Rohinton Mistry: Ethnic Enclosures and Transcultural Spaces

Rohinton Mistry is a writer of the Indian Diaspora which has come into being for political and economic reasons. Diasporic existence forces a loneliness and a sense of exile on the individual often leading to a severe identity confusion. In his first collection of short stories, Tales from Ferozsha Baag, and his three novels, Such a Long Journey, A Fine Balance and Family Matters, his engagement with the Parsi community, to which he belongs, remains a constant one, even as he goes on to expand his concerns to the wider issues of politics and society in India, and foregrounds the lives of the poor and disadvantaged with sympathy and understanding. Mistry’s writing prowess has been validated by a series of prestigious awards and his often troubled journey from ethnic enclosures to wider transcultural spaces has caught the attention of readers around the world, making him one of the better known writers of the Indian Diaspora. Bharucha has explored the multiple aspects of Mistry’s work, his search for identity, his need for roots, the desire for location in history and histories and his use of spatio-temporal frameworks with an insider’s perception.