Word: parsis
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...these lamentable historical events unfold, Lenny's sheltered life begins to crumble despite her membership in the Parsi faith, which maintains her family neutral as the violence between Hindus and Muslims escalates. Shanta's suitors, originally friends, begin to divide along religious lines as news of genocidal bloodshed trickles in from the surrounding areas. As Lahore itself begins the tumultuous transition from a former Indian city to its current status as the capitol of Pakistan, a variety of the characters' dispositions also change. The transformation of "Ice Candy Man" is the most dramatic, as he goes from being the reasonable...
Mistry, a Bombay-born Zoroastrian, or Parsi, who moved to Toronto in 1975, has long distinguished himself as a rigorous humanitarian who can re-create from afar every last rending detail of his clamorous hometown. His books are living rooms that open up onto whole worlds. And with characteristic deliberation, he has steadily moved from a first collection of stories (Swimming Lessons) to a prizewinning mid-length novel (Such a Long Journey) to this new epic, which is worthy of the 19th century masters of tragic realism, from Hardy to Balzac. In response, perhaps, to a world that...
...testament to patience, A Fine Balance (Knopf; 603 pages; $26) is also a test of it: its first 250 pages merely introduce the four main characters and the sorrows of their pasts. Dina is a Parsi widow in her early 40s who runs a small apartment in Bombay; Maneck is a student from the mountains who takes a room with her; and Ishvar and Om are two village tailors, uncle and nephew, who long to pull themselves up from their Untouchable status. All four, with their habits of impatience and loss, hopefulness and resignation, find their lives intertwined when Indira...
...name in public. The reader understands Manek as the wonderstruck prototypical immigrant, eyes aglow in the land of plenty. This characterization becomes particularly difficult to digest when taking into account that Manek and Feroza, as well as Sidhwa, belong to the notoriously wealthy, sophisticated and Westernized Parsi community in Pakistan...
...Chevette. When she intimates the seriousness of her relationship to her parents, her mother is shuttled off to Denver to rescue her from marrying a `non'; if Feroza married her beau, not only would David not be able to convert, but Feroza could no longer remain a Parsi. Variations on Feroza's crisis abound on any college campus or in any American city and here Sidhwa's rewriting of The Immigrant Experience is welcomed...