Such a Long Jorney : A Domestic Tragi-Comedy

Such a Long Journey is Rohinton Mistry’s first novel. It was published in 1991. It is “a highly poised and accomplished work.’’ (SLJ Cover Page) This creation of Mistry won many awards e.g Governor General Award, Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for best book etc. It was also Shortlisted for the Booker Prize. This Novel has been translated into German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Japanese. It has also been made into a movie named Such a Long Journey Which was released in 1998. As commented in Spectator, It is “a rich, humane work, undoubtedly one of the best novels about india in recent Years”(SLJ Cover Page). Rohinton Mistry is considerd to be one of the famous authors who have gone out of India and are writing in English. He uses’ ordinary’ men and women as his protagonists in his novels. He fills his novels with the sights, sounds, smells and colour of India. His characters are neither saints nor sinners; he involves the readers in their lives as they try to survive the comlexities of their culture.

Exploring the Various Cultural Practices in Indian Writings

Culture is a community or set or group of people that has similar experience in which the inidividuals belonging to it perceive the universe. It constitutes aggregates of people based on various factors such as race, religion, nationality, gender, class, etc.. Indian tradition is one of the oldest and unique in the world. It combines the diverse linguistic and cultural tradition which exists within the country. Indian writers like Vikram Seth, Jhumpa Lahiri, Salman Rushdie, Vikas Swarup, David Davidar, Rohinton Mistry express opinions to their nations through history, tradition, culture and other controversial yet important problems in their fictions. This paper focuses on the issue of multiculturalism and cultural assimilation in literature. Lahiri has shown the need to go beyond the man made boundaries like culture, religion, race and nation acknowledge the universal aspects of human through her writings. The novel, Lowland reflects the globalised, multicultural and transnational culture.

Cultural Conflicts in Chitra Banerjee's Arraned Marriage

Literally ‘Diaspora’ means ‘to scatter’ or dispersion, It refers to the loss of homeland, a shift of population from one locale to another. The expatriate writer undergoes the pain of homelessness, alienation and a sense of belongingness. The old memories keep on hovering in the mind of expatriate writers. The new land and unfriendly neighbourhood lead to the feeling of frustration and depression. There are so many Indian English writers can be recognized under the umbrella of diaspora: Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, V.S.Naipaul, Rohinton Mistry, HanifKureishi, Bharati Mukherjee, JhumpaLahiri, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni etc. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an Indian born American settled author. Her works are mostly set in India and the United States. She has also focussed on the experiences of South Asian immigrants. Her debut short story collection Arranged Marriage won an American Book Award in 1995. The paper highlights how the Indian born women encounter the difficulties and knots in their new lives in America through the short story collection Arranged Marriage.

Dalit Culture and Ethos in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance

Rohinton Mistry (1952- ) is a South Asian Canadian writer. He was born in Mumbai on July 03, 1952. A Fine Balance (1996), Mistry’s second novel, is set in India of mid seventies and focuses especially on the period during Emergency and afterwards i.e. post- Emergency. The setting of the novel is from 1945 to 1984. In this novel Mistry delineates the predicaments of the Chamaars (leather-workers) who are considered untouchables. Mistry is seen to draw abundantly from Indian history, but more purposely to rewrite the history of the marginalized and the oppressed. A Fine Balance is one of the very few Indian English novels which present reader the very essence of Dalit culture. Many other novels confine to portraying Dalit characters by neglecting to include their very life style, culture due to which the characters are too apart from their roots. Dalitness which is the soul of the character itself is not seen in the characterization. That is the reason many works cannot be a part of Dalit Literature in which projecting the Dalit culture is an essential part of it. But A Fine Balance is an exception to it. The novel A Fine Balance is effective in presenting Dalit culture realistically to some extent

A Study of Parsi Diaspora in Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters

Rohinton Mistry is one of the award winning Indian Writers. He is now living in Toronto. His famous novels are: “Such a long Journey”, “A Fine Balance” and “Family Matters”. Being a Parsi writer, he probes deep the problems of Parsi community in his novels.

Treatment of Indian Diaspora in Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance

The Parsi writers of the Indian diaspora have enriched the Indian literature as well as world literature through their literary contributions. They aimed to present Parsis' psyche through the presentation of historical legends, the cadences of mythology, the problems arising out of migration, family conflicts, the east-west encounter, and the cultural diversity. A sense of displacement, search for balance, cultural assimilation and the complexities of new civilization which lead them to nostalgia, are the other major points of discussion to Parsi writers.Parsi fiction in English also gives voice to the works of members of the Indian diasporic writers, such as Rohinton Mistry and others. These writers have discussed and explored the various experiences of displacement on the base of socio-cultural pattern of their community. They look at them on the margins of the two cultures. The concept of cultural identity played a critical role in all the post-colonial struggles which have so profoundly reshaped world. It reflects the common historical experiences and every country has a distinct culture. Cultural diversity adds colour and variety to the human world but at the same time it divides people into numerous groups and thus proves a great barrier to human relationships.

Socio –Political Concept In Rohinton Ministry’s A Fine Balance

‘Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft arm-chair, your will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me and after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild exagger-tragendy is not a fiction all is true’. Honor’s de Balzac, le p’ere Goriot Rohinton Mistry is an important figure in contemporary common wealth s literature and he occupies a significant position among the writers of Indian diaspora. Mistry like Rushdie and many other Indian English writer is an “émigré” who left India in 1970’s to live in Canada. He is the best-known indo-Canadian novelist, his novels namely such a long journey, a fine balance and family matter have been best sellers and received international a wards. Mistry belongs to the burgeoning crop of Indian novelist writing in English to place him rightly among the great Indian English writers in the words of the santwana haldar.“A glowing star in the galaxy that contains luminaries such as vs. 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 writer of human experience.” (Santwana, 2006:7)

Strategies in Power Relations in a Fictional Work: A Foucauldian Analysis

In a family, power relations can be seen in a father-child relationship, where the father has the authority to control the life of the child and the child must approve the father's decision. Not only the father, however, the son might also have different objective that he wants to achieve. Here both parties will usually try to keep pursuing their own objectives. In other words, both parties will look for strategies of how to win their objective in the power relation by acting certain ways. Hence, strategy can be used as the means to obtain victory (Foucault, 2002). The purpose of this paper is to analyze power relations that occurred in a family in a fictional work, namely Family Matters novel by Rohinton Mistry, particularly between Nariman Vakeel and his father, Marzi Vakeel. Nariman’s objective is to acquire his father’s approval for his desire to marry his girlfriend, Lucy Braganza, who is a Catholic. This is the opposite of Marzi’s belief, that his family should marry a Parsi. Power relations and strategies used between Nariman and his father were examined using the theory of power relations from Michel Foucault. The findings show that each character implements different strategies in imposing power and confronting each other. As for Nariman, his strategies include persuading his father, and when this does not work, he started to show a clear insubordination every time. On the other hand, Marzi’s strategies include writing a letter to newspaper to let other people know his opposition to interfaith marriage, objecting Lucy’s presents in his house by rejecting Nariman’s suggestion to invite Lucy over for dinner, and being patience in confronting Nariman’s insubordination for eleven years. During these years, Marzi never utilized violence. In the end, Marzi succeeded in achieving his objective to make Nariman marry a Parsi woman when Nariman was finally tired of confronting his father, and let his father choose a Parsi woman. Nariman ended up having an arranged marriage.Keywords: Family, Foucault, power relation, strategies