Tales From Firozsha Baag: An Intricate Analysis in the Relativity of Ethnicity and Culture

Rohinton Mistry was born in 1952 in Mumbai and migrated to Canada in 1975. He worked in a bank to support himself while studying English and Philosophy at the University of Toronto, where he received a second bachelor's degree in 1984. Although an immigrant, an outsider in Canadian Society, Mistry always understood this condition, for in India he belonged to the Parsi community. After a few years in Canada, he started writing stories and gained immediate attention, receiving two Hart House literary prizes and Canadian Fiction Magazine's annual contributor's Prize in 1985. Two years later, Penguin Books Canada published a collection of eleven stories titled Tales from Firozsha Baag, which appeared in 1989 in the United States as Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag. Most of the stories had little to do with his experience as an immigrant in Canada, but focused instead on the uneventful lives of a group of Parsis who live in a ramshackle Bombay apartment block. The stories reflect the characteristics of the Parsi community, struggling to balance old world Parsi values with changing times and circumstances. Mistry explores the relationships at the heart of this community, their cultural identity and the uniqueness of their community living while also shedding light on the syncretic nature of the diasporic Parsi experience whether in North America or in India.