SOURCE: Heble, Ajay. “‘A Foreign Presence in the Stall’: Towards a Poetics of Cultural Hybridity in Rohinton Mistry's Migration Stories.” Canadian Literature, no. 137 (summer 1993): 51-61.

In the following essay, Heble discusses the role of personal identity, cultural dislocation, and the difficulties inherent in emigrating to a new country.

I. Foreign Presences

The title for this paper finds its origin in a short story called “Squatter” by South-Asian-Canadian writer Rohinton Mistry. This story, from Mistry's collection Tales from Firozsha Baag, is, for reasons which I hope will become apparent a little later, a story within a story, and it comes to a focus in the character of Sarosh, an Indian from a Parsi community in Bombay who decides to emigrate to Canada. Before Sarosh leaves his native India, a party is held in his honour and, at this party, his friends and family debate the relative merits and demerits...