[.ca] Tales from Firozsha Baag (ISBN 0571230563)

Amazon.ca:
Tales from Firozsha Baag is Rohinton Mistry's best, but least-known, book. Other strengths aside, Mistry is plodding as a novelist. Here, in this collection of interrelated short stories, Mistry is at his most natural, showing us the actions and thoughts of characters while never condescending to tell us their theme or import. Each of the 11 linked stories is set in a different apartment in the shared Firozsha Baag (Fur-oh-shaw Bog) complex, where more than cooking odours and telltale noises travel from apartment to apartment. Joggers visible out a window in "The Collectors" later become inspiration, liberation and, arguably, temptation for young Jehangir in the aching "Exercisers." In Mistry's dexterous hands, the apartment complex is not just a clever device for uniting stories that made their debuts independently in Canada's best literary magazines. Firozsha Baag is a gossamer antenna tuned to the barely detectable human stories haunting our peculiar spaces: "No ayah \onanny/maid\c," Mistry knows, "gets key to a flat. It is something I have learned, like I learned forty-nine years ago that life as ayah means living close to floor. All work I do, I do on floors.... Food also is eaten sitting on floor, after serving them at dining-table." A uniquely accomplished first book. --Darryl Whetter

Tales from Firozsha Baag is Swimming Lessons:
This is a fine collection of early short stories, but note that it was reprinted in the U.S. as Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag; so if you have one book, you don't need the other.

Funny and Interesting:
Of all the books by Rohinton Mistry, I liked this one the best because, it isn't as depressing as the others. Its a tale about the people of a Parsi Colony in Bombay, called Firozsha Baag; their experiences, triumphs and misfortunes. Characters such as Rustomji-the-cur, Nariman Hansotia and Jaykaylee the Aya (maid) are amusing and bring about a pleasant sense of deja-vu. Being a Parsi myself, I couldn't stop laughing when Mistry depicted our "normal", rather idiotic behaviour. Strangely, a lot of old Parsi women (like Najamai in the book)complain about their cataracts!! Mistry is a good author who dwells too deeply in the depressing aspects of life at times. But, then again, this is my personal opinion. If you would like to read about the reality of Parsis in Bombay...pick up Tales from Firozsha Baag.