Abstract:

This article explores Parsi life accounts through two pairs of works. The memoirs of Peshotan D. Patel, My Fifty Years in Burma (1954) and of Burjor M. Mistry, My Life (1984) are written by Parsi lawyers who spent part of their lives in Burma. Family histories by Jehangir Vakil, A Brief History of the Vakil Family of Ahmedabad (undated) and by Blair Southerden, a Gentle Lion and other ancestors (2013) chronicle the history of two families--one Parsi (the Vakils) and one English with Parsi heritage (the Southerdens through the Ardaseers). Read together, these four little-known self- and family narratives trace the struggles of Parsi men and their families from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century across Eurasia. The article reflects upon the shared themes of outrage and regret, trauma and survival, and stigma. These texts contribute not only to the fields of Parsi and South Asian history, but also to the literature on life writing, particularly by non-western, diasporic authors.