Palsi Novels Essay

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The Parsis are a religious and ethnic minority, who came to India and settled on the western coasts with their diasporic experience and adaptable attitude. Till then, they maintain a constricted social life and practice their religious and philosophical beliefs within their miniscule community to maintain the purity of the Parsi or seed and to conform to their basic credo of neutrality. The Parsi Novels emerged as an outcome of the intellectual exposure of this highly educated, socially progressed diasporic community, where shifting and change is constant. Bapsi Sidhwa is one such Parsi woman writer, who has tried to give the Parsi novels a dimension by explaining and analyzing the Parsi world view from a new perspective. This paper will explore …show more content…

Parsi novel in English came into its own in the Eighties with the appearance of Bapsi Sidhwa on the literary scene. The emergence of promising writers like Rohinton Mistry, Firdaus Kanga, Boman Desai, Farrukh Dhondy and Ardashir Vakil has given a new direction to parsi novel in English. Steeped in the Parsi myths and legends, these writers use English as an instrument of self-assertion. The triumph of the Parsi novelists in the use of English gives us a peep into the turbulent Parsi mind of today. In asserting themselves, they re-define the identity of the Zoroastrian community. The Parsis are an ethno-religious minority in India mainly living on the west coast of the Indian Sub-Continent. Etymologically, the word ‘Parsi’ is derived from an ancient Parsian province “Fars”. They are the followers of the famous prophet Zoroaster or Zarathustra and they are also known as …show more content…

The element of joy, the slapstick uproar, has earned the Parsis the label Kagra-Khaow, that is, Crow Eaters. When Freddy and his family along with the other Parsis go to the station to bid Mr. Adenwalla farewell, a group of children seeing the Parsis shouted: “Parsi, Parsi, crow eaters! Parsi, Parsi, crow eaters!” Regarding this Bapsi Sidhwa herself explains that this little ditty is a well earned tribute to their notorious ability to talk ceaselessly at the top of their voices like an assembly of crows. But it is not a crow-eating

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