Parsi  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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A Parsi or Parsee is a member of one of the two Zoroastrian communities found throughout South Asia. They are legally and ethnically distinct from the Iranis even though both groups descend from Persian Zoroastrians.

Representations in popular culture

• The 2005 book The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar deals with the lives of a Parsi woman and her non-Parsi servant. Depictions of parties, funerals and conversations about values provide a window on contemporary Parsi life in Mumbai.
• The leader of Captain Ahab's secret whaleboat, Fedallah, in the novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville is referred to as "the Parsee". There is an emphasis on certain Zoroastrian traditions, especially a respect for fire.
• The only human in Rudyard Kipling's "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin" (Just So Stories) is a Parsee who lives on an island in the Gulf of Aden, and from whose hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more than oriental splendour.
• The 2006 film Being Cyrus is a story about a dysfunctional Parsi family of Panchgani that became the highest grossing English language Indian movie. Although highly acclaimed in the press and at foreign film festivals, the film was sharply criticized by many members of the Parsi community.
• The film Pestonjee about a Parsi couple was made in 1988 by Marathi stage director Vijaya Mehta and included the well-known Bollywood actors Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher.
• Bapsi Sidhwa's 1991 novel Cracking India (originally published in 1988 as Ice Candy Man) describes the communal violence which engulfed the city of Lahore in the aftermath of the Partition of India through the eyes of a Parsi girl Lenny. Like other Parsi stereotypes, Lenny and her parents are portrayed as devout Anglophiles.
• The main character of the 1998 Deepa Mehta film Earth (in India released as 1947) is a girl who belongs to a Parsi family during the partition of India (which occurred due to religious differences). The film was based on the semi-historical novel Cracking India (originally Ice Candy Man) by Bapsi Sidhwa.
• Salman Rushdie's novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet deals with the rise of a world famous Indian rock star named Ormus Cama, who is of Parsi background. Also, two minor but significant characters in Rushdie's book Midnight's Children, Cyrus Dubash and Homi Catrack, are Parsis.
• Man Booker Prize-nominated Parsi author Rohinton Mistry's books deal mainly with Parsi characters and society in relation to the greater Indian society around them, particularly in works like Tales from Firozsha Baag (1987), Such a Long Journey (1991), A Fine Balance (1995), and Family Matters (2002).
• In Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days, Phileas Fogg and Passepartout rescue an Indian woman named Aouda from committing sati on the funeral pyre of her dead husband (a Maharaja). She is later revealed to be a Parsi whose merchant father married her to the Maharaja.
• In John Irving's 1994 novel A Son of the Circus, the principal character is Doctor Farrokh Darruwalla, a Parsi married to an Austrian.
• The 2007 film Parzania is based on the true story of a Parsi family caught in the crossfire of the 2002 Ahmedabad riots. The film is named after the utopian world of one of the characters of the story, a world in which everything revolves around cricket and ice cream.
• In the 2003 Hindi film Munnabhai MBBS Kurush Deboo as Dr Rustom Pavri helps Sanjay Dutt pass his medical exams. The film depicts Rustom and his old father in a Parsi setting.
• The 2009 Hindi & Gujarati film, Little Zizou by Sooni Taraporevala is set in a Parsi family. It also won the National Film Award for Best Film on Family Welfare
• The 1978 film Khatta Meetha by Basu Chatterji, starring Ashok Kumar and Pearl Padamsee, has a Parsi setting.
• The Roy Apps written 'Conan Doyle and The Edalji Case', a BBC Radio full cast dramatisation, was based on the story of George Edalji, a Parsee solicitor falsely accused of 'cattle-ripping', as was the 2005 Julian Barnes's novel Arthur & George.
• In the Hindi movie Ferrari Ki Sawaari, the main character and his father and son are Parsis.
• The Bollywood movie Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi (2012), featuring Boman Irani and Farah Khan, has a plot that takes place in a Parsi community.