Parsis undertook a hazardous journey and settled in India following the Arab Invasion of Iran, their native land, in the 7^th century AD. Due to their integrity and honesty, they could, very quickly, flourish in the pluralistic Indian society. In the British Raj, they were indeed the most favored social group. However, in post-colonial India, they have developed a feeling of insecurity and rootlessness and have failed to orientate with the Indian mainstream. The Parsis, who left India and settled in the west, have also fostered feelings of otherness and alienness. This perplexity of the Parsis is vividly portrayed in the contemporary Parsi fictional narratives. This paper attempts to study the select fictional narratives of three popular Parsi novelistsRohinton Mistry, Boman Desai and Farrukh Dhondy, from the perspective of diasporic consciousness.

The Greek term `diaspora' means to `disperse' or `scatter', which is now used to refer to the "process by which people of a particular nation become scattered and settled in other countries". Originally, it was used to designate the scattering of the Jews from ancient Palestine after the Babylonian exile to settle in other countries. The Jewish diasporic writers refer to Deuteronomy 28:25, in The Bible, which speaks about the curse that fell on the Jews. The verse goes as follows: "The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies, thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shall be removed into all the Kingdoms of the earth". However, in the present times and in the vast domain of literature, the meaning of the word `diaspora' has been extended to the dilemmas and difficulties of emigrants, expatriates and refugees who have gone to live in an alien country.

The unprecedented growth of multimedia, communication facilities and cyber technology, as well as the increasing search for green pastures, have considerably intensified the process of emigration. In spite of the migrants' acculturation and the enthusiastic embrace of the new culture, in many cases, their identity is at stake, and consequently, they cling fast to their ethnic identity and become `resident aliens' (Rath, 1999, p. 13). The most common question that exacerbates a migrant's `otherness' in an alien culture is "where are you from? not who/what are you?" (Rath, 1999, p. 8). Christine Gomez gives a perceptive description of a migrant's experience in an expatriate situation in the words:

Expatriation is actually a complex state of mind and emotion which includes a wistful longing for the past, often symbolized by the ancestral home, the pain of exile and homelessness, the struggle to maintain the difference between oneself and the new unfriendly surrounding, as assumption of moral or cultural superiority over the host country and the refusal to accept the identity forced on one by the environment. The expatriate builds a cocoon around herself/himself as a refugee from cultural dilemmas and from the experienced hostility or unfriendliness in the new country .

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