordinary citizens.

33
 Malcolm Saldanha, another of Noble’s close friend too, articulates a religious

awareness when he takes Noble to the Mount Mary church and shows him the

peculiar offerings of wax imitations of limbs by devotees in the hopes of a miraculous

cure for corresponding physical deformities. Malcolm is a catholic. Malcolm and his

family helped Gustad after his father’s bankruptcy but in the course of time they

separated apart. However, multiple ironies weaken Gustad’s expectations that

Malcolm turns out the order of government to demolish the compound wall. While

Malcolm takes in charge to break down the wall, he is eventually not responsible for

the implementation of the road-widening scheme. Malcolm only carries out the order

of municipality in which he is as a victim of the impulses of life as Gustad. Gustad

blames Malcolm for destroying their friendship and the wall.

The Parsi doctor, Dr Madhiwalla Bonesetter is considered indigenous and is

the only medical alternative for Gustad’s broken hips in a metropolitan city like

Bombay;

‘With Madhiwalla Bonesetter there is no operation, no pins, no cast, nothing.

No bill even, except whatever donation you want to give. And the Bonesetter’s

methods are amazing, I am a living witness. Sometimes, the army surgeons

called him to help with difficult cases. The things he did were just like magic’

(SLJ 60-61)

Gustad Noble observes the complex political caldron of India with suspicion,

and the anti-minority attitude of a section of the dominant community raises in him

fears of an impending, disastrous ethic cleaning awaiting his community. In the novel

however, are the fragmented pictures of the community experienced in India during

34
the 1970s, coming from the memory of the author. The situation, the political climate

of Bombay obviously has changed now.

However after the 1970s, there were many instances of communal tension and

violence in Bombay that threatened the lives of the minorities. And therefore, the

novel has relevance even to the Parsis of present day Bombay. Moreover, the writer

has focused also on the mental makeup of the modern day Parsi, who keeps

comparing the grim present with the bright past. Parsi like many other minorities is

the last source of happiness as far as community experiences were concerned.

Through the analysis of the troublesome life of his Parsi hero. He however

deconstructs the myth of secularity adorned to Bombay as well as India. His portrayal

thus is to show the hidden corridors of activities that makes cracks in the constitution

and maintenance of Secularism in India.

The journey motif, made explicit through his last remarks, is suggestive of

Gustad’s spiritual journey towards the fulfilment of human feelings and also of the

journey of the Parsis who left their land in the eighth century. It was quite natural that

the minorities, who are negligible in number, become terrified at the rise of

fanaticism. A common Parsi’s anxiety is best revealed through Dinshawji’s humorous

remarks. Remembering the contribution of the Parsis to the banking system in India,

Dinshawji said,

What days those were, yaar. What fun we used to have.

Dinshawji touched the corners of his lips to wipe the foam.

Parsis were the kings of banking in those days. Such respects we

35
 used to get. Now the whole atmosphere only has been spoiled.

(SLJ 38)

Thus the common man on the street unhesitatingly implicates the Prime

Minister. The sudden and untimely death of the officer investigating the Bilimoria

case in a car crash raises strong suspicions about the objectivity of the enquiry. Later

through a newspaper report Gustad Noble learns about Jimmy’s death of a heart

attack. Jimmy had personally told Gustad Noble of the third degree treatment meted

out to him by the police in the jail. The novel also shows how the political powers

enjoy absolute control over the courts and lawyers there by reducing justice to a

monkeys. Jimmy becomes a victim of the political machinations. For Mistry, Jimmy

is an example of the way, the common man is betrayed and used in a corrupt socio-

political system that constitutes the pillars of a nation.

Gustad’s and his friend Dinshawji’s robust sense of patriotism which is

understandable as a consequence of the regular consumption of newspaper reports is

at least patriotism, Dinshawji readily agrees to help his colleague in clandestinely

depositing the ten lakh rupees sent by the Major. Mistry’s strategic inclusion of the

newspaper in the problematic of the relationship of the Parsi characters with the idea

of nation clearly establishes the role of the newspaper in sustaining and promoting the

idea of nation, nationalism and patriotism even for estranged communities. The texts

of Mistry attempts to study how decolonized societies easily swear away from the

idealistic underpinnings of the goals dreams that accompany the desire for freedom

and reveal their incompatibilities with social and democratic ideals which often

precede freedom and reveal their incompatibilities with social and democratic ideals

36
which often precede freedom and which are commonly attached to the idea of nation

in its natives predisposition and its western associations.

Similarly the novel also presents the break side of the intellectual area by

alluding to several educated unemployed persons; the pavement artist who has a

bachelor’s degree in World Religion and also a diploma from an Art school. Malcolm

Saldanha a trained pianist who cannot earn his living by music and so is forced to take

up a job at the municipality. Saldanha even considers his job at the municipality as

bloody boring.

The accounts of the political turmoil and the resultant subjection of the

minorities referred to in the novel are not to be delimited to the mere fictionality of

the novel. Rather, as Mistry is writing from the cultural sphere of an ethnic minority,

these accounts are to be approached as resulting, from the writer's interest and

participation in the socio-political scenario of the country in the post-independence

era. Mistry foresaw the emergence of extremist forces that wage war against the

cultural pluralism of Indian society. He understood the immediate threats posed by

extremist organizations like Shiv Sena directly against the multicultural, multiethnic

character of Indian society; the overwhelming racism and so forth. The threat of

violence unleashed by the majority develops a recurring fear in Gustad's mind that

eventually makes him a paranoid. All through the novel Mistry portrays the agony of

a cultural outsider who is living multiple subject positions, as an Indian citizen of

Parsi ethnicity. Gustad's world was full of hypocrisy and ugliness and tyranny. This

adds to his being trapped between multiple subject positions. The social evils, and the

human condition are presented with absolute clarity and resemblance to reality.

37
 Yet the stories in Such a Long Journey syncretise experience in non-linguistic

forms too. For instance, the pavement artist’s polytheistic mural turns the Khodadad

building’s perimeter wall from a latrine into a sacred site, enshrining India’s portable

notions of the sacred in a synthesis, albeit religious iconography. It reconciles the

different religious stories so fundamental to the nation’s sense of itself. In figuring the

saints and sages, mosques, churches and temples, on the blank canvas offered by the

wall.

The Khodadad building with its Parsi residents comes to stand for the Parsi

community. And the six feet high compound wall running around it becomes the

symbol of its insularity, protecting and sheltering it from the eyes of the majority

community, and thus rendering that space sacred where they can practice their faith

unhindered. If this wall becomes the symbol of their insularity, it also becomes the

target of attack of the majority community which shows its contempt by pissing

against the wall. Safe within this sacred space, they occasionally betray their anxieties

and fears and insecurities as members of a minority community, although they have

done better than other communities including their majority Hindu community;

The compound wall of the Khodadad building, a symbol of the insularity of

the Parsi community, is soon transformed into a multi-religious shrine, a mosaic of

different religions and cultures, a pavement artist draws pictures of deities of different

religious and renders stories from epics of different religious come to worship and pay

their obeisance.

The wall becomes gloomy within the apartment on account of the blackout

paper. The wall is used as a public latrine by outside people of Khodadad Building.

38
Gustad feels uncomfortable and he wants the place to be saved from pollution, horrid

smell of urine, and the flies and mosquitoes. He calls a street artist to decorate the

wall with figures of saints and gods from various religions. A street artist paints the

wall with gods and goddesses from all religion by the request of Gustad. As a result,

in a short time, passing people starts to pray, donate offerings, and leave flowers in

front of wall. Therefore, the natural stench changed as a natural smell of perfume. As

the novel progresses, Gustad Noble turns the offensively stinking wall into the wall of

all religions.

However, despite its auspicious influence, the wall is destined to a final

destruction. Since the Bombay officials have decided to enlarge the road they plan to

demolish the wall. Everybody is shocked by this decision, regarding it as an attack on

their religious beliefs because every religion this place is sacred. The idea of an

overall sense of sacredness valid for all religions underscores the culture transcendent

dimension of the wall. The episode suggests that while religions are different in their

surface manifestations, they can reach consensus despite these differences. This

demolition suggests that cultural heterogeneity is sacrificed in the name of a

homogenized culture associated with the aims of the nation.

The problem of unemployment in postcolonial India leaves a huge imprint on

the psyche of the people. Many Parsi's who are highly qualified and extremely good

in communication have no dearth of jobs abroad and they easily emigrate and settle in

white land. The unease with their own identity in post colonial India and consequent

emigration to the west too have been the focal point of Parsi writers. Parsi writers are

self reflective and their writing reflect on the complexity of their cultural experience.

Parsi writers often try to reposes their history and display various ethno-religious

39
traits in the course of their writing in order to assert their identity. In this process,

various issues concerning the community comes into focus.

The climax of the novel comes when the citizens of the dirty and depressed

neighborhood march to the municipal office to demand essential services. On the way,

they pause to offer prayers at the transformed wall. But the municipality has already

decided to demolish it in order to widen the road. In a violent street fight, Tehmul,

the tragic cripple dies while trying to catch a flying brick. The sacred wall is finally

destroyed. His lifetime of frustrations and anger melts away as he prays over the

victim, Tehmul Langraa’s body following the ugly violence in the streets.

The ordinariness of his life makes Gustad the symbol of every man just as the

Khodadad building is the symbol of the Parsi community. If on the one hand, Gustad

as an individual becomes every man in his aspirations and anguish, on the other he as

a member of his community shows his independent cultural and religious identity.

Through the character of Gustad, Mistry shows that in spite of the cultural and

religious differences, there is a lot which people have in common with each other as

human beings and it is this commonness which unites people despite the differences.

And this is Mistry's way of offering a paradigm of multiculturalism for Canada,

though Canada does not figure in the novel.

The subaltern's agony as a cultural outsider has spiritual implications in the

novel. The pangs of growth that Gustad experiences due to his being thrown to the

margins in adverse conditions appear to be a spiritual test in which he succeeds.

Gustad's quest ends in reconciliation and peace. He removes the black papers from his

windows letting the rays of hope peep into his room. Although the agony gets no final

40
solution, he had the feeling of temporarily resolving his agony as an outsider. He

shows that personal integrity and right approaches (as taught by his own religion) can

make man survive amidst any inclement condition. He had nowhere else to migrate to

other than his own ethnicity. The spiritual solace that Gustad finds in the ethnicity of

his origin, in the peaceful mystery of his community, was perhaps the force that drives

not only his life, but also the lives of all ethnic minorities, who happened to live in a

society mostly eclipsed by the dominant interests of a dominant community.

41
 CHAPTER - III

CULTURAL HEGEMONY IN SUCH A LONG JOURNEY

Hegemony defines the dominance of one group over another, often supported

by legitimating norms and ideas. The term hegemony is today often used as short

hand to describe the relatively dominant position of a particular set of ideas and their

associated tendency to become commonsensical and intuitive, thereby inhibiting the

dissemination or even the articulation of alternative ideas. The associated term

hegemon is used to identify the actor, group, class, or state that exercises hegemonic

power or that is responsible for the dissemination of hegemonic ideas.

The word ‘hegemony’ derived from a Greek term that translated simply as

‘dominance over’ without violence and that was used to describe relationship between

cities and states. Hegemony is the political, economic, or military predominance or

control of one state over others. In ancient Greece, hegemony denoted the politico-

military dominance of a city-state over other city-states. The dominant state is known

as the hegemon. In the 19th century, hegemony came to denote the social or cultural

predominance or ascendancy; predominance by one group within society or milieu.

Later, it could be used to mean a group or regime which exerts undue influence within

a society. Also, it could be used for the geopolitical and the cultural predominance off

one country on the others.

In the historical writing of the 19th century, the denotation of hegemony

extended to describe the predominance of one country upon other countries and by

extension, hegemonism denoted the Great Power politics for establishing hegemony

(indirect imperial rule) which then leads to a definition of imperialism (direct foreign

42
rule). In early twentieth century, in the field of international relations, the Italian

Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci developed the theory of cultural domination to

include social class. Hence, the philosophic and sociologic theory of cultural

hegemony analysed the social norms that established the social structures that is social

and economic classes with which the ruling class establish and exert cultural

dominance to impose their world view justifying the social, political, and economic

status.

The theory of cultural hegemony, associated particularly with Antonio

Gramsci, is the idea that the ruling class can manipulate the value system and mores

of a society, so that their view becomes the world view. In Terry Eagleton’s words,

‘Gramsci normally uses the word hegemony to mean the ways in which a governing

power wins consent to its rule from those it subjugates’. Gramsci’s discussion of

hegemony followed from his attempts to understand the survival of the capitalist state

in the most-advanced Western countries.

Antonio Francesco Gramsci (1891-1937) was an Italian theorist and politician.

He wrote on political theory, sociology and linguistics. He attempted to break from

the economic determinism of traditional Marxist thought and so is considered a key

neo-Marxist. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the Community Party

of Italy and was imprisoned. He wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of

history and analysis during his imprisonment. His Prison Notebooks were considered

a highly original contribution to twentieth century political theory.

Antonio Gramsci demonstrated the theory of cultural hegemony broadly.

Cultural hegemony is the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class

43
who manipulate the culture of that society the beliefs, explanations, perceptions,

values, and mores. So that their imposed, ruling-class worldview becomes the

accepted cultural norm; the universally valid dominant ideology, which justifies the

social, political, and economic status as natural and inevitable, perpetual and

beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the

ruling class. The cultural hegemony is manifested in and maintained by an existence

of minor, different circumstances that are not always fully perceived by the men and

the women living the culture.

Rohinton Mistry clearly demonstrated hegemonic impact on each character in

his novel because its past is directly associated with the post-colonial power

oppression. Therefore, living in a transcultural society causes confusion about their

ethnicities and they become aware of the postcolonial identities. Mistry’s shock at the

sight of stinking human condition and rampant corruption turns him into being a

realist, who is obliged to expose the world around him. At times he looks like a

naturalist reporting the human condition as in itself it is. Mistry whose works

centralize their community. He exhibits the consciousness of his community and

demonstrates the existing threat to the Parsi family and community. The nationalistic

fervor in the novelist makes him at times a ruthless critic of the corrupt government at

the center. His nationalism is above petty selfishness.

The title of the novel Such a Long Journey’s title is taken from T.S. Eliot’s

poem Journey of the Magi which provides one of the three epigraphs to the novel:

“A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

for a journey and such a long journey”.

44
 The title has a symbolic significance and refers to the life of Gustad Noble, the

central character of the story. In T.S.Eliot’s poem, the journey is undertaken by three

wise men to pay their homage to the divinely baby. The star guided them towards

their destination. In the case of Gustad, life itself is a long journey with a lot of

undulations’. The guiding star in his life is the deep faith in God and the stoic

spirituality with which he approaches life. The novel is set during the months leading

to the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971 over the liberation of Bangladesh which ultimately

leads to the formation of Bangladesh. This novel deals with the protagonist Gustad

Noble, an ageing Parsi, Gustad was the envy and admiration of friends and relatives

whenever health or sickness was being discussed. “For a man swimming in the tide

water of his fifth decade of life” (SLJ 1).

Journey is important Mistry as long as it talks about the predicament of a

community. The Parsis, it seems, still carry the memory of their ancestors’ historical

exodus from Iran to India. And his archetypal memory recurs in the form of a sense of

unease in India, which obviously is multiplied by the problems from outside the

community that makes them think of further journeys. Journey for the Parsis are a

continuous thing that their predicament is to prolong the journey that also gives them

their identity. He migrated Canada when he was twenty-three years old. In an

interview with Mclay, he said,

“Having a lived in Bombay for twenty three years I felt

something in me was incomplete. However, having arrived in the

West this sense of incompleteness turned around and I became

aware of the loss of my home.” (SLJ 199-200).

45
 Mistry’s focussed on the mental make up of the modern day Parsi, who keeps

comparing the grim present with the bright past. This is to be approached both as a

psychological complexity that most of the minorities experience, and as the effect of

an ideological conditioning of a geographical, or cultural location by the programmes

and agendas of a dominant system that operate not only in the dominant activities, but

also in the minds of the sidelined classes or minorities. The main theme is explore to

foregrounds the tradition versus modernity. In the name of tradition, the native

religious practices and ethnic politics of exclusiveness and terrorize people of other

communities. Roads and places are renamed with traditional ones order to Indian

identity. Both instances of asserting one’s tradition can be witnessed even today.

Mistry’s Such a Long Journey exposes in as an allegory of multiculturalism. It

presents a multicultural society and the place of minorities in it. Set in Bombay in

1971 against the backdrop of the Indo-Pakistan war and the birth of Bangladesh as a

nation, Such Long Journey deals with the life of the Parsi community in India. On the

one hand, this novel opens up a new world for the readers in Canada, the life and

ways of the Parsi community and thus helps them in developing a better

understanding and appreciation of their culture. On the other, it also presents to us a

model of multiculturalism in its delineation of this minority community in India and

how well they have integrated into the Indian society without losing their cultural and

religious identity. Mistry created in Such a Long Journey contains all the forms of a

dark world. Bribes, Knavery, treachery, tyranny, greeds are feature of their novel.

Such a Long Journey from despondency to hope. Gustad Noble is concerned his

acerbic experience of everyday life. Selfish Government their common people who

are poor and disabled, middle class and ordinary are marginal in political process.

46
Gustad was a fatalist. Gustad also recalled the year 1962, the year in which India went

into a war with China. It was the same year his daughter Roshan was born. Gustad

had met with accident in the same dreadful year, 1962. The novel captures India

through its temporal and spatial dimensions.

The cultural milieu the novel manifests a specificity and rootedness which are

rare to be found in immigrant writings. It beautifully and faithfully renders the life of

the minority Parsi community its religious beliefs, rituals, mores, social norms, modes

of dress, food habits, linguistic habits and idioms etc.

Such a Long Journey explores in depth the various complex attributes of Parsi

life, history, culture and character. Mistry set this novel at a sensitive point in

contemporary Indian history. During the period 1962-1972 India had to engage in

three successive wars, with China, Pakistan, and for the liberation of Bangladesh. This

period also saw the rise of communal politics alignment, the slow but sure politics of

votes by the dominant Hindu community in India.

A citizen of India, Gustad struggles with a rebellious son who disappoints him,

a wife influenced by superstition, a betrayal by his best friend and the loss through

death of another good friend. He finds himself the unwilling participant in a

dangerous government plot. Gustad Noble is a hard-working bank clerk and devoted

family man, living in Bombay in the early 1970s. But his life gradually starts to

unravel: his young daughter falls ill and his promising son defies his father’s

ambitions for him. One day he receives a letter from an old friend, asking him to help

in what at first seems like a heroic mission. But he soon finds himself unwittingly

drawn into a dangerous network of fraud and betrayal. Compassionate, and rich in

47
details of character and place, this unforgettable novel charts the journey of a moral

heart in a turbulent world of change. Major Jimmy Bilimoria, Noble’s neighbor and

trusted friend who is a cause of bitterness and sorrow since he appears to have

deserted his apartment next door with no explicit reason, without the root of Noble’s

grief, a single effort at explanation before leaving.

Gustad identifies that Shiv Sena authoritarian politics and anti-minority

policies as two major threats that his community has to deal with. Shiv Sena’s fascist

model onslaught on minorities was perhaps the most disturbing problem of Parsis.

Gustad and his friend Dinshawji are unhappy with Maharastra Government, mainly

because nationalized banks which adversely affected Parsi hold on the banking

industry. In Gustad’s life, two events are very much significant; his father’s

bankruptcy and childhood experience at Matheran involving the broken bowl. Gustad

associates sensual qualities with the memory of his father’s bankruptcy not only does

it have the sound of deadly virus it also feels crucially. Gustad’s plans of attending

university, something which would enhance his career prospects considerably. Instead

of being able of forced on his degree in relative material security, Gustad is forced to

earn money in order to finance his studies.

Apart from the bankruptcy the broken bowl of Matheran points to a second

instance where Gustad remembers how at the end of a childhood. Holiday at

Matheran, edible pudding bowl is broken and eaten by manager of the hotel. Gustad

worried deeply as his father visibly shrank. He did the best he could do as

breadwinner of the family. But his meagre income could never raise the status he

become more conscious of his position as culturally ‘other’. The past of the Noble

family is exposed through Gustad’s remembrances. His grandfather had lovingly

48
crafted it in his furniture workshop. The signboard of the shop contained the words;

Noble & Sons, Makers of Fine Furniture.

The historical background encompasses three battles involving the nation; the

1948 War with Pakistan, the 1962 War with China and the 1965 War with Pakistane

were riots, curfews, charges buses everywhere. India had faced a humiliating defeat at

the hands of China. During the Indo-China war, the windows and ventilators of

Gustad’s house were covered with blackout paper. Gustad father was prosperous and

economically well-established. His grandfather’s furniture shop and his father’s

bookstore are pre-eminent in this regard and both locations are often remembered in

the course of the narrative. He can situate the birth of his own identity only in relation

to these particular places.

Compassionate, and rich in details of character and place, this unforgettable

novel charts the journey of a moral heart in a turbulent world of change. A heart

which remains upright and honest in spite of receiving a lot of unaccounted money.

Those events are learns to accept and accommodate the decision of his son and the

deaths of his friends, which understands the unfairness of life and yet has the courage

to carry out the difficult business of living.

Such a Long Journey is the novel of common man’s concern for bare survival,

the theme of the journey revolves around history, religion, politics, and common

anxiety for individuality and peaceful living. In between the turmoil’s of politics the

novel tells the story of the corruption rampant in the realms of politics involving

directly or indirectly common man in its traps and thus disturbing the smooth running

of his or her life. There are no significant literal journeys in the novel apart from the

49
Dinshawji’s funeral and Gustad’s train journey to Delhi to see the bedridden Major

Bilimoria. Gustad realizes the true heroism of Dinshawji from his death. Dinshawji

had maintained a mask of obvious disorder in spite of the pain of cancer as well as the

acceptance of the reality. In the train, Gustad things,

“Would this Long journey be worth it? Was any journey ever

worth the trouble?... And what a long journey for Dinshawji too.

But certainly worth it”. (SLJ, 259-60)

Most of the minority’s mindset is the physical space of the Khodadad Building

itself. At one point, the apartment is likened to a museum and there is no coincidence

in which many domestic items seem to be in a state of waste thing. Otherwise, the

Khodadad building is protected from the outside world by a high black wall. The wall

is an important symbol in the text and it has actually a group of symbols.

Gustad’s personal life journey it also explores the political background during

that time. The battle between India and West Pakistan during the Bangadeshi

liberation war that haiped East Pakistan form their own sovereign state. The story of

Major Bilimoria who is manipulated as a pawn by government and money scandals,

depicts the corruption existing in the highest political circles.

“Tall and broad-shouldered, Gustad was the envy and

admiration of friends and relatives whenever health or sickness

was being discussed” (SLJ 1)

The novel also presents the perseverance and resolve of Indian middle class

families who are ambitious for their children and are willing to go to great lengths to

see their offspring succeed. It is this aspiration that prompts Gustad Noble to spend

50
money on books despite his low income. But Sohrab announces that he no longer

wants to go to IIT. Darius wept bitterly and buried his departed friends in the

compound besides. He spent long hours meditating on the wisdom of loving living

things. In a short span of time, he has a conflict with his neighbours Mr. Rabadi and

the latter levels the allegation that Darius Noble then he notoriously addressed as

dogwalla. Anxiety brews in the mind of Noble after coming to terms with this news

and he senses that his neighbour might spread this anywhere, When the son comes

back, the father tries to elicit information from him about the affair. The son flatly

refuses and says that when Jasmine is found with his friends, only then he talks to her.

In the words of Gustad to his son;

“Lisen, Her father is a crackpot. So just stay away.

If She is with your friends, you don’t join them.” (SLJ 79)

Poverty haunts Gustad’s life in another form when his daughter Roshan’s

illness continues, the financial constraints circumstances compel Gustad to sell his

camera and his wife also has to sell her gold bangles. Gustad expectation seems to

make life meaningless and the typical real conditions of a middle class family due to

economic hardships.

Gustad’s conversation with Bilimoria in jail is all about corruption in the

government at the highest level, even in the RAW. Rohinton Mistry shows through

him how a man who is simple at heart is so easily trapped. His pathetic death puts a

question mark on the integrity of the politicians who profit from the selfless work of

patriots like Major Bilimoria. Disappearence of Major Jimmy Bilimoria from

Khodadad building, and the complex episodes of events that followed Gustad’s

51
receiving a parcel dispatched by Major Bilimoria containing ten lakh rupees was the

first blow that Gustad felt. Bilimoria had been a loving brother for him and Gustad

considered him as “a second father” to his children.

“Almost one of the family, a second father to the childen. Gustad

had even considered appointing him as their guardian in his will,

should something ultimely happen to himself and Dilnavaz. A

year after the disappearance, he still could not think of jimmy

without the old hurt returning”. (SLJ 14)

Major Bilimoria has no family of his own and he loved his friends as his own

brothers. He has lived in Khodadad Building for almost as long as the nobles. Major

Bilimoria had fought against the Pakistanis in 1948 and also encountered the tribes

man from the North-West frontier. Being a retired army man he was recruited by

RAW and was engaged in secret service for the country. Mistry projects him as a

Parsi patriot who was devoted to India and was yet rudely betrayed by the Indian

Prime Minister. He was a simple man at heart and that is why he was so easily

trapped. His pathetic death puts a question mark on the integrity of the politicians who

profited by the selfless work of the patriots as Major Bilimoria concluded,

“Everything is in their control…courts in their pockets. Only one way…quietly do my

four years…then forget about it”. (SLJ 280)

Gustad receives a letter from Bilimoria, who wants Gustad to receive a parcel

from him. Gustad ready to do the task in the name of friendship. However, he finds

himself entrapped in complicated difficulties on opening the parcel. The parcel

contains ten lakhs rupees to be deposited in the bank in the name of a non-existent

52
women, Mira Obili. Major Bilimoria is a true-life of financial humiliation. The theme

against reality is played out in the doublespeak of the government. Then, Bilimoria is

almost everywhere in Gustad’s memories.

Major’s character is his decision to put aside ten lakh rupees for his friends

who are needy. When Gustad asks him why he had not disclosed the fact to him, he

answeres that Gustad’s would never allow him to do such immoral work. He

understands Gustad’s character well. And he confesses that he had done an immoral

job, as he was frustrated at the shameless show of corruption at the highest level. He

also made a mistake in thinking that they would not bother about ten lakh rupees.

Mistry’s keen observation made him aware of the way corruption in highest places

spreads like gangrene everywhere. However, this flaw of Major Bilimoria makes him

a man of flesh and blood. Otherwise he would remain an instrument for expressing

grudge against Government.

Dinshawji is a allegorical figures and represent ideas rather than complex

psychological dispositions. Dinshawji’s death comes to indicate the end of comic

relief. Dinshawji death is not only a shock but a permanent ruin of Gustad’s life.

Dinshawji risks his job for Gustad by opening and closing a bank account with illegal

money.

Dinshawji laments in the loss of the old names and loss of the logocentric

security then he feels loss of his social identity to the political fanatics of

“Maharashtra for Maharashtrians’. Dinshawji fears that the Parsis might become

second class citizens in the near future. Of central significance to agitation are issues

of language and language planning. The party advocates a translation of English road

53
names into Marathi and overlooks the effects that such a step has on the fore colonial

elite of the Parsi responding to Gustad’s remarks. In order to construct a postcolonial

Indian identity, the British street names so important to Dinshawji have been altered

by the Indian administration in what amounts to a reckoning with British colonial rule

in India. Having identified with British culture and values, the formerly formally

colonised Parsis lament the departure of the colonizers. Thus Dinshawji raised and

socialized within an ethno-religious tradition, severely attacks and street names and

takes issues of psychological consequences.

Dinshawji was aware of the changing political scenario that was the ultimate

cause of the changed status of the Parsis in India. With his traditional sense of

obeying the ruler in the country Gustad was rather hesitant to use strong words of

criticism against the central government. Dinshawji could also express serious views

without being light. For example, when he expressed his dissatisfaction with the

change of place names, he turned very serious at Gustad’s suggestion that change of

names hardly mattered. Without the slightest mark of fun on his face he said,

“Names are so important. I grow up on Lamington Road. But it

has disappeared, in its place is Dadasaheb Bhadkhamkar Marg.

My school was on Carnac Road. Now suddenly it’s on

Lokmanya Tilak Marg. I live at Sleater Road. Soon that will also

disappear. My whole life I have come to work at Flora Fountain.

And one fine day the name changes. So what happens to the life I

have lived?” (SLJ 74)

54
 This is not merely accusation against the change of names. This suggests an

identity crisis of the Parsi community. The Parsis felt comfortable with the British and

could learn English language very early. They were profited thereby and acquired a

central position on the national scenario. During the postcolonial days their position

became marginalized again, and the change of place name, which were all British

names, were sad reminders of their lost glory.

Ironically, it is the Major himself, Gustad’s best friend and, in many respects a

surrogate brother for him, who is the ‘agent’ that brings the outside world in and

destroys Gustad’s insulated existence. The real trouble started after the parcel was

opened and the instructions given inside were read. The parcel contrained ten lakh

rupees and Gustad was instructed to deposit the amount in account of some Mira

Obili.

Dinshawji accepts the money and makes a suggestive pass by Laurie’s desk on

his way back to work. Dinshawji take advantage of the girl ignorance of Parsi slang to

make a pun of her name. Everyday Gustad hands Dinshawji a new packet of money,

and receives a receipt. Gustad withdraws one bundle of bills for a first deposit. Ten

thousand rupees a day will not be suspicious. It will take hundred days to deposit the

whole. Laurie’s complaint about innocent Dinshawji provocative behavior leads to

lose his job and pension,

There are no significant literal journeys in the novel apart from the

Dinshawji’s funeral and Gustad’s train journey to Delhi to see the bedridden Major

Bilimoria. Gustad realizes the true heroism of Dinshawji from his death. Dinshawji

55
had maintained a mask of obvious disorder in spite of the pain of cancer as well as the

acceptance of the reality. In the train, Gustad things,

“Would this Long journey be worth it? Was any journey ever

worth the trouble?... And what a long journey for Dinshawji too.

But certainly worth it”. (SLJ, 259-60)

Most of the minority’s mindset is the physical space of the Khodadad Building

itself. At one point, the apartment is likened to a museum and there is no coincidence

in which many domestic items seem to be in a state of waste thing. Otherwise, the

Khodadad building is protected from the outside world by a high black wall. The wall

is an important symbol in the text and it has actually a group of symbols.

Ghulam Mohammad is a good friend of Bilimoria’s and he makes all the

arrangements for his friend’s funeral, yet he is not allowed to enter the Tower of

Silence because he does not belong to the religion. Thus the social ambience of the

novel reverberates only with Parsi life and culture. In a very meticulous and

systematic manner the author educates the reader about Parsi culture.

The Parsis also maintain the importance of their purity in the face of high

death rates and low birth rates. In the past, Parsis had been in India for a thousand

years and they counted themselves as Indians. On the other hand, there were also who

suffered from the Indian postcolonial reality and took refuge in a glorification of the

Parsi achivements of the past as well as to an uncritical nostalgia of everything

British. Mistry in his fiction delinated the spiritual exploration of Parsis, which is a

small, yet united, religious community in India. It is repeatedly emphasized that

56
Zoroastrianism is a matter of birth, not of affiliation. It is not acquired by the way of

social system but considered an integral part of one’s genetic heritage.

The setting ‘Khodadad Building’ is an imaginary, it is based on real

experiences of Parsi people. The backdrop of the Indo-Pakistani war also helps the

socio-cultural scenario appear real. The protagonist’s remembrances of his childhood

days the time when his father was a rich man and again when he was declared

insolvent expose the rich past of the Parsis in India. And his present experiences are

closely linked to the contemporary political crisis. The crisis in Gustad’s life is

rendered as a part of the corrupt dynastic rule that hardly bothered about the well-

being of the common people.

The Khodadad building in Gustad’s house inner appearance has no place to

keep his books in the cramped flat. The wall enclosing the housing complex is used as

an open air urinal and the thin watery milk they buy are all representative of middle

class life. When the compound wall of the Khodadad Building was being broken and

the excited mass flung bricks, Tehmul was so fascinated by the sight that he tried to

catch a piece of brick and was seriously injured. That injury led to his death and

Mistry made the incident plausible through exposing Tehmul’s fascination for moving

things which was an outward revelation of a handicapped person’s desire for freedom.

As a social realist, Mistry pointed out how the poor people suffered financially

at the time of the war. The refugee Relief Tax is referred to again and again as a

burden on the people who had to try hard for making the two ends meet. Gustad said

that the refugee Relief Tax is terrible and it is killing the middle class people. The

novel alludes to the rise in prices of essential commodities, widespread adulteration of

57
goods, absence of reform in foreign exchange regularities and long queues for milk

ration cards, fraudulence and deceit in the railways and the rampant corruption

prevalent both at the political and the individual levels. What worsens the already

precarious economic ambience is the imposition of the refugee relief tax forcing the

price of commodities to go further up and ‘killing the middle class’.

The journey is in fact the human one from past to present, from innocence to

experience, a universal journey that the three epigraphs, a universal journey that the

three epigraphs to the novel together recreate. The first epigraph is from Firdausi’s

Iranian epic, Shah-Nama, and recalls both the glorious Iranian heritage of a mighty

Empire, as well as hints at the downgraded condition of present-day Parsis. The

second one is from T.S Eliot’s The Journey of the Magi and reminds readers of the

ancient Zoroastrian religion and the belief that the Magi who attend the birth of Christ

were Zorostrian priests. Finally, Tagore’s lines from Gitanjali sum up the way in

which the Parsis have moved from one country to another and how that have had to

adapt themselves to be realities. Thus, the old story of the archetypal Parsi journey

from forcible assimilation to security and identity in a strange land is a recurrent motif

in Parsi writings.

On the one hand, the journey from Firdausi’s Shah-Nama to Tagore’s Gitanjali

proved to be a long journey in a cold and hostile world. Gustad’s friends, Dinshawji,

Bilimoria and Tehmul, have already undertaken such a long journey, on the others it

is also a long journey from hopelessness to hope and from despondency to

millennium. For Gustad the hard times are over, no matter how badly he has been

battered. As Gustad Noble experiences everyday life is inextricably bound up with

larger forces.

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 The Parsis revere the sun, moon, fire, water, earth, and all creations of God. In

Zoroastrian religion fire is considered sacrosanct. Fire worshipped in all forms from

the sun to the household fire, and no Zoroastrian worship is complete without it.

Being a Parsi himself, Mistry is aware of the rites and rituals of his religion.

Humiliation, unease, and insecurity in their lives challenge the very ideas of

democracy and ‘unity in diversity’. These pictures of the exploitation of the minorities

and common people throw light on the oppressive nature of nationalism, which

remains unheeded under the façade of solidarity between different cultures and

religions. But instead of cooperation, friendliness and unison the dominant ideologies

in the society prevail over the marginalized ones and in Postcolonial India, the

colonization and domination of the British is replaced with that of the native elite

class. But the traces of resistance to this particular form of nationhood recur again and

again throughout the novel, mostly in the form of their indignation towards the very

concept of nationalism.

Such a Long Journey also portrays the corrupt legal system. This is ratified by

the fact that the innocent Jimmy Bilimoria does not get justice. Mistry uses several

techniques to underscore Bilimoria’s innocence, the opinion of common man, Jimmy

Bilimoria’s personal confession to the protagonist and Ghulam Mohammad’s views.

Such a long Journey is the novel of common man’s concern survival, the main theme

of the journey to entire around history, politics, and individuality and peaceful living.

Such a Long Journey demonstrates an insistent concern with the slippery, malleable

nature of language, and how reality can often be very different from appearance.

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 Though Gustad’s father was also a victim of social marginalization but he had

enough money and power to stay away from this tantrum. But for common people

like Gustad, the humiliation and ignominy faced by them clearly indicates how

cooperation, tolerance and affability have ceased to exist in Indian society due to this

oppressive form of nationalism. If the common people is further worsened with the

rise of parochialism, which is subtly fictionalized by Mistry through the atrocities of

Shiv Sena in Maharashtra and their claim for a separate Maharashtra for Marathis,

which was also patronized by the some political parties and other rightwing

fundamentalists. Gustads psychological fear about his son’s future and life. He thinks

that there is no future for minorities in this country because of fascist activities like

Shiv sena who fights only for Marathi people and Marathi language. Such fascist

ideology reduced them as a black people in America. Political corruption and

victimization is also one of concerns of the novel. Mistry depicts how politicians use

common man as a scapegoat. When Gustad’s father is in hospital, “the finest

bookstore in the country” (130) goes bank-rupt in the hands of his drunkard uncle.

Major Bilimoria's disappearance, and the parcel that he had dispatched,

however, caused considerable havoc in Gustad's small world. As the arrest of

Bilimoria on charges of impersonating PM's voice over phone and receiving a large

amount of money to the tune of 10 lakh rupees, had been part of a major political

conspiracy, Gustad felt as if he was trapped by traitors of various types. His ordeal

that resembled an epic struggle involved physical and mental torture. Gustad's

ultimate escape as the representative of an ethnic minority from the tyranny of time

and circumstances culminated with a feeling of reconciliation, although he had to part

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with some of his best-loved friends. His survival was a morale booster to all minority

struggles.

In the midst of the turbulent times with regard to his personal worries and

problems, Gustad was doubly troubled when he thought about the position of

minorities in India. As a conscientious Parsi, he was aware of the bleak future that

awaited minorities in India in general, and Parsis in particular.

East Pakistan has been attacked by a strong virus from West Pakistan, too

powerful for the Eastern immune system. And the world’s biggest physician is doing

nothing. Worse, Dr America is helping the virus. So what’s the prescription? The

Mukti Bahini guerrillas?..Not strong enough medicine. Only the complete,

intravenous injection of the Indian army will defeat this virus’. (SLJ 164-165)

The duplicity of the political leaders and their greed power also rudely

exposed. Fund raising at the time of war or any natural calamity is a common practice

in India, but it is never made clear to the public how the amount raised through

collections from the poor and the underpaid is spent. Dr. Paymaster’s accusations

against the municipality are not imaginary. They are very much real pointing at the

varied problems of the common people.

In Such a Long Journey, Mistry exposes the reality of the affected, suffered,

suppressed, marginalized and alienated persons in the multicultural society. The only

cause of their endless pain is that they belong to the minority group of Parsis. In Such

a Long Journey Mistry picturizes the sufferings of the Parsi people at the hands of

other majority religious and political parties such as Shiv sena and Marathi

government through his characters. In this novel Gustad’s endless pain and

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Bilimoria’s crucial death, Dinshawji’s pathetic death and Tehmul’s psychological

pain and murder, etc are caused by the hegemonic impact of dominant culture and

political system.

Thus we can say that Mistry tries to evolve the Indian image objectively. He,

emphasizing the defect of vision, the racial sense and the symbolic actions of Indians,

also narrates the mental conflicts and confusions. Mistry’s works, pregnant with

autobiographical undertones, examines not only the colonial background of India but

also the Post-independence Emergency period. He also focuses on the Indo-China and

Indo-Pak wars and the religious sentiments and superstitions. It is noteworthy that

Mistry also encounters the age-old culture and civilization of Indian sub-continent and

views profoundly the dramatic changes occurring in the social, political, and cultural

atmosphere of India. While dismissing Indian way of life, he has criticized many

persons and issues, their lack of vision, people’s nostalgia for Indian culture and

civilization, various religious concepts and their negative and positive effects on

Indian masses.

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 CHAPTER - IV

SUMMATION

A work of literature cannot afford to peevishly shy away from social reality.

As a social discourse, it is written by a sensitive being for some other members of the

society to read and comprehend what is written and conveyed. A serious work of

literature, created as it is within the framework of existing social relations, is not only

a living document of the contemporary happenings but also of the historical processes

underlying them. This is particularly true of the diasporic writers. Immigrant novelists

have on several occasions revealed more biased and lopsided political and socio-

cultural truths than all the professional politicians put together.

Mistry boldly voices the chaotic and cruel oppression of Parsi community by

the majority communities both at the national level and at the regional level-especially

in Bombay where the majority of the Parsis live. The central theme of all his works in

the almost certain failure of the community’s desperate attempts at trying to preserve

its lost glory and its ethnic uniqueness in an increasingly antagonistic contemporary

Indian society which is organised along communal lines.

In modern times, people expect more money without hard work and refuse to

utilise the opportunities in the right way. The youngsters refuse to listen to their

parents and bring sufferings to their parents. In case of Darius in Such a Long

Journey, they choose non-Parsi girls as partners. Even though Darius, is severely

admonished by his father and has to relinquish his love. This shows the youngster’s

behaviour in the name of modernity. Thus Mistry has portrayed the personal lives of

the personal lives of conflict between “modernitic ideas” and “orthodox confusions.”

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 Indian society is rapidly changing and this is affecting people’s personal lives

and life styles. Moreover, in India, the family continues to be the foundation of

society and the novels have the family as their subject. The family as a social unit is

dying in the West. But both in India and in the West, relationships matter a great deal

in people’s lives. Rohinton Mistry has delineated these cataclysmic changes that are

occurring in interpersonal relationships. He also explores the impact of ‘modernity’

on the family set up. This has directly or indirectly influenced family relationships

and psychology behind them. Rohinton Mistry is a product of the postcolonial Indian

diaspora. In his novels, one finds a poignant picture of the Parsi diaspora, as members

of his miniscule community struggle to come to term a with the baffling and complex

phenomenon of Indian modernity.

Mistry’s novels have as their milieu the “City by the Sea” Mumbai, a city

marked by constant and permanent changes in its landscape, sky cape and in the

people who inhabit it. Here more than anywhere else in India, one witnesses the lives

of the people being governed and even enmeshed by globalization, by networks of

new and foreign media images on the one hand, and by poverty, illiteracy,

unemployment, exploitation and homelessness, on the other. This gives the

impression of identities getting detached and disembodied from specific places and

times and becoming free-floating. Mistry’s Such a Long Journey marks the beginning

of this detachment and dismemberment, while A Fine Balance deals with characters

who are displaced, isolated and estranged, framed against the background of the

anonymous, impersonal and terrifying metropolis. Family Matters places the

microcosm of individual’s lives within macrocosmic events.

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 Though Such a Long Journey is a Parsi novel, it does not project

Zoroastrianism as the best religion whatsoever. That is why Gustad went to Church of

Mount Mary to pray for Roshan and Dinshawji and this posture did not diminish his

faith in Zoroastrianism. He even followed the Catholic rituals of offering wax-made

parts of human bodies for curing those parts of his friends and children.

Rohinton Mistry’s attitude to religion is best expressed through the pavement

artist. Gustad had requested him to paint portraits on the compound wall of the

Khodadad Building and he started with Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Then

he painted gods, goddesses and saints of different religions. He also painted sacred

religious places of different religions. He also painted sacred religious places of

different religions. And the place was miraculously changed. The stink was replaced

by fragrance of flowers and incense sticks. Instead of flies and mosquitoes buzzing, a

thousand colours danced in sunlight. Not that all the people were happy. There were

lots of sceptics and malingers. Some even meant by religion only mysteries and

magic. Religion is necessary for upliftment of one’s ethical standard, broadening of

one’s consciousness and for mental peace.

Such a Long Journey reveals Rohinton Mistry’s interest in psychology.

Sohrab’s adolescent mind came into conflict with his father’s as his father imposed

his own will on his son. Sohrab’s enrolment in I.I.T. was so much aspired by Gustad

that he was engrossed with the idea and as a result Sohrab felt humiliated. Moreover,

Sohrab had a genuine interest in arts and this interest was not reciprocated in the

surroundings he was in. The way he protested was quiet natural for boy of his age

group. Mistry sought to delve deep beneath the surface of his mind. Sohrab’s mind

protested against this mad rush and he wanted to satisfy his inner urge for learning

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more about arts and literature. His father was not in a mood to understand the mind of

his son and he insisted on his getting enrolled in I.I.T. which was supposed to bring

material prosperity to the family.The conflict between father and son was thus

inevitable and the conflict reveals Rohinton Mistry’s hold on adolescent psychology.

Besides adolescent psychology, the novel also reveals Rohinton Mistry’s

interest in the psychology of the old person, socially secluded and abused. Ms.

Kutpitia is projected as a strong personality and capable of running an independent

life of her own. She was alone because of the misfortune in her life that came in the

form of the death of his brother and his motherless son whom Ms.Kutpitia had

adopted. The sketch of Ms. Kutpitia reveals Mistry’s hold on psychology.

The character of Tehmul is another example of Rohinton Mistry’s sympathetic

understanding of an idiot’s mind and activities. A physically handicapped male

Tehmul was denied mental development. When the compound wall of the Khodadad

Building was being broken and the excited mass flung brinks, Tehmul was so

fascinated by the sight that he tried to catch a piece of brick and was seriously

injuried. That injury led to his death and Mistry made the incident plausible through

exposing Tehmul’s fascination for moving things which was an outward revelation of

a handicapped person’s desire for freedom.

Rohinton Mistry comes out as a satirist so far as the treatment of social reality

is concerned. Though he exposes the personal life of Gustad Noble in Such a Long

Journey in the background of the contemporary political scenario, his awareness of

the society to which he belonged is revealed in his writing. The setting of the novel

being Bombay, the problems faced by the middle class and the lower-middle class

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people in Bombay are highlighted. The novel starts with the water-crisis; Dilnavaz

had get up early morning only in order to keep in store the necessary water for her

family for the entire day. The familiar hissing, spitting, blustering sound in the water

pipes was like a summon. Details are given of Dilnavaz’s activity in the early

morning; she connected the transparent plastic hose to fill the water drums, the two

hours after the taps went dry. All this is described only to point at the scarcity of water

in Bombay.

The simple faith of the common Indian people who were ready to do their best

when their dear motherland was attacked by China is put side by side with the corrupt

practice of stealing the things contributed by the common people. The slant remark

that there was competition among the persons, who donated, makes the picture more

realistic. This reveals Rohinton Mistry’s keen observation of the surroundings and of

the attitudes of people. Corruption is rendered as an integral part of Indian life.

The writings of Mistry are governed by the experience of being diasporic

minority in India and also the different situation of being an emigrant in Canada.

Mistry’s novels are about the patterns of empowerment in a world that denies

individual voices. They expose parental authority, class hierarchies, personal betrayal,

political supremacy, and corruption. Savita Goel says that Rohinton Mistry in his

works tries to revisit the history of his homeland and defines his ethnic identity and

sense of self. A study of this kind will also place in proper perspective the salutary

and sterling role played by novelists in bringing about social balance and reforms. A

society can reconstruct and restructure itself on the basis of mankind. A constitutional

assurance not with standing, the reformatory spirit must come from within. In this

process, a writer has a limited but powerful role to play. Mistry as amply

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demonstrated their avowed beliefs and humanistic learnings in their texts as the

following study shows. Besides, humanism has evolved as a universal law that binds

all people together.

It’s is true, globalization and media have created awareness and have raised

human consciousness to new novels. He pictures broken human personalities under

the socio-economic cultural pressures and stimulates the human individual to develop

an intimate growth and adopt himself to the relative social milieu. Gustad Noble in

Such a Long Journey undergoes the trials and tribulations of an urban middle class

and middle aged man. Rohinton Mistry’s expectations of society are high. A free

India must necessarily harbinger peace and prosperity to all sections of the sections of

the society. As a member of a minority community whose number is fact dwindling,

he has reasons to fear for its survival.

The marginalization of the immigrant writers fail to deter them from writing

their versions of Canada. From their position on the margin they create narratives

which challenge the static borders of national and cultural identities by disrupting the

dominant discourse of the nation. There narratives seek to extend the boundaries of

the nation, neither by assimilation into the dominant narrative nor by its simple

subversion, but by hybridizing the discourse through a process of creative dialectic

tension.

Life for him seems to be an endless series of trials and tribulations. First, he

feels betrayed by his long time friend, Bilimoria who suddenly decides to leave the

Khodadad building without even bothering to inform him. Then, his eldest son,

Sohrab, after having qualified for the I.I.T., refuses to join it and all his efforts to

68
persuade him fail and it leads to quarrels and fights at home, and finally Sohrab leaves

the home in a huff.

Social unrest, the rise of parochialism, and the exploitation of minorities and

common people question the very concept of ‘imagined communities’, imposed by

the dominant ideologies and particular nation states on their individuals. Mistry

envisions the Bombay of 1960s and 70s, as a place of heterogeneity, where people

from multiple religions and cultural background stay. But unlike mainstream texts

Mistry here brings forth the discursive traces of heterogeneity, which is evident

enough in his focus on the indigenous Parsi culture, the pervading effect of hybridity

in Indian society and references of other marginalized groups in the society. This is

turn leads him to establish an alternative form of community, which is largely

dependent on the shared space between the members of different groups. The very

description of the inhabitants of Khodadad building throws light not only on the Parsi

culture and their day to day life, but also on the cultural and linguistic hybridisation

and hegemonic facts , which in present era is inextricably linked with the lives of

Indians.

This mainly comes to fore with the reference of the language used by them

which is an admixture of Gujrati and Parsi idioms. So the shared space is also

ethnically and linguistically determined. But Mistry in this novel also tends to explore

a possibility of a ‘shared space’ between the individuals which transcend their ethnic

and cultural identity.

Mistry’s first novel apparently appears to be a detailed portrayal of the usual

life of Gustad Noble’s family and others, mostly in relation with the members of his

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family. But a deeper analysis of unravels the deeper political intention of day to day

life, their interaction with others and hurdles faced by them in their daily encounters.

These minute details in turn open up different facts of this oppressive nature of Indian

politics, the power struggle, cultural politics, gaps and silences in the documented

narratives of Indian society. This is led further in his attempt to create an alternative

form of nationalism, centered on the very heterogeneous culture of the marginalized

groups and most viably of Parsis. But unlike some of the other postcolonial writers of

mostly of ‘postnational’ era Mistry has strictly resorted to the very realistic portrayal

of victimization and resistance to the dominant forces of the society.

In Such a Long Journey, Mistry presents the various kinds of human bond. He

shows relation of friendship in Gustad’s relation with Tehmul, Dinshawji, Bilimoria,

Malcolm, Dilnavaz and Kutpitia. He also reflects the pathetic situation like Gustad’s

laments on Tehmul’s death.

Mistry’s language is a fine specimen of Indo-Canadian English. He uses

highly polished and refined language, sometimes tinged with emotions, when he

describes the dignity of his charcters and when he champions the cause of the under-

fog. Mistry’s prose is alive with enduring images and a cast of unforgettable

characters. Written with compassion, humour, and insight, his fiction is a vivid, richly

textured, and powerful fiction written by one of the most gifted writers of our time.

His characters speak their own adulterated and unadulterated variety. When he

describes typical Indian scenes, situations and characters, he uses different kind of

language. In his fiction, Mistry avoids the simple employs the flash back method for

presenting fractured memories of his protagonist in disorderly sequence.

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 The brief and sketchy account of the Parsis’ role in Indian politics is sufficient

to make us inquisitive about the Parsis’ views on Indian Politics and politicians as

found in their novels. The Parsis generally looked at politics with disfavour and

misgivings. Rohinton Mistry in his novels and short stories proposed family as a unit.

He articulates how feelings of personal gain and individualism hamper the filial

relationship. Zoroastrians assume the whole world as a family, but the rise of

modernity and increasing selfishness has distorted the traditional concept of combined

family. However, when tradition is imperilled by the forces of modernity, family

bonds turn fragile. The contrasting pulls and pressures of modernity bring a sweeping

change not over the Parsi community also but also on the institution of family across

communities, where focus shifts from general well being of the family to the question

of privacy, individualism and self-fulfilment. Western education, sense of freedom

and privacy has proved havoc to the Parsi community in India. Mistry had the

opportunity to observe and analyze the compulsions, tensions and contradictions of

urban life. And he fictionalizes the life in Bombay as experienced by him during his

stay in India.

The texts of Mistry attempt to study how decolonized societies easily swerve

away from the idealistic underpinnings of the goals and dreams that accompany the

desire for freedom and reveal their incompatibilities with social and democratic ideals

which often precede freedom and which are commonly attached to the idea of nation

or nation-state both in its nativity predisposition and its western associations.

Commonly referred to as postcolonial, Mistry’s work examines a side of India

not often seen elsewhere in literature. Critics have praised Mistry’s ability to present

fresh perspective on his native land. While the Bombay in which Mistry’s characters

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live is a dark and troubled place filled with tragedy and difficult lives, his portrayal of

it has been assessed as a lively and interesting picture of a city whose vivid

environment is shown with remarkable clarity.

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 WORKS CITED

PRIMARY SOURCE:

Mistry Rohinton. Such a Long Journey. London; Faber and Faber. 1991. Print.

SECONDARY SOURCES:

Bharucha, Nilufer. Reflections in Broken Mirrors Diverse Diasporic in Recent Parsi

Fiction. London: Hawk Press, 1992.

Clark, P. (1998) Zoroastrianism; An Introduction to an Ancient Faith, Sussex

Academic Press, Brighton.

Dipsinh, Jay and Dodiya. The Fiction of Rohinton Mistry:Critical Studies New Delhi:

Prestige Books, 1998.

Genetsch, Martin. Difference and Identity in Contemporary Anglo-Canadian Fiction;

M.G. Vassanji, Neil Bissoondath, Rohinton Mistry. Ottawa; University of

Ottawa, 2003. Dissertation.

Haldar, Santwana. Ed.Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey: A Critical Study. New

Delhi: Asia Book Club, 2006.Print.

Kapadia, Novy, et al. Parsi Fiction. 2 Vols. New Delhi; Prestige, 2001.

Kulke, E.The Parsees in India: A Minority as Agent of Social Change. 2nd ed. New

Delhi: Vikas, 1978. Print.

Mistry, Rohinton, 1991. Such a Long Journey. Calcutta; Rupa.

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Mistry, Rohinton. Such a Long Journey. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. Print.

Mukherjee, Arun. “Narrating India”. Rev. of Such a Long Journey. The Toronto

South Asians Review Vol. 10. No,2, Win 1992. 82-91. Print.

Selvam, P. Humanism In The Novels of Rohinton Mistry. New Delhi: Creative Books,

2009. 

WEB SOURSES

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohinton Mistry.

http://www.india-seminar.com/1999/484/484 %20parekh.htm

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