Bapsi Sidhwa is a gifted writer. Each of her words is weighed carefully to inject the right tone into the story. Every character is lovingly portrayed to serve the individual story. The author of four internationally acclaimed novels tells us the story of her life and it sounds as if she is one of many Pakistani women in voluntary exile, struggling with the issue of identity. The difference is: she is successfully channeling her struggle into prose that touches millions of displaced people all over the world.
The Kinnaird College graduate quietly began writing after her two children were born. “I knew that people around me were not going to be encouraging. Publishing in English was unheard of and I was prepared for unpleasant remarks. When I finally managed to publish, I got a rather mixed response.”
That her work had more to it than a bored housewife writing stories to pass the hours was quickly recognized by well-known Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. “He was on a flight with my brother and he showed him a manuscript saying, ‘This is by a Parsi writer. I wonder if you know her.’ My brother recognized it and they came to me together.”
Faiz compared her to such writers as V.S. Naipaul and urged her to keep writing. Javed Iqbal suggested she publish with Ilmi Press but they printed only Urdu books. When “The Crow Eaters” began to circulate, she was more than a little disappointed by the abrupt letdown she was subjected to by critics. It was not until the book was being reviewed positively in England that the press in Pakistan began to re-evaluate their position.
“It is typical of us to take our cues from the British! I wish there was a way out of it,” she says. It is interesting to note that Pakistan awarded her the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, the country’s highest national honor in the arts, in the same year that her third novel was named a New York Times Notable Book. She also received a German literary prize the same year.
Bapsi Sidhwa grew up in a conservative family in Lahore and always had a sense of feeling “marginalized” as part of a Parsi female minority in the midst of the male Muslim majority in Pakistan.
Of developing her creative sensibility in such an environment, she says, “Being marginalized as a minority is like being made to sit on a fence and observe society from different eyes. A woman — all women in Pakistan go through it and a woman’s frustrations build into a certain internal creative tension.”
Parsis have traditionally been on the outside looking in until they developed the ability to merge with their surroundings. The story is that when the first boatload of Parsis arrived from Iran, the local ruler sent them a glass of milk to indicate that there was no place for them in India. The Parsis solemnly stirred a spoonful of sugar into the glass, wordlessly demonstrating that they would not only mix unobtrusively with the population but that they would also sweeten the mix along the way.
Having taught at such institutions as Columbia, the University of Texas, Rice University and Mount Holyoke has made Bapsi Sidhwa Pakistan’s best cultural export! Everyday she takes into her classroom the essence of being a Pakistani. Every American student who listens to an intelligent articulate woman such as she is one less Caucasian who will look down on the next brown person they encounter. If there is one invaluable service for Pakistanis being performed abroad, it is the way Bapsi Sidhwa has banished so many incorrect ideas which the international community held about Pakistan.
The controversy swirling around Salman Rushdie gave other Indian and Pakistani authors a platform to launch themselves from and most people, rightly or wrongly, hold him responsible for the popularity of that literature in English. Bapsi Sidhwa, however, predates him by a few years. If she had been marketed half as furiously as Rushdie has been, the world would know that Pakistan had produced the first internationally acclaimed literary work in English. But that would have gone against the grain of her soft nature; and even now, it is difficult for me to imagine the courage and aggression which propelled her to where she now is. They were not easy steps for her to take. Her curiosity and passionate energy appear to be veiled by a certain reserve until she begins talking about women’s place in the world, where they could be, if only…
“If there are women at the top today, you will find men who put them there. This is a sad reality.”
Being a member of Benazir Bhutto’s dispensation gave Bapsi Sidhwa a chance to fight things she had found oppressive from the day she understood what the word meant. “It was impossible. I knew people who were appointed to overthrow the laws that served to trample women’s rights in the name of religion. These were good hardworking people, but the system failed them every time. There were promises that weren’t honored, laws that should have been repealed but which were not. It was like beating one’s head against the proverbial stone wall. In terms of the way our society is set up, women have to prove themselves at every turn. We are not trained to be aggressive or to fight for a position. We are supposed to sit back, be quiet, listen and obey. No education means that women have no options. None other than marrying and being supported by a husband, however he may treat them.”
Herself from a conservative family, Bapsi Sidhwa knows how society can treat a woman in her most fragile years — those between adolescence and womanhood. She was married at 19 because, she quips, “a single girl in Lahore makes people nervous. There is so much stagnation in society where women are concerned. A graduate degree is considered enough. No upward movement is encouraged: marriage, no other successes, is the key to getting into social circles.”
About borders, the author, who has held the Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe/Harvard, says, “I think in my writings I maintain one thing: that borders are very fluid. They cannot hold people down and benefit very few people. The Earth resents being broken. She bleeds everytime. Seldom has a border dispute been settled without outbreaks of violence.”
“Ice-Candy Man” is a delightful story about people reacting to historical events as the “powers that be” conspire to redefine their lives forever. Known in the US as “Cracking India” the book deals with the confusion that partition caused to people. Lenny, the polio-ridden child, whose birthday is marked by events that hurtle a nation toward partition, says it best, “One day everyone is themselves and the next day they are Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Parsi. People shrink, dwindling into symbols.” “Cracking India” has been made into a film, “Earth” starring Aamir Khan.