Nariman’s Long Journey in Search of Selfless and Caring Soul in Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters

Abstract

A Parsi is a member of a Zoroastrian community, one of two mainly situated in India, with a few in Pakistan. Parsis migrated from greater Iran to Gujarat, where they were given refuge, between the 8th and 10th century to avoid persecution following the Muslim conquest of Persia. Rohinton Mistry is an Indian-born Canadian writer. Born in Bombay in 1952, of Parsi origin, Mistry immigrated to Canada in 1975. Like other Parsi writers, Mistry's work is guided by this experience of double displacement. As a Parsi, Mistry finds himself at the margins of Indian society, and hence his writing challenges and resists absorption by the dominating and Hindu-glorifying culture of India.Family Matters is at once a domestic drama and an intently observed portrait of present-day Bombay in all its vitality and corruption. At the age of seventy-nine, NarimanVakeel, already suffering from Parkinson’s disease, breaks an ankle and finds himself wholly dependent on his family. This research paper aims to explore Nariman’s Long Journey in search of selfless and caring soul in Mistry’s Family Matters.