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Ice-Candy Man
Bapsi Sidhwa
Bapsi Sidhwa: A Biographical Sketch

Introduction
Sidhwa is widely recognized as one of the most prominent Pakistani-Anglophone novelists
writing today. She was raised in the Parsi community, a religious and ethnic minority in Pakistan.
Critics regard Sidhwa as a feminist postcolonial Asian author whose novels—including The
Crow Eaters (1978), The Bride(1981), and Ice-Candy-Man (1988; republished as Cracking
India 1991)—provide a unique perspective on Indian and Pakistani history, politics, and culture.
Her characters, often women, are caught up in the historical events surrounding the geographical
and social division—or “Partition”—of India and Pakistan in 1947, and the subsequent
development of Pakistan as an independent nation. Her recurring themes include human
relationships and betrayals, the coming of age and its attendant disillusionments, immigration,
and cultural hybridity, as well as social and political upheavals.
Sidhwa skilfully links gender to community, nationality, religion, and class, demonstrating
the ways in which these various aspects of cultural identity and social structure do not merely
affect or reflect one another, but instead are inextricably intertwined. Since moving to the United
States and becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen, Sidhwa has written An American Brat (1993),
which describes the Americanization of a young Parsi woman.
Biographical Information
Sidhwa was born on August 11, 1938, in Karachi, Pakistan, then part of India. Her family
belongs to the Parsi ethnic community which practices the Zoroastrian religion. Sidhwa received
a bachelor's degree from Kinnaird College for Women in 1956.
After her first husband died, she married Noshir R. businessman, in 1963, with whom she
has three children. In 1975 Sidhwa served as Pakistan's delegate to the Asian Women's Congress.
She immigrated to the United States in 1983, and became a naturalized American citizen in 1993.
Since moving to the United States, Sidhwa has taught, lectured, and presented workshops in
creative writing at several colleges and universities, including Columbia University, St.
Thomas University, the University of Houston, and Mount
Holyoke College in Amherst, Massachusetts. She held a Bunting fellowship at Radcliffe/Harvard
in 1986 and was a visiting scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation Centerin Bellagio, Italy, in 1991.
Sidhwa also served on the advisory committee on women's development for former Pakistani
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. In 1991 she was awarded the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan's highest
national honor in the arts. She has also received a variety of grants and awards for her fiction,
including a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1987, a New York Times Book
Review Notable Book of the Year award for Cracking India in 1991, and a Lila Wallace-Reader's
Digest award in 1993.
Facebook Page MA English University of Sargodha Pakistan

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Major Works
Sidhwa's first three novels focus on Parsi families and the Parsi community in the city
of Lahore and outlying areas that were incorporated into the newly formed nation of Pakistan.
The Crow Eaters—written after The Bride, but published first—draws its title from a proverb
which refers to those who talk too much as people who have eaten crows. The story takes place
over the first half of the twentieth century, and concerns the fortunes of a Parsi man, Faredoon
“Freddy” Junglewalla.
After moving from a small village in central India to the city of Lahore, Freddy gains financial
success through a variety of questionable money-making schemes, such as arson and insurance
fraud. Meanwhile, his strong-willed mother-in-law, Jerbanoo, makes his life increasingly difficult.
The Crow Eaters, while addressing serious cultural and historical issues, is written in a
humorous, farcical style that lampoons elements of Parsi culture. The Bride details the events of
the Partition through the story of Qasim, a Kohistani tribesman, and Zaitoon, a young girl he
adopts after witnessing the massacre in which her family was killed. The plot chronicles the events
leading up to and following the ill-arranged marriage between Zaitoon and a man from Qasim's
tribe in the mountains. When her new husband becomes abusive, Zaitoon decides to run away.
The Bride interweaves Zaitoon's narrative with the story of Carol, an American woman
unhappily married to a Pakistani engineer. Sidhwa's third novel, Ice-Candy-Man, recounts events
surrounding the Partition through the eyes of Lenny, a precocious Parsi girl who has been disabled
by polio.
Throughout the novel, Lenny relates the effects of the Partition on her family and community.
During the course of these events, Lenny's beautiful young Hindu nanny, Ayah, is kidnapped and
raped by a group of men who had previously courted her.
The Ice-candy-man, a local popsicle vendor, is among this group of suitors-turned-
kidnappers. The novel is both the story of Lenny's coming of age and a complex history of the
growing divisions among Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh communities of India at the time, as well as a
scathing social commentary about the British colonization of India.
An American Brat, written after Sidhwa immigrated to America, follows a sixteen-year-old
Parsi girl named Feroza Ginwalla. Alarmed by the rising fundamentalism of Pakistan in the 1970s,
Feroza's mother, Zareen, decides to send Feroza to the United States to stay with her uncle. After
an initial culture shock, however, Feroza decides to remain in America as a college student, where
she falls in love with a young Jewish man. Feroza also becomes increasingly politicized about such
issues as gender, imperialism, and global relations. Zareen, alarmed by Feroza's newly
Americanized attitudes, travels to the United States to retrieve her daughter, who Zareen believes
has become an “American brat.”
Critical Reception
Sidhwa's work has garnered positive critical attention for providing a unique Parsi
perspective on the culture and politics of the Partition of India. The Crow Eaters has received
acclaim as an entertaining social farce, with critics lauding Sidhwa's charming characters and
unabashed use of “barnyard” humor.
Reviewers have additionally praised her portrayal of an ethically questionable protagonist
in The Crow Eaters without subjecting him to moralizing judgments. Ice-Candy-Man has
received a decidedly mixed critical reception.

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While some commentators have favoured Sidhwa's narrative device of relating major political
events through the eyes of a child, other critics have found the device to be an ineffective and
clumsy means of describing the events of the Partition.
Several scholars have also criticized Ice-Candy-Man for oversimplifying the history and
politics of the Partition, and faulted Sidhwa's portrayal of Mahatma Gandhi, asserting that her
view of the religious and political leader is unrealistic and unbalanced. Tariq Rahman has
disputed this assertion, arguing that Ice-Candy-Man,“shows the human personality under stress
as a result of that cataclysmic event and depicts a society responding to it in the way societies do
react: through sheer indifference, gossip, trivial and malicious activities, making love, and also
killing, raping, and going insane.”
Sidhwa has also been highly regarded as a feminist postcolonial author who effectively
addresses issues of cultural difference and the place of women in Indian and Pakistani society.
Critics have noted both The Bride and An American Brat for their examinations of cultural
conflict and their strong characterizations. Kamala Edwards has observed, “Sidhwa is a feminist
and realist. One sees in her women characters the strength of passion, the tenderness of love, and
the courage of one's convictions.
They struggle to overcome the hurts of time and escape the grip of a fate in whose hands they
are often mere puppets.” An American Brat has been extolled by many reviewers as a compelling
delineation of both the coming of age process and the immigrant experience in the United States.
However, several critics have noted Sidhwa's use of stock social and cultural stereotypes in all of
her novels, particularly in An American Brat.
The plotting of An American Brat has additionally been judged by several reviewers to be
weak and predictable, but a majority of critics have found Sidhwa's representation of American
culture to be insightful and unique.
Principal Works
The Crow Eaters (novel) 1978
The Bride (novel) 1981
Ice-Candy-Man (novel) 1988;
An American Brat (novel) 1993
*The Bapsi Sidhwa Omnibus (novels) 2001 Includes The Crow Eaters, The Bride, Ice-Candy-Man,
and An American Brat.
A Study of Bapsi Sidhwa’s Works

The Bride
The Bride was written earlier but has only now been published. It narrates the story of
Zaitoon, who lost her parents in the Indo-Pakistan riots in the summer of 1947 and was adopted
by Lahore-bound Qasim, a Himalayan tribesman also fleeing the mountains after committing a
crime and losing his wife and children to the fatalities inflicted by smallpox.
Zaitoon is so named by Qasim, after his own late daughter, and raised from the age of five in
the city of Lahore as his adopted daughter. Against better counsel, he decides to marry her off at

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fifteen to a tribesman in the northern mountains, whence he himself originated. The city-bred
young girl now must learn the ways of the tribesman's world outside the civilized, urban though
decadent life of the plains, where she spent most of her years. The result is as expected. Sakhi is
not husband she wants; nor is she the wife he can endure. So she must escape the rugged hills,
which she does, and find her way back, which we cannot know about. Honor, commitment,
marriage and loyalty are at stake, and there is really no way either to quash or to salvage them in
the painful predicament in which Zaitoon's circumstances have placed her.
Escape from the oppressive, no-go “civilization” is what Carol also decides upon. She appears
midway through the book, apparently to highlight Zaitoon's dilemma and to judge it with the
outsider's objective eye.
Carol is American and married to a Pakistani engineer living in the northern mountains,
extremely dissatisfied with her own life as much as with local mores, which she finds “too ancient”
and “too different.” She decides to go “home,” thus mirroring Zaitoon's flight from the “different”
North. The two story lines combine to produce a splendid tale examining sociocultural differences
at a level far above that which is familiar in Pakistani Anglophone writing.
An American Brat
Coming of age is never easy. Coming of age as a woman is even harder. But coming of age as
a female immigrant in a foreign country may be the most difficult of all. For many women born
into societies with restrictive social and political codes, however, immigration may be the only
real way to come of age. In An American Brat,Pakistani-born novelist Bapsi Sidhwa reveals with
a humorous yet incisive eye the exhilarating freedom and profound sense of loss that make up the
immigrant experience in America.
Sidhwa begins her novel in Lahore, Pakistan. Feroza Gunwalla, a 16-year-old Parsee, is
mortified by the sight of her mother appearing at her school with her arms uncovered. For Zareen
Gunwalla, Feroza's outspoken 40-something mother, it is a chilling moment. The Parsees, a small
sect in Pakistan, take great pride in their liberal values, business acumen, and—most
importantly—the education of their children.
It's 1978 in Pakistan and 16-year-old Feroza Ginwalla, the heroine of the novel,An American
Brat, is beginning to worry her relatively liberal, upper-middle-class Parsee parents.
She won't answer the phone; she tells her mother to dress more conservatively; she sulks, she
slams doors, she prefers the company of her old-fashioned grandmother; she seems to sympathize
with fundamentalist religious thinking.
What to do? “I think Feroza must get away,” says Zareen, the girl's mother, to her husband,
Cyrus. Feroza is packed off to visit her Uncle Manek, a student at MIT. But as Zareen waves
goodbye to her daughter, she cannot know that in America Feroza will become more independent
than Zareen ever dreamt, or hoped, was possible. “Travel will broaden her outlook, get this
puritanical rubbish out of her head.”
And indeed it does—although to a disastrous degree, from Zareen and Cyrus' point of view,
for Feroza's three-month sabbatical with her uncle in Massachusetts turns into a three-year
sojourn in many parts of the United States.
By the time Zareen decides, toward the end of the book, to reassert parental control by flying
from Lahore to Denver—where Feroza has become a hotel-management student—it's too late. Her
daughter is already an “American brat,” a woman with a mind and opinions of her own, able to
relish the ability to choose.

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An American Brat is an exceptional novel, one of such interest that the reader's reservations,
while significant, are ultimately of little consequence.
Bapsi Sidhwa, author of three previous works of fiction and frequently referred to as
Pakistan's most prominent English-language novelist, has produced a remarkable sketch of
American society as seen and experienced by modern immigrants.
America, to Feroza and her Uncle Manek, is in many ways a paradise—as indeed it appears
to be for Sidhwa, a Parsee who has lived in the United States for many years—but An American
Brat is nonetheless a measured portrait, often reassuring and discomfiting at the same time.
It's both wonderful and startling, for example, to hear the fully Americanized Manek say to
the newly arrived Feroza, as she grapples with some well-wrapped container, “Remember this: If
you have to struggle to open something in America, you're doing it wrong. They've made
everything easy. That's how a free economy works.”
In style, An American Brat is nothing like Henry James' The Ambassadors, being
straightforward, humorous, easygoing and unpoetic. In plot, though, it bears some similarities,
with travelers finding themselves unexpectedly transformed by their encounters in a new land.
Feroza soon realizes that Manek's years in the United States have changed him: He is now
“humbler and, paradoxically, more assured and quietly conceited, more considerate, yet …
tougher, even ruthless.”
One of the first things Zareen notices about Feroza at the Denver airport is her gaudy tan:
“You'd better bleach your face or something,” she tells her daughter, “before you come home.”
But even Zareen proves vulnerable to America’s charms:
Although she has come to break up Feroza's engagement to a “non”—a non-Parsee—she
glories in the shopping and amenities of Denver life, “as happy as a captive seal suddenly released
into the ocean.”
Zareen, her American mission at least partially accomplished, returns to Pakistan but
wonders momentarily whether she has done the right thing. And that's the issue lying at the heart
of this novel—the competing loyalties immigrants feel toward family, culture, heritage, self.
The problem only flashes through Zareen's mind because she is too old to be fully taken with
American ways; Manek can almost ignore the contradiction because, being male, he will be
celebrated for living in the United States so long as he takes a Parsee wife.
Feroza, by contrast, feels the brunt of the conflict, newly aware of the severe sexism in Parsee
culture—men can marry outside the faith, for instance, while women cannot—and thrilled at the
idea of having her own money, her own career, her own identity. Feroza has come to America, she
discovers moments after first landing in New York, to be “unself-conscious”—to be free, once and
for all, of “the thousand constraints that governed her life.”
An American Brat suffers from a meandering, literal plot and a tone that doesn't distinguish
major insights from minor ones. Page by page, though, Sidhwa keeps the reader engaged, for one
can never predict which mundane American event she will display in an entirely new light.
At the hospital: A Parsee couple is presented with a ?15,000 bill for their daughter's delivery,
where-upon the shocked father replies, walking out, “You can keep the baby.” At home: Feroza,
gushing over Manek's vast supply of canned frankfurters and sardines, saying, “I could eat this all
my life!”

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At an expensive restaurant where Manek has sent back half his meal, to Feroza's horror,
because he can't possibly pay for it: “If you weren't so proud,” Manek tells his niece, “you wouldn't
feel so humiliated, and you'd have enjoyed a wonderful dinner.”
He has a point, however twisted, and it's moments like that which make An American Brat a
funny and memorable novel.
Ice-Candy-Man
Lenni is an eight year old Parsi girl who leads a comfortable life with the four members of her
family before the Partition of India in Lahore. Lenni regularly goes for walks with her Hindu Ayah
Shanta. The Queen's garden near her house is their favourite place. Lenny limps on one leg and
her parents are worried about her. Dr. Bharucha puts plaster on the leg a number of times but
each time the results are not upto the mark. Even surgery hasn't helped much. Dr. Bharucha
assures the parents of Lenny that with the passage of time, Lenny will walk normally.
The novel Ice-Candy-Man presents people from all communities —the Hindus, Muslims,
Sikhs and Parsis living in Lahorebefore Partition. 'Bapsi Sidhwa here introduces the device of
child-narrator. Lenny, the eight year old girl narrates the events around her from a child's point
of view. The novelist also shows the child growing, becoming more conscious about the changing
environment around her. Sidhwa introduces the readers to characters like Shanta the Ayah,
Imamdin the cook, the Ice-Candy-Man Dilnawaz and Hassan Ali, his cousin brother. At the
moment, people in undivided India are seen engaged in the Quit-India Movement, and on the
other hand, the Muslim League motivates the Muslim Community to raise a demand for a
separate nation for the Muslims. Often the slogans of 'Pakistan Zindabad' are heard in the streets
but the communal harmony is intact. One day, one British police officer Rogers and Mr. Singh a
neighbourer of Lenny visit the house on dinner. They begin to quarrel on trifles. This hot exchange
of words is in fact a glimpse and foreshadow of the coming conflicts in the near future. People
have started discussions on the possibility of Pakistan and the minorities begin to plan for shifting
to safer places. It foreshadows the communal riots between the Hindus and Muslims.
One day, riots break out in Lahore in a locality far away from Lenny's house. This leads to the
killing of innocent people on both the sides. The news of bloodshed spreads like wild fire. The All
India Radio also reports about cases of violence from different parts of India. Soon the entire
Punjab province is seen burning in the fire of hatred and communal violence. Dilnawaz, the Ice-
Candy-Man waits for his sisters on Lahore railway station. When the trian arrives from
Gurdaspur, everyone on the plateform is shocked to see the ghastly, sight. The Train is loaded
with mutilated bodies of Muslim passengers. This shocks everyone and the friendly Dilnawaz
turns into a person possessed with a frenzy and a desire to kill the Hindus. He also abducts his
friend Shanta, the Ayah of Lenny and later takes her to Hira Mandi of Lahore, a locality of
prostitutes.
Ice-Candy-Man loved Shanta from the core of his heart but now she is a Hindu for him.
Vengeance has transformed him into a killer and a beast. Later with the belp of Lenny's relatives,
Shanta is rescued and she reaches the relief camp at Amritsar. Lenny's delicate mind is shocked
to see all this. The Parsee community remains neutral during this time. Lenni's life becomes a
nightmare. She realizes that her Muslim neighbours will not spare the lives of non-Muslims
anymore. There have been a number of incidents where the Muslims burn alive the non-Muslims.
These traumatic incidents leave a damaging impact on the sensitive person like Ice-Candy-Man,
and he loses his sanity and poise. He begins to roam about in the streets of Lahore to avenge the
death of his Muslim friends. Communalism and the narrow feelings of caste and creed put on a
cloak of greed, meanness and hatred which leads to violence and destruction on the large scale.

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The Crow Eaters

The Crow Eaters is named after derogatory slang referring to the Parsi people, in reference
to their supposed propensity for loud and continuous chatter.The Crow Eaters is a comedy, which
signals an abrupt change from her earlier work. The Parsis, or Zoroastrians, are the socio-religious
group to which Sidhwa belongs, a prosperous yet dwindling community of approximately one
hundred thousand based predominantly in Bombay. The Crow Eaters tells the story of a family
within the small Parsi community residing within the huge city of Lahore. Complete with
historical information and rich with bawdy, off-color humor, the novel is never boring, as Sidhwa's
acute sense of humor constantly changes from the subtle to the downright disgusting. Nothing is
above this humor, which often times leaves the reader feeling guilty for laughing out loud. The
main character, Faredoon, relentlessly torments his mother-in-law Jerbanoo, especially about her
self-indulgent complaints of impending death. Some of the most hilarious moments involve
Faredoon's detailed and gory description of her funeral. The Parsis practice charity in life as well
as death, and their funeral custom of feeding the body to the vultures reflects this belief.
Postmodernism, Postcolonialism and Bapsi Sidhwa

Introduction
Postmodernism is the name given to the period of literary criticism that is now in full bloom.
Just as the name implies, it is the period that comes after the modern period. But these are not
easily separated into discrete units limited by dates as centuries or presidential terms are limited.
Postmodernism came about as a reaction to the established modernist era, which itself was a
reaction to the established tenets of the nineteenth century and before.
What sets Postmodernism apart from its predecessor is the reaction of its practitioners to the
rational, scientific, and historical aspects of the modern age. For postmodernists this took the
guise of being self-conscious, experimental, and ironic. The postmodernist is concerned with
imprecision and unreliability of language and with epistemology, the study of what knowledge is.
An exact date for the establishment of Postmodernism is not easy, but it is said to have begun
in the post-World War II era, roughly the 1950s. It took full flight in the 1960s in the social and
political unrest in the world. In 1968 it reached its zenith with the intense student protests in
the United States and France, the war for independence in Algeria, and the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia. The beginning of space exploration with the launch of Sputnik in 1957,
culminating in the 1969 landing of men on the moon, marks a significant shift in the area of
science and technology.
At the same time, Jacques Derrida presented his first paper, Of Grammatology(1967),
outlining the principles of deconstruction. The early novels of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and Alain
Robbe−Grillet were published; Ishmael Reed was writing his poetry. The Marxist critics, Fredric
Jameson and Terry Eagleton, who saw a major shift in the social and economic world as a part of
the postmodern paradigm, were beginning their creative careers. As time progressed, more and
more individuals added their voices to this list: Julia Kristeva, Susan Sontag, and, in popular
culture, Madonna.
In a speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on July 4, 1994, Vaclav Havel, president of
the Czech Republic, said the following:

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The distinguishing features of such transitional periods are a mixing and blending of cultures
and a plurality or parallelism of intellectual and spiritual worlds. These are periods when all
consistent value systems collapse, when cultures distant in time and space are discovered or
rediscovered. They are periods when there is a tendency to quote, to imitate, and to amplify, rather
than to state with authority or integrate. New meaning is gradually born from the encounter, or
the intersection, of many different elements.
This speech outlines the essence of Postmodernism in all its forms: the mixing, the
disintegration, and the instability of identities.
REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS
Donald Barthelme (1931-1989)
Donald Barthelme, Jr. was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 7, 1931. He has been
characterized as an avant-garde or postmodernist who relies more on language than plot or
character. He is well known as a short story writer, novelist, editor, journalist, and teacher.
Jacques Derrida (1930-)

Jacques Derrida was born in El Biar,Algeria, on July 15, 1930. His work beginning in the
1960s effected a profound change in literary criticism. In 1962 he first outlined the basic ideas
that became known as deconstruction in a lengthy introduction to his 1962 French translation of
German philosopher Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry. The full strategy of deconstruction
is outlined and explained in his difficult masterwork, Of Grammatology, published in English in
1967. It revealed the interplay of multiple meanings in the texts of present day culture and exposed
the unspoken assumptions that underlie much of contemporary social thought.
Terry Eagleton (1943-)
Terence Eagleton was born on February 22, 1943, in Salford, England. As one of the foremost
exponents of Marxist criticism, he is concerned with the ideologies found in literature, examining
the role of Marxism in discerning these ideologies. His concise Marxism and Literary
Criticism, 1976, discusses the author as producer, and the relationships between literature and
history, form and content, and the writer and commitment. He is the foremost advocate of the
inclusion of social and historical issues in literary criticism.
Michel Foucault (1926-1984)
Michel Foucault was born in Poitiers,France, on October 15, 1926, and received a diploma in
1952 from Ecole Normale Superieure and the Sorbonne, University of Paris. He used what he
called the archaeological approach in his work to dig up scholarly minutia from the past and
display the "archaeological" form or forms in them, which would be common to all mental activity.
Later he shifted this emphasis from the archaeological to a genealogical method that sought to
understand how power structures shaped and changed the boundaries of "truth." It is this
understanding of the combination of power and knowledge that is his most noteworthy
accomplishment.
Toni Morrison (1931-)
Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931, in Lorain,Ohio, to a
black working class family. After the publication of her first novel in 1970, Morrison's writing
quickly came to the attention of critics and readers who praised her richly expressive style and ear
for dialogue.

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THEMES
Deconstruction
This is the term created by Derrida that defines the basic premise of Postmodernism. It does
not mean destruction, but rather it is a critique of the criteria of certainty, identity, and truth.
Derrida says that all communication is characterized by uncertainty because there is no
definitive link between the signifier (a word) and the signified (the object to which the word
refers). Once a text is written it ceases to have a meaning until a reader reads it. Derrida says that
there is nothing but the text and that it is not possible to construe a meaning for a text using a
reference to anything outside the text. T
he text has many internal meanings that are in conflict with themselves (called reflexivity or
self-referential) and as a result there is no solid and guaranteed meaning to a text. The text is also
controlled by what is not in it (referents outside the text are not a part of its meaning). The
consequence of this position is that there can be no final meaning for any text, for as Derrida
himself says, "texts are not to be read according to [any method] which would seek out a finished
signified beneath a textual surface.Reading is transformational."
Disintegration
One of the main outgrowths of Postmodernism is the disintegration of concepts that used to
be taken for granted and assumed to be stable. These include the nature of language, the idea of
knowledge, and the notion of a universal truth. The application of deconstruction to the
understanding of language itself results in disintegration of that very language. Even these words
are not stable in the sense that they cannot convey an unalterable message.
The consequence of this is that once language is destabilized the resultant knowledge that
comes from that language is no longer a stable product. The end result therefore is that there can
be no universal truths upon which to base an understanding or a social construct.
In literary works, authors often disrupt expected time lines or change points of view and
speakers in ways that disrupt and cause disintegration in the very literature they are
writing. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon is a good example of this.
Cultural Studies
One major impact of Postmodernism on the structure of college and university courses is the
introduction of multiculturalism and cultural studies programs. These are sometimes directly
related to specific areas on the planet and sometimes to specific focus groups. Often these are not
limited by political concerns and boundaries but are economically and socially organized, a major
concern expressed in the writings.
Multiculturalism
Another aspect of multiculturalism is combining specific interest areas into one area of study.
This aspect of Postmodernism broadens the experiences of college students through the study of
literature and history of peoples from other parts of the world. Classes whose structures combine
sometimes disparate elements are found in these new departments. For example, a study of
prisons and prison literature might be combined with literature from Third World countries
under the broad label of Literature of the Oppressed.

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STYLE
Schizophrenia
An important aspect of Postmodernism in literature and entertainment media is the
relaxation of strict time lines, sometimes called discontinuous time. Often an author will construct
a sequence of events that have no time relationships to each other. In literature this requires the
reader to create a time line, which the author may upset later in the story. Therefore, the writers
show one event, then show another that happened at the same time as the first. This kind of
temporal disruption is called "schizophrenia" by Jameson.
Recurring Characters
Some authors introduce a single character into several different works. Vonnegut does this
with Kilgore Trout and Tralfamadorians, who appear in several of his novels.
Irony
Irony is a specialized use of language in which the opposite of the literal meaning is intended.
Its former use often had the intent to provoke a change in behavior from those who were the object
of the irony. But for the postmodernist the writer merely pokes fun at the object of the irony
without the intention of making a social (or other kind of) change.
Authorial Intrusion
Occasionally an author will speak directly to the audience or to a character in the text in the
course of a work—not as a character in the tale but as the writer. Vonnegut does this in several of
his novels, including Breakfast of Champions.
Self-Reflexivity
Many literary works make comments about the works themselves, reflecting on the writing
or the "meaning" of the work. These works are self-conscious about themselves. In some instances
the work will make a comment about itself in a critical way, making a self-reflexive comment on
the whole process of writing, reading, or understanding literature.
Collage
This style is characterized by an often random association of dissimilar objects without any
intentional connection between them or without a specified purpose for these associations. For
example, the rapid presentation of bits and pieces from old news tapes that are often used at the
beginning of news programs is a collage. While it intends to introduce the news, it is not the news
nor is it any hint of the news to come.
Prose Poetry
This idea seems to be a contradiction in terms but it is an effective style of writing. The
passage will look like a paragraph of prose writing, but the content will be poetic in language and
construction. Rather than being a literal statement, the language in this paragraph will be more
figurative.
Parody and Pastiche
Oftentimes writers will take the work of another and restructure it to make a different
impression on the reader than that of the original author. Some writers lift whole passages from
others, verbatim, resulting in something quite different from the original writer's material.

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Parody is the imitation of other styles with a critical edge. The general effect is to cast ridicule
on the mannerisms or eccentricities of the original.
Pastiche is very much like parody but it is neutral, without any sense of humor. It is the
imitation or a pasting together of the mannerisms of another's work, but without the satiric
impulse or the humor. Jameson says that because there is no longer a "normal" language system,
only pastiche is possible.
Simulacra
This is a term that comes from Plato meaning "false copy" or a debased reflection of the
original that is inferior to the original. Author Jean Baudrillard claims that a simulacrum is a
perfect copy that has no original. The postmodernists use this technique of copying or imitating
others without reservation or hesitation. They treat it as just another process in their creative
effort. Many science fiction movies deal with simulacrum characters.
Movement Variations
As might be expected in a relatively new philosophic movement, there are a variety of
different understandings, proposals, and approaches reflecting on the particular interests of
writers and contributors to that new philosophy. Postmodernism's origin in the aftermath of
World War II was not a universally scripted event. By the time Derrida and others were presenting
their major papers on the basics of Postmodernism, many others were already approaching these
concepts in individual ways. Additionally, as time moved on and Postmodernism developed as an
accepted area of discussion, the basic ideas of Postmodernism were branching off into many facets
of contemporary life. Among these variations are Marxism and political studies,
Poststructuralism, feminism and gender studies.
Feminism
Feminist readings in Postmodernism were initiated as a way to consciously view and
deconstruct ideas of social norms, language, sexuality, and academic theory in all fields. Feminist
theorists and writers (and they were not all women, e.g., Dr. Bruce Appleby, Professor Emeritus
of Southern Illinois University, is a long-standing contributor to feminist writings and theory)
were concerned with the manner in which society assumed a male bias either by direct action—
for example, paying women less for doing the same job; or by inaction—using the term "man" to
mean all of humankind. In either case, the female segment of society had been excluded. Even the
modernist penchant for binary sets for discussions, good/bad, white/black, established an
unspoken hierarchy that made the first of the set more important than the second. In that way the
"male/female" set defined the female half as being less important or inferior to the male half of
the set. This was not acceptable to the feminist writers and to those in the subsequent feminist
movement. Feminist writers and theorists attempted to separate the ideas of sex (which is
biological) and gender (which is a social construct), and use those ideas as a lens through which
to deconstruct language, social mores and theories, economic policies, and longstanding historical
policy.
Marxism
It is not much of a stretch to move the discussion of gender discrimination into a discussion
of class discrimination, which is the focus of many of the Marxist critics. While some issues are

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different, it is easy to see that bias based on gender is just as destructive as the elitism in a society
based on class differences.
Political Marxism is a topic that engenders strong emotional opinions, especially among
those who see it as a threat to Western political systems. However, the basic issues that drove Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels to formulate their theories in the nineteenth century are still valid in
a discussion of literature and art and the relationship between class and the arts in a society.
Marxist critics assert that the products of artistic endeavors are the results of historical forces that
are themselves the results of material and/or economic conditions at the time of the creation of
the art.
Art then becomes the product of those who control the economic and the intellectual
production of the society. Therefore, the nature of the description of an era in human history is
the product of the dominant class at the time the description is given. The present era called
postmodern is so labeled by the dominant class. (It is important to note that since the present era
has not yet come of age, the eventual naming of it may shift if the dominant class also shifts. What
that shift may be is unknown at this time.) This concept has been reduced to the simple statement
that the victor writes the story of the battle.
Poststructuralism
Poststructuralism is a term often used interchangeably with Postmodernism. While these two
terms share a number of philosophic concepts, there are some differences.
Postcolonial Literature
"Postcolonial Literature" is a hot commodity these days. On the one hand writers like Bapsi
Sidhwa and Arundhati Roy are best-selling authors; and on the other hand, no college English
department worth its salt wants to be without a scholar who can knowledgeably discourse about
postcolonial theory.
But there seems to be a great deal of uncertainty as to just what the term denotes. Many of
the debates among postcolonial scholars center on which national literatures or authors can be
justifiably included in the postcolonial canon. Much of the discussion among postcolonial scholars
involves criticisms of the term "postcolonial" itself. In addition, it is seldom mentioned but quite
striking that very few actual authors of the literature under discussion embrace and use the term
to label their own writing.
It should be acknowledged that postcolonial theory functions as a subdivision within the even
more misleadingly named field of "cultural studies": the whole body of generally leftist radical
literary theory and criticism which includes Marxist, Gramscian, Foucauldian, and various
feminist schools of thought, among others. What all of these schools of thought have in common
is a determination to analyze unjust power relationships as manifested in cultural products like
literature (and film, art, etc.). Practitioners generally consider themselves politically engaged and
committed to some variety or other of liberation process.
It is also important to understand that not all postcolonial scholars are literary scholars.
Postcolonial theory is applied to political science, to history, and to other related fields. People
who call themselves postcolonial scholars generally see themselves as part of a large (if poorly
defined and disorganized) movement to expose and struggle against the influence of large, rich
nations (mostly European, plus the U.S.) on poorer nations (mostly in the southern hemisphere).
Taken literally, the term "postcolonial literature" would seem to label literature written by
people living in countries formerly colonized by other nations. This is undoubtedly what the term
originally meant, but there are many problems with this definition.

13
Postcolonial literature, sometimes called "New English Literature" is literature concerned

with the political and cultural independence of people formerly subjugated in colonial empires,
and the literary expression of Postcolonialism.
Postcolonial literary critics re-examine classic literature with a particular focus on the social
"discourse" that shaped it. For instance, in Orientalism, Edward Said analyzes the works
of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire and Lautréamont, exploring how they were influenced
by and helped to shape a societal fantasy of European racial superiority. Postcolonial fictional
writers interact with the traditional colonial discourse, but modify or subvert it; for instance by
retelling a familiar story from the perspective of an oppressed minor character in the story, for
example Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which was written as a pseudo-
prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Often the protagonist of a postcolonial work will find
him/herself in a struggle to establish an identity, feeling conflicted between an old, native world
that is being abolished by the invasive forces of modernity and/or the new dominant culture.
Postcolonial literature uses a wide range of terms, like "writing back", re-writing and re-
reading, which describe the interpretation of well-known literature under the perspective of the
formerly colonized.
Other authors use different analogies for the colonized, but also very different approaches.
The "anti-conquest narrative" recasts indigenous inhabitants of colonised countries as victims
rather than foes of the colonisers. This depicts the colonised people in a more human light but
risks absolving colonisers of responsibility for addressing the impacts of colonisation by assuming
that native inhabitants were "doomed" to their fate.
In Africa, Chinua Achebe set the standards for African literature with 1958'sThings Fall
Apart. Ayi Kwei Armah in "Two Thousand seasons" tries to establish a history for Africa from an
African perspective.
In the Americas, Isabel Allende from Chile contributes to Latin-American literature and
occasionally writes in a style called magic realism also used by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a certain
way of vivid storytelling.
In Asia, the areas of postcolonial writing are the Muslim and the Indian literature. Meena
Alexander is probably best known for lyrical memoirs that deal sensitively with struggles of
women and disenfranchised groups. Other notable postcolonial writers are J.M. Coetzee, Athol
Fugard, Hanif Kureishi, Doris Lessing, Earl Lovelace, Gabriel García Márquez, Bharati
Mukherjee,V. S. Naipaul, Bapsi Sidhwa, Wilbur Smith,Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott and Kath
Walker.
Events leading to post colonialism: a little about colonialism

Before post colonialism there was colonialism. Colonialism can be broken down simply as the
following; in the beginning, a large power, for various reasons, has to colonize. This means that
colonies had to be established by a large power. The large power seeks to expand its borders for
any of a number of reasons. Some of these include: “civilizing” the native inhabitants (people who
lived in the area before the settlers), converting their religion to Christianity, or using resources
and/or raw materials found in the new territory. Colonialism is the way (usually brute force) that
a country or empire takes natural resources, raw materials, markets etc. from its colonies.
Colonialism most commonly was the abuse of the native people by settlers making a life in the
new colony; settlers who were put there by the larger power. Colonialism and the oppression of
the colonies by the large power can only go on for so long. Eventually, the colonies will fight back
which ultimately leads to a revolution, if the colony is successful. A revolution and the rejection

14
of oppression ultimately leads to an independence day, everything after that day is post
colonialism.
Defining postcolonial literature from a critics point of view

What qualifies as postcolonial literature is debatable, in fact it is a constant debate. Some
would say that it is anything written after the colonies independence, however that seems a bit
broad. The term, postcolonial literature, has taken on many meanings and has been shaped by the
study of books written post colonialism. After years of postcolonial literature theories, ideas and
arguments, most postcolonial critics have found common ground on three main rules. These rules
are more like subjects. If a piece of literature is written after the independence day and disscusses
or explores any of the subjects, it may be considered postcolonial. The three subjects include:
1. Social and cultural change or erosion. It seems that after independence is achieved, one
main question arises; what is the new cultural identity?
2. Misuse of power and exploitation. Even though the large power ceases to control them as
a colony, the settlers still seem to poses power over the natives. The main question here; who
really is in power here, why, and how does an independence day really mean independence?
3. Colonial abandonment and alienation. This topic is generally brought up to examine
individuals and not the ex-colony as a whole. The individuals tend to ask themselves; in this new
country, where do I fit in and how do I make a living?
Bapsi Sidhwa and Postcolonial Literature

Bapsi Sidhwa does not believe in the classification of authors according to movements. She
thinks that such terms are coined only by critics to facilitate themselves. However she is not
against these terms as well. Speaking about postcolonial literature she says: I have heard often
heard the phrase "post-colonial". In fact, it has been cited to death. But I still do not know what it
means. Do I become “post-colonial” because I am writing after India and Pakistanachieved
freedom? The fact is that, as a child, I never considered myself governed by anybody but our own
people. I never had that sense. To me the British Raj was already a thing of the past, and today
there is no visible legacy of it (as in monuments or statues) left in Pakistan. If a stranger came to
Pakistan he would see nothing that would remind him that the British once ruled inPakistan. So
this is one part of our history which does not mean all that much to me. Maybe this is because I
have no memory of it, have read little about it. My experiences are mine, and have not much to do
with being “post-colonial” or otherwise. I write about my experiences in my particular part of the
world.
Post-colonial is a label coined by critics.If it means a lot to critics, it is fine by me. I don't
object to it. But I do feel that as a writer such labels put you into very strange slots. There are so
many writers who wrote during British rule but did not say very much about the Raj. For instance,
there is Ismat Chugtai, and even Khushwant Singh. Their writings, before and after Partition,
form one seamless whole. The reality of India and Pakistan does not suddenly become different
for them. It remains the same.
However she admits that she writes in English only. And "the more important point in all this
is that the western world does not know us. And many of us feel that it is time our voice was heard
there, that our cultures should be seen by them. I have always been very conscious of this. Here
we are, living in huge communities in hidden corners of the world. It is time that these were seen,
understood and recognized for what they are. We may be living in other parts of the world
worshipping other religions, but we also laugh, cry, and deal with similar issues, have the same

15
notions, and live through similar turbulences…I see injustice happening everywhere because of
the hegemony of the western world. One of the things a writer can do is speak of the humanity of
our people, their poverty and their naiveté …
She wants to give a voice and a face—an identity to poor people. In this way the thinking
pattern and motives behind writing are "postcolonial". She is a postcolonial writer whether she
calls herself so or not.
Postcolonialism and Bapsi Sidhwa’s Fiction

Bapsi Sidhwa's fiction deals with both the pre and post-colonial period of the subcontinent.
Her fiction not only brings to life the horror of the Partition but also vividly portrays the
complexities of life in the subcontinent after Independence. What makes her work interesting
from the post-colonial point of view is the way in which she re-writes the history of the
subcontinent. In Ice-Candy-Man, Lenny, the young narrator, in the process of narrating the story
of her family re-writes the history of the subcontinent, thereby undercutting the British view of
history imposed on the subcontinent.
In An American Brat Sidhwa highlights the predicament of the Pakistani people in general
and of the Parsi community in particular. Thus, while in Ice-Candy-Man Sidhwa grapples with
the realities of the pre-Independence period, in An American Bratshe highlights the phenomenon
of neo-colonialism in Pakistan. What is most remarkable about her work is her dual perspective,
which is based on both the Pakistani and the Parsi point of view. She speaks both for the Pakistanis
and the marginalized Parsi community.
Sidhwa's re-writing of history in Ice-Candy-Man is far more complex than it appears to be
since she re-writes history not just from the Pakistani but also from the Parsi point of view. In
order to highlight the Parsi dilemma at the time of the Partition she goes back thirteen hundred
years to the significant moment in Parsi history, when they "were kicked out of Persia“ and "sailed
to India." After waiting for four days on the Indian coast they were visited by the Grand Vazir,
with a glass of milk filled to the brim, symbolizing that his land is full and prosperous and in no
need of "outsiders with a different religion and alien ways to disturb the harmony." However, the
Parsi forefathers, intelligently, "stirred a teaspoon of sugar into the milk and sent it back,”
symbolizing that the Parsis "would get absorbed into his country like sugar in the milk. And with
their decency and industry sweeten the lives of his subjects." The short account, whether true or
not, highlights the dilemma the Parsis have faced over the centuries—the dilemma of assimilating
themselves into an alien culture and risking the loss of their identity.
The impending partition of the country, as depicted in the novel, might prove that all the
efforts the Parsis have made over the centuries to assimilate themselves into Indian culture are
futile since the community all of a sudden faces the threat of extinction in the wake of the
Partition. Thirteen hundred years ago, the Parsis had tried to accept Indian culture with all its
diversities, but now at the moment of Partition they might be forced to take sides with one of the
dominant communities/religions in India—Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs. Thus Sidhwa undercuts
the received historical view that the Persis were totally indifferent to the partition of the country.
Instead of indifference the Parsis had a complex attitude towards Partition, as brought out in the
main-hall meeting in the Fire Temple. Col. Bharucha, the president of the community in Lahore,
argues that the Parsis should shun the anti-colonial movement and stick to their long standing
stance of loyalty to the British Empire. He warns the Parsis that once we get Swaraj, ''Hindus,

16
Muslims and even the Sikhs are going to jockey for power: and if you jokers jump into the middle
you'll be mingled into chutney!"
However Dr. Moody points out that it is not so simple. The Parsis cannot remain uninvolved
and will have to take a stance otherwise, "our neighbours will think that we are betraying them
and siding with the English.” This, however leads to a further complication, as voiced by a fellow
Parsi, when he asks: ""Which of your neighbours are you going to betray? Hindu? Muslim?
Sikhs?" This remark brings to the foreground the bitter fact that even after thirteen hundred years
the Parsis feel alienated in the subcontinent. Their alienation from all the major communities
in India ultimately forces them to support "whoever rules Lahore." Col. Bharucha suggests, "Let
whoever wishes to rule! Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian. We will abide by the rules of the land."
Thus Sidhwa by giving voice to the marginalized Parsis demonstrates that their choice of
remaining neutral in the context of the Partition was not out of indifference but forced upon them
by a complex historical reality.
Sidhwa, further, demonstrates that the neutral stance adopted by the Parsi community vis-a-
vis the freedom struggle did not prevent them from participating in the freedom struggle in
whichever way they could. M.F. Salat observes that Sidhwa contradicts the received discourses by
showing the "silent but positive role played by Lenny's parents in helping both the Hindu and the
Muslims,” suggesting that "the Parsis too were involved in their own ways in the events of the time
and that they were not just indifferent and passive onlookers to the awful human tragedy:"
Salat observes that it is a revelation meant not only for Lenny but also for all those who are
ignorant of the Parsi involvement in the Partition when Lenny's mother explains the secret of her
suspicious outings. She explains: "I wish I'd told you ... we were only smuggling the rationed petrol
to help our Hindu and Sikh friends to run away. And also for the convoys to send kidnapped
women, like our Ayah, to their families across the border."
This theme is further developed in her next novel An American Brat, where the Parsi
community is shown actively participating in Pakistani politics. Instead of keeping a neutral, de-
tached stance, Ginwalla family is passionately involved in the country's current political crisis.
Zareen at one point voices her concern over her daughter's intense involvement in "Bhutto's trial."
Her concern for her daughter, however, does not stop her from working in "many women's
committees with Begum Bhutto." Feroza even when she is in America, remains acutely concerned
about the crisis in her country. She is totally shocked to hear of Bhutto's hanging. On coming back
to Pakistan, she voices her disappointment at being inadequately informed about Pakistan's
current political scenario: "I want to know what's going on here. After all, it's my country!" Thus
Sidhwa exhibits that the Parsis, both in the pre and post-Independence period, instead of showing
indifference to the country's politics, have been actively involved in it.
Sidhwa in Ice-Candy-Man as mentioned earlier, rewrites history from the Pakistani point of
view also. In an interview with David Montenegro, she clearly states this agenda:
The main motivation grew out of my reading of a good deal of literature on the partition
of Indiaand Pakistan ... what has been written by the British and Indians. Naturally they reflect
their bias. And they have, I felt after I'd researched the book, been unfair to the Pakistanis. As a
writer, as a human being, one just does not tolerate injustice, I felt whatever little I could do to
correct an injustice I would like to do. I have just let facts speak for themselves, and through my
research I found out what the facts were.
To counter the British and Indian versions of the Partition, Sidhwa in Ice-Candy-Man not
only tries to resurrect the image of Jinnah but also demystifies the image of Gandhi and Nehru.

17
The sublime image of Gandhi constructed by British and Indian historians is totally undercut
when he is seen through the eyes of the seven-year-old narrator, Lenny: "He [Gandhi] is small,
dark, shrivelled, old. He looks just like Hari, our gardener, except he has a disgruntled, disgusted
and irritable look; and no one'd dare pull off his dhoti! He wears only the loincloth and his black
and thin torso is naked." According to Masseur, Gandhi "is a politician" and "it's his business to
suit his tongue to the moment." Similarly Nehru is a shrewd politician who in spite of all the efforts
of Jinnah "will walk off with the lion's share." Nehru, according to the Ice-Candy-Man is "a sly
one... He's got Mountbatten eating out of his one hand and the English's wife out of his other what
not ... He's the one to watch!"
Even though Sidhwa tries to depict the atrocities committed by Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs
without partiality, being a Pakistani writer she makes it obvious that her sympathies are with the
Muslim victims. Not only is the Sikhs's attack on Muslim villages in Punjab described vividly, but
also it is seen through the eyes of the Muslim child Ranna, which shifts the reader's sympathy
towards the Muslims. In an interview with David Montenegro, Sidhvva observes, "the Sikhs
perpetrated the much greater brutality—they wanted Punjab to be divided. A peasant is rooted in
his soil. The only way to uproot him was to kill him or scare him out of his wits."
Sidhwa’s Use of English Language
Another interesting feature of Sidhwa's writing from the postcolonial perspective is her use
of the English language. In fact, language is a major preoccupation of the postcolonial writer.
Should the writer write in the language inherited from the imperial power or should he/she revert
to the native language? An opposing stance has been taken by the two African writers Chinua
Achebe (Nigeria) and Ngugi wa Thiong'o (Kenya) vis-a-vis language in postcolonial literature.
Ngugi after writing his earlier works in English has rejected the language and now writes in his
native language Gikuyu.
Ngugi's point is that language has been always used by the colonizer to mentally and
spiritually control the colonized: "The domination of a peoples' language by the languages of the
colonizing nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonised." By
continuing to write in the colonizer's language, one is colonized on the cultural level, and instead
of enriching one's own native language and culture, one only ends up enriching the European
traditions. However, writers such as Chinua Achebe and Gabriel Okara disagree. Achebe argues:
"'I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it
will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit
new African surroundings.” He best demonstrates this new English in his much acclaimed
work Things Fall Apart.
Sidhwa's stance is in line with that of Chinua Achebe. In her interview with Feroza Jussawalla,
she states:
My first language of speech is Gujrati, my second is Urdu, my third is English. But as far as reading
and writing goes I can read and write best in English. I'm a tail end product of the Raj. This is the
case with a lot of people in India and Pakistan. They're condemned to write in English, but I don't
think this is such a bad thing because English is a rich language. Naturally it is not my first
language; I'm more at ease talking in Gujrati and Urdu. After moving to America I realized that
all my sentences in English were punctuated with Gujrati and Urdu words.
So, even though Sidhwa writes in English, it is a new English— an English punctuated with
words from the native language. However, it is not a simple addition of words from the native
language to English. While the writer translates a number of words from the, native languages, a
large number of words are also left untranslated. For instance, the following words, in Ice-Candy-
Man, have been translated: "pahailwan, a wrestler", "Choorail, witches", "Shabash, Well Said!",

18
"Ghar ki Murgi dal barabar. A neighbour's beans are tastier than household chickens", "Khut putli,
puppets", "Mamajee [Uncle]." InAn American Brat, almost every word and phrase of the native
language employed in the novel is translated by the writer in a "Glossary" at the end of the novel.
For instance: "Badmash: scoundrel," "Gora; white, in Urdu," "Heejra: eunuch or transvestite."
What such a translation of individual words does? Bill Ashcroft et al in The Empire Writes
Back observe that such translation of individual words is the most obvious and most common
authorial intrusion in cross-cultural texts. Juxtaposing the words in this way suggests that the
meaning of a word is its referent. But the simple matching of words from the native language with
its translated version in English reveals the general inadequacy of such an exercise. The moment
a word from a native language is juxtaposed with its referent in English, instead of clarifying the
meaning, it shows the gap between the word and its referent.
Bill Ashcroft et al argue that the implicit gap between the word from the native language and
its referent, in fact, disputes the "putative referentiality" of the words and establishes the word
from the native language as a cultural sign. For instance, let us take the word "Kotha" from Ice-
Candy-Man, which is translated as "Roof in the novel. However, it is made clear in the novel that
the word "Kotha" does not simply mean "roof," but is a place of prostitution. This gap between the
word "Kotha" and its English translation "roof establishes "Kotha" as a cultural sign.
Apart from these words, in Ice-Candy-Man, there are certain other words from the native
language which are not translated, such as: "sarka'r", "yaar", "doolha", "chachi", "Angrez",
"chaudhary". What purpose is served by not translating words of the native language? The use of
untranslated words "is a clear signifier that the language which actually informs the novel is an
other language." Even though the Ice-Candy-Man is written in English, the untranslated words
remind the reader that the language of conversation of the characters is not English but Urdu and
Punjabi. The untranslated words are part of the strategy of the postcolonial writer to highlight the
cultural difference.
Apart from using the strategies discussed above, Sidhwa, to highlight Muslim culture, quotes
various Urdu poets in her narrative. Ice-Candy-Mann opens with Iqbal's poem "Complaint to
God." At the beginning of chapter 13, the quote from Iqbal's poetry is a good example of the poet's
anticolonial stance:
The times have changed; the world has changed its mind.
The European's mystery is erased.
The secret of his conjuring tricks is known:
The Frankish wizard stands and looks amazed.
To conclude, Sidhwa through the Ice-Candy-Man successfully questions the British and
Indian versions of the subcontinent's history and provides an alternate version of history based
on the Pakistani point of view. In An American Brat, she voices the social and political chaos
in Pakistan generated by the forces of neo-colonialism. In both the novels, she has succinctly
adapted the English language to suit her purposes. Further, she has not just provided the
marginalized Parsi community with a voice but also a large number of Pakistani readers. She is
justified in saying:
I think a lot of readers in Pakistan, especially with Ice-Candy-Man, feel that I've given them a
voice, which they did not have before. They have always been portrayed in a very unfavourable
light. It's been fashionable to lash out Pakistan, and it's been done again and again by various
writers living in the West. And I feel, if there's one little thing one could do, it's to make people
realize: We are not worthless because we inhabit a poor country that is seen by Western eyes as
primitive, fundamentalist country only.

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Pakistani Literature in English

I grew up in a bilingual home where my father seldom spoke anything but English; my mother
was truly at home only in Urdu. This world simply did not exist in tales about churails, badshahs
and parrots recounted by Bua, nor the English stories of teddy bears and Father Christmas that I
read as a child. The only book, which remotely touched on my bilingual inheritance, was Kipling’s
Jungle Book. Confusingly, my older, literary cousins in London used the word “Kiplingesque” as
disparagement. Much later, I discovered John Masters. Alas the literary cousins did not think
much of him either.
In 1961, my chachi, Attia Hosain, published her novel, Sunlight on a Broken Column. There
was such excitement in the family. I tried to share it with teachers and friends at my school
in England, but no one was interested. Even worse, when I returned to Pakistan for good at 19
(after 10 years) I became aware of another discourse among once-colonized intellectuals — that
subcontinentals could not write creatively in English and should not even try! Nevertheless I went
on reading and enjoying V.S. Naipaul and others.
In 1967 the expatriate Zulfikar Ghose published the riveting The Murder of Aziz Khan. This
was the first cohesive, modern English novel written by a writer of Pakistani origin. The plot about
a poor Punjab farmer destroyed by a group of industrialists, though fiction, was so close to the
bone, that the chattering classes were abuzz, speculating “who-was-who”. Ghose’s remaining
novels were set in South America, his wife’s country and few reached Pakistan. However, his
poetry appeared in the first two major anthologies of Pakistani English writing: First Voices (1965)
which also included the young Taufiq Rafat; and Pieces Eight (1971) which introduced Adrian
Husain, Nadir Hussein, Salman Tarik Kureshi and Kaleem Omar. Soon I began to hear of an
exciting new poet, Maki Kureishi. Wordfall (1975) consisting of wonderful poems by Omar, Rafat
and Kureishi, remains one of my favourite books. We would all gather regularly at Adrian Husain’s
multi-lingual, literary meetings, ‘Mixed Voices’.
In 1980, Bapsi Sidhwa’s first novel, The Crow Eaters was published
by JonathanCape in England, which caused a tremendous stir. I remember my aunt and my sister
chortling out loud because they found it so funny. I still find it one of Bapsi’s best, but I particularly
like the accomplished Ice-Candy-Man (1988) which holds a place of its own as partition literature.
For me, its special quality lies in the use of an entertaining and canny English-speaking child as
narrator, who employs multi-lingual cadences of Pakistani English.
Meanwhile a new academic discourse revealed that some of the best English literature was
coming from minority and migrant groups in the West and Britain’s erstwhile colonies. In 1984,
the British-born playwright Hanif Kureishi, having won the 1981 George Devine Award, came
toPakistan for the first time. By then I had become a freelance journalist. My interview with him
raised many issues of identity and belonging. Hanif had thought himself English, but England has
perceived him as Pakistani — and his work tried to bridge the two. He wrote a haunting memoir
The Rainbow Sign (1986) about this and hisPakistan trip, which was published with his Oscar-
nominated screenplay My Beautiful Laundrette.
Sara Suleri’s creative memoir Meatless Days opened up a new dimension for me: I had never
read a work which occupied a space between fiction and non-fiction, with chapters divided
according to metaphor. I loved its beautiful tightly-knit prose too, as did my teenage daughter,
Kamila.
Over the next few years, the number of Pakistani English language writers grew rapidly.
Adam Zameenzad published four novels and won a first novel award, as did Hanif Kureishi, while

20
Nadeem Aslam won two. Tariq Ali embarked on a Communist trilogy, and an Islam quintet; Bapsi
Sidhwa received a prize in Germany, an award in the USA, and published her fourth novel The
American Brat (1993). Zulfikar Ghose, who had written around 10 accomplished novels, brought
out the intricate and complex The Triple Mirror of the Self about migration and a man’s quest for
identity, across four continents.
Despite this, in Pakistan, everyone said, “Oh, there are so many Indians writing English, but
why aren’t there any Pakistanis?” But I was reading, reviewing and interviewing Pakistani writers,
all the time including playwright Rukhsana Ahmad and short story writer Aamer Hussein
inEngland. We also had some rather good resident English language poets, but they had no outlets
— Pakistan’s publishing and newspaper industry was in crisis and the international fanfare
revolved around South Asian English novels, not poetry or short fiction. Even so, a younger
generation, including Alamgir Hashmi and Athar Tahir had emerged.
In 1996 Ameena Saiyid of OUP asked me to put together an anthology of Pakistani English
writing to commemorate Pakistan’s Golden Jubilee. The hunt for material was quite challenging,
though I found that through interviews I had collected a lot of rare, first hand, biographical
information. I chanced upon the Pakistani-born Moniza Alvi’s work for the first time in the British
Council Library and learnt that she was a promising mainstream British poet. But the real surprise
came from America. I knew of some short story writers such as Tariq Rahman and Athar Tahir
in Pakistan and Talat Abbasi in New York, but the real surprise came from America. In answer to
my query Professor M.U. Memon sent me a list of Pakistani-Americans including Tahira Naqvi,
Javed Qazi and Moazzam Sheikh; Moazzam, in turn pointed me to Sorayya Y. Khan. Suddenly I
found I had 44 published writers of Pakistani origin for the book.
The anthology, Dragonfly in the Sun, which took its name from a Ghose poem, was a
retrospective of fiction, poetry and drama, which followed the development of Pakistani English
writing. In the process I re-discovered Shahid Suhrawardy, Ahmed Ali, Zaibunnissa Hamidullah,
Mumtaz Shahnawaz. There was one unexpected problem: many contributors would not give their
date of birth! So I had to resort to a loose grouping, instead of a chronological order.
The major event in our lives was that Kamila’s first novel was accepted for publication in
1998. By the time my next anthology was out, Kamila had published her second and my
octogenarian mother had written a memoir. Amazingly, our three books appeared in the space of
a year.
Dragonfly raised questions of identity: How did I define ‘Pakistani”? Why had I included
expatriates? To me it seemed that with globalization, most people have more than one identity. If
a writer claims to be Pakistani, that is enough and will influence his/her writing, responses,
perspective.
Therefore my second anthology Leaving Home (2001) explored the Pakistani experience of
migration in its widest perspective, through fiction and essays. I had discovered that the first
South Asian English book, Travels by Sake Dean Mohamet, began with a migration. He had served
in the East India Company, migrated to Ireland and written his memoirs in 1794 to explain his
homeland to Europeans — and I included an extract symbolically as a prologue.
The rest of the book was divided into three sections. The first “When Borders Shift” opened
with an extract from Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel The Bride, about the 1947 train massacres. The second
“Go West” took its title from Javaid Qazi’s comic tale of a Pakistani student’s fantasy of America.
The third, “Voting With Their Feet” began with Irfan Husain’s essay on why the brightest and best
were leaving Pakistan.

21
In between the book also explored many other dimensions. Hamida Khuhro described the
changes she saw in Karachi after 1947; Aquila Ismail’s “Leaving Bangladesh” was a harrowing eye-
witness account of 1971; Kamila Shamsie’s “Mulberry absences” was a mediation on exile and
language; Zia Mohyeddin recalled his memories of Leela Lean in London; the half German, Anwer
Mooraj wrote about pre-and-post-warGermany. All these were juxtaposed between fiction, mostly
by expatriates, such as Rukhsana Ahmad, Zulfikar Ghose and Aamer Hussein, but there were also
stories by resident Pakistanis including Tariq Rahman, Athar Tahir and Humair Yusuf. I also
included two distinguished Urdu writers Intizar Husain and Fahmida Riaz who wrote occasionally
in English — and that in itself was a form of migration.
Since 2001, Pakistani English literature has come into its own. Uzma Aslam Khan and
Mohsin Hamid have made spectacular debuts too. Saad Ashraf, Sorayya Khan and Feryal Ali
Gauhar have published accomplished new novels. However Pakistani women, who chose English
as a creative vehicle, occupy a unique space. They must constantly challenge stereotypes imposed
on them as women and as writers by the patriarchal narratives and cultures of both English and
Pakistani literatures. This is the focus of my new anthology And the World Changed:
Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women, (June 2005) to be published by Women Unlimited.
Twenty two writers are represented, including well-known authors and exciting new talent such
as Humera Afridi, Hima Raza and Soniah Kamal. Collecting and collating material has been a
journey of discovery and surprise and here the oral narratives of my childhood and my bilingual
world, all co-exist, held together by themes of a ‘Quest’.
Background to Bapsi Sidhwa’s Novels Or Bapsi Sidhwa and

Women Rights
"I feel if there's one little thing I could do, it's to make people realize: We are not worthless
because we inhabit a country which is seen by Western eyes as a primitive, fundamentalist country
only. . .I mean, we are a rich mixture of all sorts of forces as well, and our lives are very much
worth living."
Bapsi Sidhwa
Bapsi Sidhwa is an award winning Pakistani novelist striving above all to bring women's
issues of the Indian subcontinent into public discussion. She was born in 1938
in Karachi, Pakistan, but her family migrated shortly thereafter to Lahore.
As a young girl, Sidhwa witnessed first-hand the bloody Partition of 1947, in which seven
million Muslims were uprooted in the largest, most terrible exchange of population that history
has known. The Partition was caused by a complicated set of social and political factors, including
religious differences and the end of colonialism in Sub-continent.
Sidhwa writes about her childhood,
"the ominous roar of distant mobs was a constant of my awareness, alerting me, even at age seven,
to a palpable sense of the evil that was taking place in various parts of Lahore".
Sidhwa was also witness to these evils, including an incident in which she found the body of
a dead man in a gunnysack at the side of the road.
Characteristically succinct, she says of the event, "I felt more of a sadness than horror". Her
home city of Lahore became a border city in Pakistan, and was promptly flooded by hundreds of

22
thousand of war refugees. Many thousands of these were women - victims of rape and torture.
Due to lasting shame and their husbands' damaged pride, many victims were not permitted entry
into their homes after being "recovered."
There was a rehabilitation camp with many of these women adjacent to Sidhwa's house, and
she states that she was inexplicably fascinated with these "fallen women," as they were described
to her at the time. She realized from a young age that "victory is celebrated on a woman's body,
vengeance is taken on a woman's body. That's very much the way things are, particularly in my
part of the world". It appears as if realizations such as this inspired Sidhwa's later activism for the
cause of women's rights.
Sidhwa claims to have had a rather boring childhood, with the exception of the years of strife
surrounding the Partition, due partly to a bout with polio, which kept her home schooled. She
cites Little Women as being the most influential book of her childhood, as it introduced her to "a
world of fantasy and reading--I mean extraordinary amounts of reading because that was the only
life I had". She went on to receive a BA from Kinnaird College for Women, inLahore. At nineteen,
Sidhwa got married, and soon after gave birth to the first of three children.
While traveling in Northern Pakistan in 1964, Sidhwa heard the story of a young girl who was
murdered by her husband after an attempted escape. She looked into the story and discovered
that the girl was a purchased wife, a slave. This discovery moved Sidhwa into action. She began to
tell the girl's story in the form of a novel.
Along with prevailing expectations of women's place during that time in Pakistan, the
responsibilities of raising a family prompted Sidhwa to write in secret. Although Sidhwa speaks
four languages, she made a conscious decision to write in English, partly due to the increased
probability of worldwide exposure to issues that concerned her within the subcontinent. At that
time there were no English language books published in Pakistan, so after Sidhwa finished writing
the novel, she published it herself as The Bride. The novel was critically acclaimed for its forceful
style and its undeniable ability to speak eloquently of human warmth amid horrible
circumstances. She received the Pakistan National Honors of the Patras Bokhri award for The
Bride in 1985.
Soon after publication of The Bride, Sidhwa began work on her second novel,The Crow
Eaters. The novel is named after derogatory slang referring to the Parsi people, in reference to
their supposed propensity for loud and continuous chatter.The Crow Eaters is a comedy, which
hundred thousand based predominantly in Bombay. The Crow Eaterstells the story of a family
within the small Parsi community residing within the huge city of Lahore. Complete with
historical information and rich with bawdy, off-color humor, the novel is never boring, as Sidhwa's
acute sense of humor constantly changes from the subtle to the downright disgusting. Nothing is
above this humor, which often times leaves the reader feeling guilty for laughing out loud. The
main character, Faredoon, relentlessly torments his mother-in-law Jerbanoo, especially about her
self-indulgent complaints of impending death. Some of the most hilarious moments involve
Faredoon's detailed and gory description of her funeral. The Parsis practice charity in life as well
as death, and their funeral custom of feeding the body to the vultures reflects this belief.
Bapsi Sidhwa's third novel, Ice-Candy-Man marked her move into international fame. Book
sellers stateside feared that an American audience would mistake the unfamiliar occupational
name (meaning popsicle vendor) for a drug pusher. The novel is considered by many critics to be
the most moving and essential book on the partition of Sub-continent. Told from the awakening
consciousness of an observant eight-year-old Parsi girl, the violence of the Partition threatens to
collapse her previously idyllic world. The issues dealt with in the book are as numerous as they

23
are horrifying. The thousands of instances of rape, and public's subsequent memory loss that
characterize the Partition are foremost. In the hatred that has fueled the political relations
between Pakistan and India since that time, these women's stories were practically forgotten. In
one of her infrequent bursts of poetry, Sidhwa writes,
"Despite the residue of passion and regret, and loss of those who have in panic fled-- the fire could
not have burned for... Despite all the ruptured dreams, broken lives, buried gold, bricked-in
rupees, secreted jewelry, lingering hopes...the fire could not have burned for months..."
(Ice-Candy-Man)
Sidhwa replaces flowing, poetic sentences with forceful criticism when she theorizes about
what caused the fires to keep burning. Sidhwa repeatedly condemns the dehumanizing impact
that religious zealotry played in promoting mob mentality, separation, and revenge during the
Partition. Sidhwa's widely varied narration alternates between opulent description, subtle humor,
and bone-chilling strife.
The narrator, Lenny, is astute beyond her years, yet the questioning nature of the child is
portrayed so skillfully that it allows the author to effectively deal with serious subjects both firmly
and with subtlety, whichever suits her purpose. When she discovers that her mother is illegally
stockpiling gasoline, Lenny wrongly assumes that her mother is responsible for the bombings that
are plaguing Lahore. This image is both funny and disturbing, highlighting the strange mixture of
innocence and fear that Lenny is dealing with.
When the citizens of Lahore become more apprehensive of the impending Partition, they
stratify strictly upon religious lines. Lenny's perceptions of the differences in people changes at
the same time. In reference to a Hindu man's caste mark, Lenny proclaims, "Just because his
grandfathers shaved their heads and grew stupid tails is no reason why Hari should." "Not as
stupid as you think," says Cousin. "It keeps his head cool and his brain fresh" (Ice-Candy-Man).
Seemingly simple passages such as this one succinctly and with humor hint at a child's precise
realization of the discriminatory nature of the caste system. The novel is made up of hundreds of
such cleverly phrased passages, which make the book quite enjoyable to read despite the clarity
with which the troubling passages are depicted.
Women's issues, the implications of colonization, and the bitterly divided quagmire of
partisan politics that the British left in their wake are reevaluated in the novel, picked apart by the
sharp questions of a child. Sidhwa's credibility in the eyes of the press and literary critics of the
subcontinent is remarkably accentuated by virtue of her being a Parsi, a woman, and a first-hand
witness to the violence.
The Parsis remained neutral during the Partition, a fact well remembered by two countries.
Sidhwa uses this impartial position to its fullest, contributing greatly to the national discourse on
the matter. Critical analysis of Ice-Candy-Man deals with a wide variety of topics in the novel,
including several analyses of Sidhwa's subtext on male/female authority issues.
Sidhwa travels frequently to Pakistan in her capacities as a women's rights activist. Sidhwa
works with women to help foster an awareness of their rights, including the organization of large-
scale awareness-raising public protests. She also utilizes her position as an acclaimed writer to
make numerous public statements in the Pakistani media aimed against repressive measures that
harm women and minority communities. She has worked as the voluntary secretary in the
Destitute Women and Children's home in Lahore for years, and was appointed to the advisory
committee to Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on Women's Development.

24
Since moving to the United States in 1983, Sidhwa has received numerous literary awards
both in the U.S. and abroad. In 1987 she was awarded both a Bunting Fellowship at
Radcliffe\Harvard and a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts that allowed her to
finish Ice-Candy-Man. In 1991 Sidhwa received the Sitara-i-Imitaz,Pakistan's highest national
honor in the arts, along with the Liberaturepreis in Germany. In 1993 she published her most
recent novel,An American Brat, a comical reflection on the confusing friction that different
cultures impose upon a Pakistani girl in the United States.
The same year she received the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award, which,
pleasantly enough, also included one-hundred-five thousand dollars. The author has received
numerous other awards for her writing.
In her most recently published essay, for Time Magazine, she reflects on the Partition's
victims of rape. "What legacy have these women left us? I believe that their spirit animate all those
women that have bloomed into judges, journalists, NGO official, filmmakers, doctors and writers-
- women who today are shaping opinions and challenging stereotypes".
Bapsi Sidhwa's Passion for History and for Truth

Telling
With the publication of her third novel,Ice-Candy-Man, Bapsi Sidhwa established herself
as Pakistan’s leading English-language novelist, a position she confirmed with the publication of
her most recent novel, An American Brat which also heralds a new direction in her fiction. In that
book Sidhwa shifts the predominant locale of her work from Lahore in Pakistan to various cities
across America as she explores the Parsi/Pakistani Diaspora. Her first three novels, however, are
all set in Pakistan, and in each there is a strong sense of place and community which she uses to
examine particular aspects of Pakistan’s postcolonial identity.
Sidhwa’s early novels, while very different from one another share in common what Anita
Desai has accurately described as ‘a passion for history and for truth telling.’ And in each her
desire to understand the terrible events of the Partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947 and
the subsequent birth of Pakistan as a nation is evident.
Sidhwa’s first novel, The Crow Eaters is a ribald comedy in which Faredoon Junglewalla
(Freddy for short) narrates the story of his life. The action of the novel commences at the turn of
the century and continues through to the eve of Independence and Partition. Historically, The
Bride begins more or less where The Crow Eaters left off. It tells the story of Zaitoon, a young
Punjabi girl who is adopted by a Kohistani tribesman after her parents are slaughtered in the riots
which accompanied the partition of the subcontinent. Sidhwa’s passion for history is evident in
both these novels; through the stories of Faredoon Junglewalla and Zaitoon, one pre-
Independence, the other post-Independence, she attempts to present a true picture of Pakistan.
But without meeting head-on the bloody events which gave birth to her country Sidhwa cannot be
true to her passion for history.
In her third novel, Ice-Candy-Man, she turns her attention to that terrible period of her
country’s history as she dramatically recreates Lahore (the predominant setting of all three of
these novels) during the tumultuous months of Partition.

25
To understand Pakistan, Bapsi Sidhwa appears to suggest, it is necessary to understand the

events which led to its emergence as a new nation in 1947. With this always in mind, her
wonderfully irreverent first novel begins a lifetime earlier—towards the end of the nineteenth
century. It is an unusual passage to India which transports the reader to the heart of the Parsi
community, and, as the story progresses, prepares him or her for the end of a significant chapter
of history—the birth of Pakistan.
There is always a strong sense of place in this novel, Lahore is vividly brought to life through
the wealth of local detail Sidhwa includes, and there is a strong sense, too, of community. Like the
author herself, the hero of the novel is a Parsi, and through Freddy, his family, and their Parsi
friend, the culture of this minority community is imaginatively recreated.
Though the focus on Parsi customs and beliefs is interesting in itself, the decision to set her
story within the Parsi community is made on solid literary grounds too. Her choice of a Parsi hero
enables Sidhwa to marginalize her narrator, to make him a slightly detached observer of the events
played out by the Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs as history moves inexorably, step by step towards
1947. She also appears to be suggesting that to understand the whole one must understand all the
constituent parts (the various ethnic/religious groups). Her lens in this novel focuses primarily
on the Parses, but through their contact with other groups the whole is gradually glimpsed bit by
bit.
Along the way there are many clear historical signposts. The date, for example, is introduced
on a number of occasions, and references to Partition or Independence recur throughout the
novel. The presence of the British Raj, which had such a significant, if illegitimate role in the birth
of Pakistan, is evident, for example, in the character of Colonel Williams. It is also brought to mind
by Freddy’s friend Mr. Charles P. Allen, whose name reminds the reader, particularly the western
reader, of Plain Tales from the Raj (1975), which in turn evokes Kipling’s Plain Tales from the
Hills(1888), and the whole history of the British Raj in India.
Subtly, through these minor figures, Sidhwa is writing back against the traditional pictures
of the Raj—by implying that colonel Williams accepted bribes, and by showing Freddy arranging
visits to dancing girls in the Hira Mandi for Charles P. Allen. The British Raj is thus transformed
from the proud father of so many British versions of history to the somewhat seedy progenitor of
Sidhwa’s version of Pakistan’s history.
Sidhwa is also, as a Pakistani writer, writing against Indian views of the past, against
predominantly Indian versions of Partition which have increasingly been challenging British
interpretations of those events. And as a Parsi she even appears, on occasions, to write against
Pakistani interpretations of history—as with Freddy’s foreboding words which bring the novel to
a close:
“We will stay where we are… let Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, or whoever rule. What does it matter?
The sun will continue to set—in their arses.”
By causing her novel to be seen in the context of the numerous novels of Partition, and
through the emphasis placed on Freddy’s words by their position at the close of the novel, Sidhwa
is making a strong political statement about the nature of Partition, which will be taken up more
fully in her next two novels.
Whereas The Crow Eaters draws to a close with the horrors of Partition imminent, those
horrors are the starting point of The Bride (which was actually written earlier than The Crow
Eaters). The Bride, then, commences at the beginning of the first chapter of Pakistani history.
And as The Crow Eaters was successfully set in the marginalized Parsi community, so Sidhwa
chooses to treat another marginalized ethnic group of Pakistan in The Bride.

26
Qasim’s marginalized position as a Kohistani tribal is made clear at the outset of the novel.
The description of the harshness of tribal life in the opening chapter, and the brief description of
his life in Jullundur where his tribal customs set him apart from the people of the plains,
emphasize this position. And his marginalized position is confirmed, re-enforced when he
witnesses the brutal attack on the refugee train early in the book.
Despite the horror of the attack, which he himself only just escapes, “Qasim watches the
massacre as in a cinema.” His detachment is objectified: “Although he is horrified by the slaughter
he feels no compulsion to sacrifice his own life. These are people from the plains—not his people.”
There is no suggestion of fear or cowardice in Qasim’s behavior—quite simply he would be
prepared to sacrifice his life for one of his own people, but not for Muslims of the plains.
The attack on the train which is told in the first-person to add the sense of horror, together
with the later attack on the refugee camp causes readers of The Bride, like readers of The Crow
Eaters, to recall once more the many Partition novels, like Khushwant Singh’s Train to
Pakistan and Chaman Nahal’s Azadi (1976), in which similar attacks take place; indeed attacks
on refugee trains are so common in novels of Partition that they are almost a leitmotif for the
period. In The Bride, however, the horror of “the chaotic summer of 1947” is only the starting
point of the novel rather than its subject.
When she is fifteen, Zaitoon, the young girl Qasim adopts after the attack on the Lahore-
bound train, is taken to her stepfather’s ancestral home in the mountains to be married to one of
his kinsmen. This allows Sidhwa to contrast the often brutal ways of Qasim’s people with the
gentler life Zaitoon has known in Lahore, and sets the scene for an exploration of the cultural
divisions Sidhwa sees within independent Pakistan. At the heart of her examination of the
conflicts she perceives between two essentially male-dominated worlds, lies a very strong interest
in the position of women in Pakistani society. This Interest in women is skillfully highlighted by
the introduction of the young American woman, Carol, who is married to a ‘modern’ western-
educated Pakistani husband. Her presence in the novel does not emphasize the cross-cultural
differences between East and West so much as the cross-gender differences that exist within
Pakistani society. Women, unlike men, are expected to be silenced voices, inhabiting the shadows
cast by their fathers, husbands, the family home—silences and shadows which deny an individual
her identity, make her anonymous.
Sidhwa uses the burka as the ultimate symbol of shadow and silence: when Zaitoon borrows
a baurka (tribal women do not wear the burka, and Qasim will not allow Zaitton to wear one) she
can walk past her father unrecognized; similarly, Carol, offended by the stares of a group of tribal
men sarcastically comments, “Maybe I should wear a burkha!”, suggesting that this would be a
shadow which would hide her and metamorphosis her into an anonymous part of womankind. In
this respect the generally negative connotations of shadows and silence in this book have a
positive aspect too, which should not be overlooked.
In Lahore the women are at ease, are truly themselves only when they inhabit these shadows
together in the absence of men. The zenana, for example, is seen as a refuge from the male world.
It is described as: a domain given over to procreation, female odours and the interminable care of
children…
Redolent of easy hospitality, the benign squalor in the women’s quarters inexorably drew
Zaitoon, as it did all its inmates, into the mindless, velvet vortex of the womb. The positive
sisterhood of the zenana, or women's quarter, is offset by the image of the zenana as a prison—
the women are described as inmates—while the comfort and safety of the ‘velvet vortex of the
womb’ is partially denied by the fact that it is also a ‘domain given over to procreation’ and thus
not entirely free from the influence of men. The picture of Pakistan Sidhwa presents inThe Bride is
not one of harmony, rather she focuses her critical lens on the many conflicts and divisions that

27
she sees as part of life in that country, particularly those which must continually be faced by
women in Pakistan.
The important shaping-presence of the now-departed British Raj is also evident in this novel,
Sidhwa reminds the reader, as she did in The Crow Eaters, of the role of the British in the division
of the sub-continent into two countries, India and Pakistan: “The earth is not easy to carve
up. India required a deft and sensitive surgeon, but the British, steeped in domestic
preoccupation, hastily and carelessly butchered it. They were not deliberately mischievous - only
cruelly negligent! A million Indians died. The earth sealed its clumsy new boundaries in blood as
town by town, farm by farm, the border was defined.”
The birth of Pakistan was not a time for rejoicing. Rather, Sidhwa casts the British not in the
role of caring surgeon, but as bloody abortionist, the child of whose botched work survives, alive
but damaged and literally dripping with the blood of its parent India. But in this novel the ills of
Pakistan are by no means laid solely at the feet of the British Raj. Pakistan's continuing maladies
are due to corrupt Pakistani politicians and businessmen, like the ‘Leader’ Nikka Pehalwan works
for, and to the colonial patronage of the United States which is gradually ousting the legacy of the
British Raj.
Similarly, Pakistan’s colonial past, and the English literary heritage out of which novelists like
Sidhwa have emerged and now write against is recalled when in their early months in Lahore,
“Qasim perched a frightened Zaitoon on the tall, proud snout of the Zam-Zam cannon, known
because of Kipling as ‘Kim's gun.” This reference shows too that Sidhwa is aware that many
western readers (who will make up the majority of her readership) will read her in the shadow of
Anglo-Indian writers like Kipling, and that their first view of India/Pakistan may have been the
picture of Kim sitting “in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah.”
In both The Crow Eaters and The Bride, partition has been important, but not the shaping-
force of either novel. In her third novel, Ice-Candy-Man, Partition is the shaping-force. And as in
her earlier novels, Sidhwa chooses a marginalized narrator—a child, a female, a Parsi, a victim of
polio—a narrator who is so marginalized that in less-skilled authorial hands she could easily have
vanished off the page altogether.
In a scathing review of the book for the New Statesman, Marianne Wiggins suggests that
“Much of Sidhwa’s trouble in telling this tale lies in her choice of narrative voice,” and that “As
character fails, so does any sense of the politics of the time—so does any sense of place.” The extent
of Wiggins’s miss-reading of the novel is astonishing: there is a strong sense of place, of Lahore,
and there is a strong sense of the politics of the time, a strong historical consciousness in this
novel, as there is in her two previous novels.
Despite Wiggins’s objections to the young narrator, it may be that the atrocities of 1947 are
best seen through the innocent, naïve eyes of a child, who has no Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh axe to
grind, and who is thus likely to present a more objective view of what she sees. As a child Lenny
is free both from the prejudices of religion, and from the prejudices against women and the
constraints imposed on her sex which she will be subject to as she grows older:
“Our shadow glides over a Brahmin pundit… Our shadow has violated his virtue. The Pundit
cringes… He looks at his food as it is infected with maggots. Squeamishly picking up the leaf, he
tips its contents behind a bush and throws away the leaf…
I am a diseased maggot. I look at Yousaf. His face is drained of joy, bleak, furious. I know he too
feels himself composed of shit, crawling with maggots.
Now I know surely. One man’s religion is another man’s poison. I experience this feeling of utter
degradation, of being an untouchable excrescence, an outcast again, years later when I hold out

28
my hand to a Parsee priest at a wedding and he, thinking I am menstruating beneath my facade
of diamonds and sequined sari, cringes.”
The authorial voice, in this case the powerful voice of hindsight, clearly compares religious
prejudices to the prejudices against women, within the various religious groups themselves as well
as in Pakistani society in general. Moreover, by using a child narrator Sidhwa is truer to her own
memories than if she wrote through the prejudiced eyes of an older narrator. It may be worth
remembering that Sidhwa herself was a young girl in Lahore in the years leading up to Partition,
and thus, like Lenny, witnessed the historical events of the time through childhood eyes.
Wiggins’s ill-conceived and unrestrained criticism of the authorial voice is effectively
answered in Lenny’s self-condemning question, “How can anyone trust a truth-infected tongue?”
This is a wonderful conceit, an elaborate metaphor which contains both paradoxical and ironical
elements. The word ‘infected’ loads its partner ‘truth’ with unusually negative connotations and
causes us to reflect on the nature of the truth we want to hear. Though we require Lenny to be a
reliable witness to the historical events she sees, and to tell an historical truth (within the bounds
of Sidhwa’s fictional truth) in her narration, we are made uneasy by the unwise, instinctive truth
which causes, her to betray Ayah. Only a child could own such a truth-infected tongue. It is this
same childish innocence which causes Lenny to draw a number of wrong conclusions about the
petrol which is loaded in and out of her mother’s car, and about the women in the ‘prison’ across
the road. But it is testament to Sidhwa’s skill as a novelist that the reader always sees the ‘real’
truth of the situation, while at the same time recognizing the validity of Lenny’s truth.
Again, we are reminded that there is no single truth—there are always many ways of
interpreting the events which are being played out in Sidhwa's Lahore of 1947. An unreliable or
apparently unreliable narrator is always, one hopes, used for a purpose. InIce-Candy-Man the
fact that Lenny’s unreliable narration proves, after all, to be reliable in its own way, causes us to
at least question the British and Indian versions of the truth that have hitherto been accepted.
The decision to make her narrator a child also allows Sidhwa to restrict her world to a very
small geographical area ofLahore. This compressed world of a child’s vision is populated by a
relatively small group of people, which like the focus on the Parsi community in The Crow
Eaters or the focus on the Kohistani tribals in The Bride, provides a useful microcosm through
which Sidhwa can convey the wider history of the period; thus Ayah's followers include a Hindu,
a Muslim, a Sikh, a Pathan from the mountains, a Jat from the plains, who together are
representative of the population mix of Lahore prior to Partition.
The British Raj enters Lenny’s little world, too, when Mr. And Mrs. Roger come for dinner,
and her tutor (the aptly named) Mrs. Pen is an Anglo-Indian. The sickening violence of the period
(revealed in all its enormity in the great set-piece story that Lenny’s young friend Ranna tells of
his own escape from the slaughter that overtook his village) which is difficult for a child (Lenny
or Ranna) to understand is paradoxically seen more clearly by the reader through the
uncomprehending eyes of a child. It is the innocence and disbelief of the children in this book—
Lenny, her brother Adi, Cousin, Ranna—together with the humanity of people like Lenny’s
mother, who smuggles rationed petrol at great personal risk to help her Hindu and Sikh friends
escape Lahore, and some wonderful, deft comic moments, that save the novel from an all-
consuming bleakness, and provide hope for the future. This essential humanity, this innocence,
this instinctive understanding of the need for restraint, is apparent too in other Partition novels.
Contrary to Wiggins’s view, Sidhwa’s young narrator is always convincing, and even her faulty
memory, always skillfully controlled by Sidhwa, adds authenticity to the novel, as the following
passage illustrates:

29
“Mozang Chawk burns for months… and months… despite its brick and mortar construction:
despite its steel girders and the density of its terraces that run in an uneven high-low, broad-
narrow continuity for miles on either side: despite the small bathrooms and godowns and
corrugated tin shelters for charpoys deployed to sleep on the roof—and its doors and wooden
rafters—the building could not have burned for months. Despite all the ruptured dreams, broken
lives, buried gold, bricked-in rupees, secreted jewelry, lingering hopes… the fire could not have
burned for months and months…
But in my memory it is branded over an inordinate length of time: memory demands poetic
license.”
That comment on memory reveals an authorial presence which subtly lends power to the
narrator’s voice, and a sense of hindsight which strengthens, adds authority to the immediacy of
the intimate first-person narration, and draws together past and present. The dinner-party at
Lenny’s parent’s house, during which Lenny and her brother hide under the large table and
eavesdrop on the conversation overhead, allows Sidhwa to introduce a discussion of the major
political issues of the day—Swaraj, the demand for Pakistan—and the major political players—
Gandhi, Jinnah, Wavell, Congress, the Muslim League, the Akalis—which would otherwise be
outside the world of her young narrator.
Similarly, Lenny overhears much about the current political situation (much of which she
doesn’t understand at the time) as she sits with Ayah and her followers. And it is because of what
she overhears, because of the opinions she has been exposed to, that Lenny suddenly becomes
aware of the different religions all around her, and understands that in the Lahore of 1947 people
are not simply themselves: “It is sudden. One day everybody is themselves—and the next day they
are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian. People shrink, dwindling into symbols. Ayah is no longer just
my all-encompassing Ayah—she is also a token. A Hindu.” This signals a growth from innocence
to experience, which prompts us to place more trust in the rapidly maturing narrator. But despite
her growing maturity there are still some things that Lenny can only interpret through childhood
experience.
Lenny’s attempt to understand this, to her incomprehensible, attack in her own terms follows
shortly afterwards:
“I select a large life-like doll with a china face and blinking blue eyes and coarse black curls.
It has a sturdy, well-stuffed cloth body and a substantial feel. I hold it upside down and pull its
pink legs apart. The knees and thighs bend unnaturally, but the stitching in the center stays intact.
I hold one leg out to Adi.“Here,” I say, “pull it.”
“Why?” asks Adi looking confused.
“Pull, damn it!” I scream, so close to hysteria that Adi blanches and hastily grabs the proffered
leg… Adi and I pull the doll's legs, stretching it in a fierce tug-of-war, until making a wrenching
sound it suddenly splits. We stagger off balance. The cloth skin is ripped right up to its armpits
spilling chunks of grayish cotton and coiled brown coir and the innards that make its eyes blink
and make it squawk “Ma-ma.” I examine the doll’s spilled insides and, holding them in my hands,
collapse on the bed sobbing.
Adi couches close to me. I can't bear the disillusioned and contemptuous look in his eyes.
“Why were you so cruel if you couldn’t stand it?” he asks at last, infuriated by the pointless
brutality.”
By having Lenny transport the cruelty she witnesses into the once-safe world of dolls, Sidhwa
introduces an image which is as haunting as any vivid, bloody description of the Banya’s death

30
could have been, and forces the reader to re-examine the inhumanity behind the atrocious act, the
pointless brutality of Partition. Adi is ‘infuriated by the pointless brutality’ shown by Lenny
towards her doll because he doesn’t understand it, just as we find ourselves unable to understand
the brutality which causes the death of the Banya, and the brutality that underlies all the violence
of this terrible period. And because we, as readers, still have the mob's brutality fresh in our
minds, Adi’s words echo our fury and emphasize the metaphysical element of Lenny’s action, and
the fury which drove her to destroy her doll. Unlike Qasim in The Bride, Lenny cannot maintain
an impersonal distance from the violence she witnesses. Indeed, that violence gradually disrupts
the very center of her own small world, as first she comes across the gunny-sacked body of Ayah’s
preferred admirer, Masseur, and then sees Ayah herself abducted from the family home by an
angry mob.
Alamgir Hashmi does not share Marianne Wiggins’s hostility towards Sidhwa’s narrator, but
he too has some reservations about the historical content of the novel. He writes that Ice-Candy-
Man“concerns the Partition events of 1947, and is more interesting for its characterization,
developing narrative techniques and the child’s point of view than what it actually has to tell about
the events.” Yet Ice-Candy-Man is deeply political in its retelling of the events of Partition from a
Pakistani rather than an Indian perspective, and it is a novel laden with historical references.
Admittedly, at times the historical signposts in this novel do appear misleading. The early
reference to Gandhi’s intention “to walk a hundred miles to the ocean to make salt,” for example,
is wholly out of its time-scale. Gandhi’s salt march to Dandi Beachtook place in the early months
of 1930, not in the early months of 1947.
However, this is far from being a case of inaccurate historical detail; rather memory is playing
a part here—what Lenny is told and what she remembers hearing first-hand merge at times, as is
common with our childhood memories, and this reference to Gandhi is for Lenny a received truth
even if it is historically out of its time. It has become part of the ethos of the age. Similarly, she
confuses the burning of Lahore with the celebration of Holi—a Spring Festival which would have
taken place some months earlier. The introduction of such tricks of memory shows how
thoroughly Sidhwa understands her young narrator, and makes her a more rather than less
reliable witness. The historical signposts or references in this novel are necessarily limited
because Lenny doesn’t understand much of what she hears.
As Lenny herself says: “Obviously (Ice-Candy-Man’s) quoting Bose (Sometimes he quotes
Gandhi, or Nehru or Jinnah, but I’m fed up of hearing about them. Mother, Father and their
friends are always saying: Gandhi said this, Nehru said that. Gandhi did this, Jinnah did that.
What’s the point of talking so much about people we don’t know?)” But a number of significant
historical events do occur in the novel.
And in her attempt to write against Indian versions of history, to present instead a Pakistani
version, she complains, too, about the way Jinnah has been treated in Indian and in British
histories: “And, today, forty years later, in films of Gandhi’s and Mountbattens lives, in books by
British and Indian scholars, Jinnah, who for a decade was known as ‘Ambassador of Hindu-
Muslim Unity,’ is caricatured.” In re-imagining Jinnah, Sidhwa again displays the important
presence of hindsight in her fiction (‘today, forty years later’) and draws on a quotation from the
Indian poet and freedom fighter, Sarojini Naidu, to support the validity of her portrayal of Jinnah.
Sarojini Naidu is not the only literary figure Sidhwa introduces into her story. Her references
to such figures as Iqbal and Longfellow show her own dual literary heritage, out of which Pakistani
writing in English has also grown. The most interesting literary reference, though, which occurs
early in the novel links Sidhwa’s title to Eugene O’Neill’s play The Iceman Cometh: “Ice-Candy-
Man is selling his popsicles to the other groups lounging on the grass. My mouth waters. I have
confidence in Ayah’s chocolate chemistry… lank and loping the Ice-Candy-Man cometh.”

31
In O’Neill’s play, published in 1946, Sidhwa has found a framework for her dramatic re-
creation of Lahore during the months leading up to Partition. Through this intertextual
referencing, and by responding to a particular literary text, Sidhwa is re-confirming the role of
fiction as a shaping-force in history, while at the same time exposing the influences that are
working on her as a writer who divides her time between Pakistan and the United States. By
referring to the influences of British and American Literary texts, Sidhwa is once again reflecting
on the influence of Britain, and, more recently, America on the history of her own country.
Bapsi Sidhwa’s voice is an important voice in Pakistani writing in English. Her treatment of
the Parsi community in The Crow Eaters and Ice-Candy-Man provides the reader with an
intimate view of a minor ethnic group in Pakistan that has hitherto not been in fiction, just as The
Bride provides significant glimpses of the lives of Pathans and Kohistanis of the Tribal Territories.
India has produced a number of Partition novels which have contributed to the strong body of
fiction which treats the history of India. But Partition is as much a part of Pakistani history as it
is a part of Indian history, and it is important to have a Pakistani version of that shared horror. Ice-
Candy-Man is both Pakistani version of Partition and a major contribution to the growing list of
Partition novels which continue to emerge from the sub-continent. Through her various
marginalized narrators and through the experiences of the many marginalized characters in her
first three novels, Sidhwa gives voice to hitherto silenced groups of Pakistan and in so doing tells
other versions of her country’s history.
Sidhwa’s Quest for the Continuation of Parsi

Community
Bapsi Sidhwa has emerged as a leading woman novelist writing in English from Pakistan. In
her novels, she shows her concern about her Pakistani roots, culture and the treatment of recent
history i.e., Partition. Being a Parsi, she also introduces her Parsi community in her novels. She
has a distinctive Parsi ethos in her novels along with her individual voice. She possesses a sense
of individualism and humour which makes her writings lively. She also possesses the art of
storytelling.
As a realist, she believes that a writer of fiction cannot alter the social reality but at least, he
can make his voice audible to the sensible people. The Crow Eaters is Sidhwa's first published
novel but she wrote her novel The Bride first. It was published later.
When her novel The Crow Eaters was published in Pakistan, it created a storm in its limited
reading circles because it was alleged that she revealed her Parsi community's social and ethical
secrets to the world. Abroad, the novel was praised for its literary value and strength. It has "a
distinctive authorial voice which celebrates the achievements of a tiny community which has
survived migration, resettled peacefully and prospered without losing their cultural identity,".
In fact, the book created a turmoil in the Parsi Community. The novel describes the social
mobility of a Parsi family, the Junglewallas during the British rule in the early 20th century. The
novel also shows the ambivalent attitude of the Parsi in the independence struggle.
In her another novel, Ice-Candy-Man, Sidhwa describes the events that took place during the
Partition through a child-narrator Lenny. She presents the Parsi paradox of whether to support
the independence struggle or not. Novy Kapadia's observations need attention here:
"With Independence imminent, the dilemma is acute and the paranoid feelings of the Parsis, a

32
minuscule minority get accentuated. The Lahore Parsis have an acrimonious debate on the
political situation at their temple hall meeting. Apprehensions of their status at the departure of
the British emerge." It is observed that now the Parsi community's fascination with the Whites is
gone and they hold. A status quo position, resulting in "a typical Parsi compromise." The
community of the Parsis is concerned about its survival. Bapsi Sidhwa also provides the moral
vision of her community.
In her novel An American Brat, Sidhwa deals with the inter-faith marriage in the Parsi
community. Feroza Ginwalla the rebellious daughter of Cyrus and Zareen moves
to Colorado from Lahore to improve her lot. Sidhwa here shows the protagonist Feroza adapting
to an alien culture. Her room mate Joe instructs her into American way of life.
Feroza becomes bold enough to shed her hesitation. Now she discovers that she has attained
an independent personality and thinking. She no longer needs guardians and protectors. She
intends to marry David Press, an American Jew. Her family atLahore is disturbed as no one had
in their family marriage outside the parsi community. Here Sidhwa's treatment of theme, subject
and characters provides a valuable insight into the Parsi psyche. She also provides an ironic
exposure of the Parsi attitude to inter-faith marriage.
Feroza's mother Zareen later realizes that her attitude towards interfaith marriage is no better
than the Mullahs of Pakistan. Sidhwa also touches the problem of fundamentalism in Pakistani
society. She does not intend to criticize a community but its orthodoxy and out-dated values. She
employs irony to expose fundamentalism. "She criticizes the 'mullah mentality' that "girls must
not play hockey or sing or dance!" The Parsi community's own brand of fundamentalism."
Bapsi Sidhwa has emerged as a trendsetter in English novel in the Indian sub-continent. She
provides insights into the antiquity of the Parsi faith with their tolerance of other beliefs and their
cultural values. She lets her readers to know about the Parsi community with their rites, customs,
traditions, beliefs and mannerism. One psychological factor behind the restrictions in Parsi
community is the small population and its closed society.
As a Parsi, Sidhwa's writings show her quest for the continuation of her community. "She
aptly reflects the cultural multiplicity in which she has lived. It is Sidhwa's sexual and excretory
candour and depiction of enforced sexual innocence in a touching manner," observes Novy
Kapadia. Sidhwa's attempt to show the heart and soul of the Parsi community has been successful.
She presents realistically the reaction of the Parsi community towards the question of loyalties
and Swaraj. The Parsis have also been presented a culturally hybrids in their faiths and
mannerism.
The novels-like An American Brat, The Crow Eaters and Ice-Candy-Man hold a mirror to
Parsi community for which Bapsi Sidhwa had to face a hostile reaction from orthodox section of
Parsis. The reflection of the Parsi ethos and comic tone in her writings makes her one of the finest
Asian writers in fiction. Jagdev Singh observes:
What distinguishes Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice-Candy-Man U988) is the prism of Parsi sensitivity
through which the cataclysmic event is depicted. Ice-Candy-Manis, so far, the only novel written
by a Parsi on the theme of Partition. While the novel shows in the beginning the noncommittal
attitude of the Parsi community towards the flux in which the various communities of India found
themselves in the beginning of the twentieth century, it distills the love-hate relationship of the
Hindus and Muslims through the consciousness and point of view of Lenny, an unusually
precocious eight year old Parsi girl.

33
Bapsi Sidhwa is a realist to the core. She does not romanticize situations and characters in
her narratives. Her novels also provide an interesting and realistic socio-cultural background of
her community. She introduces her Parsi character without any distortion or exaggeration. They
are true to their colours. Her portrayal of Parsi Characters in her novels is in fact a part of her
quest for the continuation of her Parsi identity. The novel Ice-Candy-Man has a great potential
for textual and sociological criticism.
Bapsi Sidhwa: A Pakistani Writer

In Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice-Candy-Man, the narrator, Lenny, muses about the absurdity of the
Partition of the subcontinent: "I am Pakistani. In a snap. Just like that." Nevertheless, despite her
narrator's musing over the absurdity of Partition, Sidhwa's Pakistani perspective is evident in her
writings. Sidhwa is perhaps the first Pakistani writer to receive international recognition—apart
from Zulfikar Ghose. As a Pakistani writer, Sidhwa feels it incumbent upon her to explain her
Pakistani background to those unfamiliar with her milieu. Because she is a Parsi, she attempts to
explain this heritage as well.
Sidhwa is not alone in her need to explain her heritage, but shares with other Third-World
writers, particularly those writing in a non-native language, the compulsion to explain her culture
to an audience unfamiliar with that culture. Thus The Crow Eaters" as well as The Bride' and Ice-
Candy-Man are firmly rooted in a historical-political consciousness and concern directly or in-
directly, the Partition of the subcontinent and the creation of the newly-independent states
of India and Pakistan. The Bride, her first written novel, though published after the success of The
Crow Eaters, begins some years before Partition and, for the earlier part of the novel, describes
the communal tension during Partition, a train massacre, and the displacement consequent upon
Partition. It is only after describing the turmoil of Partition and its aftermath, that the story of
Zaitoon and her adopted father, the hill-man Qasim, is developed. The Crow Eaters ends just
before Partition, with Faredoon Junglewalla, the protagonist of the novel, pronouncing, in his
inimitable fashion, upon the bickering politicians who are going to cut up the country. Ice-Candy-
Man, tighter in focus than the other two novels, concerns wholly the turbulent events of Partition
as they affect the lives of a Parsi family and the people who come into their lives. When Ice-Candy-
Man was published in the United States in 1991 the title was changed toCracking India, focussing
on the Partition rather than on the eponymous character.
Unlike the Indian writer of today who has a long literary heritage and does not have to make
new beginnings, Sidhwa was writing in what was essentially a vacuum. Hence it was necessary for
her to establish her political credentials, proclaim her cultural allegiance.
Sidhwa establishes her political identity in two significant ways: first, by focusing on the worst
Indian atrocities committed in the Punjab, and secondly, by reappraising the character of Jinnah
and attempting to improve this image by suggesting that the British were less than fair to
both Pakistan and Jinnah. Sidhwa's political stance is clearly depicted through her treatment of
Partition—which it may be noted, is a focal point in each of her books. Even The Crow
Eaters which ends before Partition, refers to it. Ice-Candy-Man narrates what takes place
in Lahore during the traumatic events that accompanied the division of the sub-continent. And
Sidhwa's first book, though inspired by the murder of a tribal woman, begins with the gruesome
account of a train massacre during Partition. In The Bride,Sidhwa combines her feminist
concerns with a compulsion to explain the culture of Pakistan to audiences unfamiliar with that

34
culture. It is this combination that gives the novel its structural weakness but also its perceptive
insights.
Though The, Bride fails to come up to the level of either 'The Crow Eaters or Ice-Candy-
Man, its failure stems from the same motives that make Ice-Candy-Man a success: to familiarize
her audience with the writer's cultural, political milieu. In Ice-Candy-Man to which she came
via The Crow Eaters, she is both Parsi and Pakistani at the same time. She returns to the Parsi
world she had described so well in The Crow Eaters and focuses as she had in the second half
of The Bride, on the fate of a young woman. By narrowing her canvas, she succeeded in writing a
book which, even if not as successful as The Crow Eaters—this was, remember, the first of its
kind—shows an exceptional literary talent. Furthermore, by blending the humour of The Crow
Eaterswith the theme of Partition and a feminist perspective, Sidhwa reveals herself as a writer
of the first rank.
In Ice-Candy-Man Sidhwa describes Partition through the eyes of the young Lenny. The
story of the growth of Lenny and her awakening into sexual awareness merges with her awakening
into history. Sidhwa's humour blends with horror and pity as she tells the story of Partition
through the perspective of a child. Lenny's comprehension of the events of Partition is told
through the story of what happens to her beloved Hindu Ayah. When the story begins, Ayah is
surrounded by many admirers, Hindu and Muslim. Among these many admirers is the Ice-Candy-
Man after whom the novel is named. As Partition nears, Muslims and Hindus become enemies.
Some Hindus in an attempt to save themselves become Christians. Some Hindus leave Lahore.
Ayah is Hindu, but, protected by her Parsi employers, she assumes that she is in no danger.
Unfortunately her charms lead to her abduction by a group led by the Ice-Candy-Man. Ice-Candy-
Man keeps Ayah, renamed Mumtaz. Ayah begs to be rescued and she finally is by godmother—in
a departure from The Bride where the rescue of Zaitoon was effected by a man.
Sidhwa makes her Pakistani identity unmistakably clear in Ice-Candy-Man where she sug-
gests how Partition favoured India over Pakistan. The Hindus are being favored over the Muslims
by the remnants of the Raj. Now that its objective to divide India is achieved, the British favour
Nehru over Jinnah. Nehru is Kashmiri, they grant him Kashmir.
They grant Nehru Gurdaspur and Pathankot without which Muslim Kashmir cannot be secured.
True, Lenny is not Sidhwa, but as Laurel Graeber points out, "Bapsi Sidhwa has attempted to
give a Pakistani perspective to the Partition of India." As a Pakistani, Sidhwa feels it incumbent
upon herself to defend Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The reference to Jinnah is made aptly in the
context of the Parsi family that is the focus of the novel. Lenny comes across the picture of an
"astonishingly beautiful woman" and is told that it is the picture of Jinnah's wife.
Sidhwa, however, rises above petty nationalism. Ice-Cancly-Man does not stress the Two-
Nation theory behind the creation of Pakistan. In other words, she does not stress the belief of
Pakistani Muslims of the necessity of Partition and the creation of Pakistan. In fact, Ice-Candy-
Man suggests that religious and cultural differences are artificially created and deliberately fos-
tered. Through Lenny's perspective, Sidhwa shows how religious differences were deliberately
exploited on the eve of Partition.
Sidhwa describes the destruction of the Muslim village of Pir Pindo Lenny visited earlier
during happier times. The villagers had been warned to leave, but they do not, and Ranna
describes the mass murder that takes place. Sidhwa does not narrate this incident through Lenny
but through Raana:
Ranna saw his uncle beheaded. His older brothers, his cousins. The Sikhs were among them like
hairy vengeful demons, wielding bloodied swords, dragging them out as a handful of Hindus,

35
darting about the fringes, their faces vaguely familiar, pointed out and identified the Mussulmans
by name. He felt a blow cleave the back of his head and the warm flow of blood. Ranna fell just
inside the door on a tangled pole of unrecognizable bodies. Someone fell on him drenching him
in blood.
Sidhwa took up the story of Ranna and retold it in a short story "'Defend Yourself against
Me." In this story Sidhwa also suggests that though the past cannot be forgotten, it can be forgiven.
Let not the crimes of the fathers be visited on their sons—but then the sons must be conscious of
their fathers' sins and ask for forgiveness.
A Brief Study of Novels Based on Partition

A number of novels in the Indian sub-continent have been written on the theme of the
Partition of India. This unforgettable historical moment has been captured as horrifying by the
novelists like Khushwant Singh in Train to Pakistan (1956), A Bend in the Ganges (1964) by
Manohar Malgaonkar, Attia Hosain's Sunlight on a Broken Column(1961) , Rajan's The Dark
Dancer, Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice-Candy-Man, Chaman Nahal'sAzadi and Bhisham Sahni's Tamas.
These novels examine the inexorable logic of Partition as an offshoot of fundamentalism and
fanaticism sparked by hardening communal attitudes. These novels belong to the genre of the
partition novel. These novels effectively and realistically depict the "vulnerability of human
understanding and life, caused by the throes of Partition which relentlessly divided friends," as
Novy Kapadia observes. She opines that throughout history, fanatics as well as ideologies, pushed
to the emotional brink of daring their lives, have taken the plunge, which has triggered off a chain
reaction of rigid mental fixations and attitudes.
Bapsi Sidhwa's novels are narratives of political and moral upheaval resulting in a
masstrauma which continues to haunt the minds of generations. Generally, in the novels of
Sidhwa, there are people from all walks of life and from all communities. They are Hindus,
Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and Parsis. The event of Partition has been depicted through the
painful experiences of these ethnic groups. Novy Kapadia explicitly explains the situation as:
"With a morbid sense of humour, Bapsi Sidhwa reveals how the violence of Partition has serrated
the roots of people of different communities, irrespective of ideology, friendship and rational
ideas. In such a depiction, Bapsi Sidhwa resembles the horror portrayed by William Golding
in The Lord of the Flies(1954).
Golding indicated that there is a thin line between good and evil in human beings and it is
only the structures of civilizations which prevent the lurking evil from being rampant. At the end
of the novel The Lord of the Fliesboys of Jack's tribe like barbarians got a sadistic delight in
hunting Ralph. The situation is saved as a naval officer reaches the island to stop brutality ...
Lenny's destruction of the doll also has allegorical significance. It shows how even a young girl is
powerless to stem the tide of surging violence within, thereby implying that grown up fanatics
enmeshed in communal frenzy are similarly trapped into brutal violence.' It becomes obvious that
there is no solution to communal holocausts except struggle and resistance to communalism in a
collective effort.
There are no winners in these riots and the communal holocaust devours everything that
supports life-sustaining principles. It presents a scene of Holi, not of colours but of blood in the
living inferno. The Partition of India proved to be the greatest communal divide in the Indian sub-

36
continent. In fact, the novel Ice-Candy-Man is a Pakistani version of the Partition just like
Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan.
In the fictional world of Ice-Candy-Man,the readers are introduced to a plethora of
characters from different communities and different walks of life. "Sidhwa's novel written at a
period of history when communal and ethnic violence threaten disintegration of the sub-
continent, is an apt warning of the dangers of communal frenzy. Bapsi Sidhwa shows thatduring
communal strife, sanity and human feelings are forgotten." In fact, riots anywhere in the world
follow the common pattern where distrust and rumour reign everywhere which leads to bloodshed
and terror.
With a sprinkling of humour, parody and allegory Bapsi Sidhwa conveys a sinister warning
of the dangers of compromising with religious obscurantism and fundamentalism of all
categories. Otherwise a certain historical inevitability marks this historical process. Though her
novel is about the traumas of Partition, Bapsi Sidhwa like Amitav Ghosh reveals that communal
riots are contemporaneous and that 'those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat
it.'
Similar messages have been forwarded by other novelists in their novels based on the theme
of Partition. While depicting the heart-rending saga of Partition, these novelists have also tried to
adhere to its historical background.
In The Shadow lines, Amitav Ghosh depicts Hindu-Muslim riots in Bengal in 1964 which
soon spread to erstwhile East Pakistan. Amitav Ghosh shows "how different cultures and
communities are becoming antagonistic to a point of no return. Hence in The Shadow Lines he
effectively uses political allegory to stress the need for a syncretic civilization to avoid a communal
holocaust."
Attia Hosain's novel Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961) is another novel about the
communal divide and riots. Attia Hosain depicts the trauma of the Partition and communal riots
through her narrator-heroine Laila.The action of the novel is revealed through the memories of
her Taluqdar family disintegrating. Laila does not glorify her Muslim past or traditional customs.
Attia shows her heroine Laila making a departure from tradition and customs. She rejects
dogmatism and epicureanism.
The opening pages of the novel show Lailain an environment which is conservative. Laila's
cousin married inPakistan returns to Hasanpur. They are engaged in a hot discussion on Muslim
culture and traditions. It turns out to be a serious difference of opinion. Laila later recalls this
experience with a sigh: "In the end, inevitably we querrelled, and though we made up before we
parted I realized that the ties which had kept families together for centuries had been loosened
beyond repair."
After the violence of the Partition, Laila moves around her plundered home. Later, she vividly
recalls those shocking sights with a pang in her heart. She walks and strolls through the rooms of
her ancestral home 'Ashiana', but she does not want to return. She has been fed up with the feudal
order and now she wants to be Ameer's wife. She experiences the expansion of her limited self
after discovering her new identity. A-famous critic compares the experience of trauma of Partition
of Laila with Lenny (Ice-Candy-Man):
"She comes to detest dogmatism, either in the name of religion or radicalism. Her
views and perspective of life developed after intense personal struggle enable Laila
to tackle the loss of her husband Ameer and the trauma of Partition. So both

37
narrator-heroines, Lenny and Laila react against communal responses and the
horrors of violence. The mature Laila rationalizes against communal tension
whereas the young Lenny instinctively reacts against the horrors of communal
violence."
All the novelists writing about, communal violence agree that it is no easy job to find out a
solution to the problem of "communal holocaust except intense struggle against dogmatism".
In Ice-Candy-Man, Sidhwa shows how friends and neighbours turn out to be enemies
overnight. A Muslim village Pir Pindo is attacked by Sikhs and Muslim men and women are killed.
Sikh families in Lahore are attacked in Lahore and the chain reaction continues. People like Hari
and Moti become converts to save their lives. Ayah's lover Masseur is killed.
Bapsi Sidhwa shows that the communal frenzy has a distorting effect on the masses and leads
to feelings of distrust and frenzy. In such an atmosphere of communal frenzy and hatred, simple
people like Ice-Candy man lose their temper when he sees the mutilated bodies of Muslims.
Revenge becomes the only motivation in his life. Friendships and personal relations are forgotten.
The atmosphere becomes malicious and Ice-Candy man joins the frenzied mob which abdicates
Ayah and keeps her in the brothels of Hira Mandi.
Later in the novel, Ice-Candy man tries to mend his ways and forcibly marries Ayah and
changes her name as Mumtaz. But she finds this disgusting and with the help of Lenny's
Godmother she reaches a relief camp in Amritsar. Ice-Candy-Man tries to get her but in vain. The
novel conveys a serious warning of the dangers of communalism and religious obscurantism.
Gender and Imagination in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Fiction

It was only after the Second World War that women novelists transcended gender-related
limitations in their thematic concerns and started writing about a range of experiences, including
the squalid and the terrifying. In Sidhwa's work, the themes diverge from traditional to
contemporary.
The feminine imagination in her novels is presented with an incongruous humour to discuss
serious sociopolitical issues even though Sidhwa is not gender conscious in writing about any
issue. She analyzes how Ice-Candy-Man, despite possessing stylistic charm, vivacity and com-
pelling themes, fails to achieve artistic synthesis. Though her language and narrative are refined,
Sidhwa is unable to delve deep into the psyche of her female characters, consequently the sensa-
tions it generates are discordant and dishevelled.
In the last thirty years there is a vigorous development in thinking about women and their
role in society. For majority of women their gender has had some effect on their experiences, and
their perceptions of the world, and this is reflected in the nature of the work they, produce.
Feminism has become a lighly important issue in contemporary thought and has resulted in
challenging the patriarchal assumption. The application of new ideas about women to their
conceptions has produced extensive discussion of both how women have been represented in lit-
erature and their trend of writing,
The 'gynocritics' theorize about women's literary production and women writers have re-
sponded in terms of ‘colonization of the mind.' In the contemporary literary scenario in the Indian

38
subcontinent, gender consciousness is not palpable in the phraseology of Western criticism.

Women are not lagging behind in their input of literature—we have women writers writing in
English from the nineteenth century onwards, not to mention regional writers. These writers with
their distinctive talents, particular age of interests and individual style have proved that they are
imaginative and are at par with women writers of the West.
It was thought before the First World War that a woman writer is at her best when she deals
with the known domain of her womanliness, immediate surroundings and cognition of varied
relationships that she creates for herself. But it was after the second World War that women
novelists of quality have begun enriching literature, specially fiction, on the Indian subcontinent.
Women writers are not always preoccupied with their personal lives; many of them are
interested in large-scale social or intellectual questions. Novelists have started using a
combination in varying proportions of what they have experienced, what they have discovered
and what they have imagined. Their gender has not debarred women from writing about a range
of experiences that include the squalid and the terrifying.
India and Pakistan have enjoyed a common literary and cultural heritage till 1947 and have
parted ways in trends and achievements after Partition. In spite of Pakistani fragmentation
and Sri Lanka's autonomy, India dominates the subcontinent due to its size and literature. The
shared thought and heritage has produced in India many women writers whose work is copious
and multifarious in its amplitude. But in Pakistan there is virtually only one established woman
writer, Bapsi Sidhwa, and in Sri Lanka probably Yasmine Gooneratne.
Bapsi Sidhwa, born in Karachi and brought up in Lahore, is acclaimed by the Times as 'a
powerful and dramatic novelist' and the New Statesman has described her as 'An affectionate and
shrewd observer ... a born storyteller.' In addition to writing and teaching in the United States,
she is an active social worker and has represented Pakistan at the 1975 Asian Women's Congress.
All her novels, The Crow-Eaters (1980), The Pakistani Bride (1983) and Ice-Candy-Man (1988),
are experimentations in imagination with an aim to achieve artistic synthesis.
In Sidhwa's work themes diverge from traditional to contemporaneity. Her concern ranges
from a pre-Independence social scene to Partition and its aftermath, and her time frame is fifty
years. In this narrow canvas Sidhwa who experiences the pleasures of exile is in a more
advantageous position than most of the writers. Her exile has given her an opportunity to laugh
at the slogan 'Anatomy is destiny.' She could shed many inhibitions under this influence, but it is
doubtful whether she has achieved artistic synthesis or not.
Being a writer who is not gender-conscious, she relies more on her imagination than on val-
ues. As Pap Gems says:
"Writing is individual. When you write you bring the whole of yourself to the
meristem, to the growing point of your thought. You are an explorer. You try to push
on, to find out. Writing is science, and like science, not entirely cognitive. In fact
often hardly so at all."
Therefore, in most cases writing is a personal fantasy.
Sidhwa's first novel The Crow-Eaters is about Faredoon Junglewalla, a man of distinction
and listed in the Zarathustra calendar of great men and women and whose motto in life is 'The
sweetest thing In the world is your need. Through this narcissistic personality, in about forty-six
chapters, Sidhwa takes us into the heart of the Parsi community, portraying its varied customs
and traits. It is a straight narration without any twists in the plot and we travel through the book
without much mental strain.

39
At the age of twenty-three along with his wife Putli, mother-in-law Jerbanoo and an infant
daughter Faredoon settles in Lahore, never to look back. In Lahore he continues to live till the end
of the novel that is 1940. His family expands and with his pragmatic intelligence and fraud and
arson in insurance he becomes a man of great consequence among the Parsis. People travelled
thousands of miles to see him in Lahore, especially as they wished to escape the tight spots they
had got themselves into. This successful worldly man encounters disappointment and personal
loss in the death of his eldest son and a self-exiled second son.
Within this straight conventional theme Sidhwa flings her feminine imagination with an
incongruous humour to talk about serious issues like national politics, fraud, death-dealing of
mother-in-law, Parsi superstitions, faiths, marriages, rites of death, romance, birth, multifaceted
activities and forays to London. Not so much of action but so many incidents take place that one
gets a feeling of contradiction. On the one hand the reader finds no link between the words on the
page, and on the other the vision or experience is missing in the narrative.
The Pakistani -Bride is about Qasim and his foster daughter Zaitoon. Qasim is a man who in
the hands of fate had known no childhood. From infancy, responsibility was forced upon him and
at ten he was a man conscious of rigorous code of honour by which his tribe lived. By the time he
is ten, he is married to a fifteen-year-old'girl, at sixteen he becomes a father and a widower at
thirty-four. In the year 1947 he migrates to Jullundur which is in India after Partition and from
there to Lahore, committing a murder at a slight provocation in Jullundur.
If Freddy of The Crow-Eaters contemplates murder, Qasim executes it. On his way
to Lahore he is impelled to adopt a little girl who is a riot victim like him and calls her Zaitoon. He
also makes friendship with Nikkaa 'Pahilwan' and his wife Miriam in the refugee camp. Out of the
thirty chapters in the novel, seven (from 4th to 11th) deal with Nikkaa's political connections and
Zaitoon flowering into a young girl of sixteen, and as the years slip by Qasim gets nostalgic for the
mountains and his memories become Zaitoon’s fantasies. When a proposal comes from the
mountains of Kohistani, Qasim decides to return to his tribe to settle his daughter. On their way
to Kohistan they cross the Army Camp and encounter Major Mushtaq, his cousin Farukh and his
American wife Carol. From here seven chapters explain the triangle involvement of Mushtaq,
Farukh and Carol. The chapters dealing with this relationship are more authentic than the
previous ones. Chapter 18 and 19 are about Zaitoon's incompatible marriage with Sakhi. In the
next pan shot we come to know of the infatuation of Carol for Mushtaq and also her desire to
understand Zaitoon: "Her life is different from mine, and yet I feel a real bond, an understanding
on some deep level."
The American and the Pakistani brides become subjects of their husbands' suspicion and both
take pragmatic decisions to overcome their crises. Carol decides to make it up to Farukh and
contemplates to have a child to bring anchorage to her loveless marriage. Zaitoon decides to take
a visionary course of action and runs away, knowing fully well that the punishment for such an
act is death. There is a world of difference between these two women and Mushtaq explains to
Carol:
It wouldn't be easy for you really to understand her. You'd find her life in the Zenanna with
the other women pitifully limited and claustrophobic—she'd probably find yours—if she could
ever glimpse it—terrifyingly insecure and needlessly competitive.
Though their paths are divergent, both Zaitoon and Carol take the same path toLahore.
The title of the novel is to some extent misleading and cryptic. The novel is a combination of
Qasim's personal difficulties and a diluted study of ideals and feelings about love and marriage.
The area Sidhwa takes for her subject is a significant human experience, and in her treatment of
it she does her best to make it a contemporary issue concerning the extent to which women are

40
psychologically free to change their lives. No doubt Sidhwa has passionate interest in the depth
and richness of human experience but to a certain extent her enterprise has become too much for
her to cope with.
The third novel Ice-Candy-Man and its author have been acclaimed by Anita Desai: "There
is no other writer I know on the subcontinent who combines laughter and ribaldry, a passion for
history and for truth telling as Bapsi Sidhwa does in Ice-Candy-Man."
Sidhwa acknowledges that she is indebted to Rana Khan for sharing his childhood
experiences at the time of Partition. Maybe the author's knowledge of Partition and the historical
experiences in the novel is not all that authentic and could be only a borrowed experience. The
book was written with the financial assistance of Bunting Institute and the National Endowment
for the Arts. No doubt there is novelty and freshness in the book but how far it is artistic is the
question.
Ice-Candy-Man comprises thirty-two chapters and gives us a glimpse into events of turmoil
on the Indian subcontinent during Partition. Historic truth is only a backdrop of the novel and
personal fate of the Ice-Candy-Man the focus. Ice-Candy-Man is a close associate and admirer of
an eighteen-year-old ayah working in a Parsi household to look after Lenny, a polio child of four.
As in other novels so also in this novel Sidhwa is meticulous immentioning the age of her
characters. It is through Lenny that we come to know of the action of the novel and the seriousness
of the narration is marred because of this. It is an adult that speaks through the child's memory
and keeps the reader on guard and creates a sense of impressions that the child is capable of
reminiscing. The parallel theme in the novel is the slow awakening of the child heroine to sexuality
and pains and pleasures of the grown-up and to the particular historical disaster that overwhelms
her world. There is an element of exaggeration in all instances with regard to characterization and
imagination.
Ayah has thirteen admirers and Sidhwa says: "Only the group around Ayah remains
unchanged. Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Parsee are, as always, unified around her." Of this group Ice-
Candy-Man is a man of varied interests. On bitterly cold days when ice sales plummet, Ice-Candy-
Man transforms himself into a bird man: "News and gossip flow off his glib tongue like a torrent";
sometimes he quotes national leaders and does political analysis and finally he is a
metamorphosed character adopting a poetic mould, confessing that he belongs to 'Kotha'—the
royal misbegottens located in Hira Mandi. When Ayah becomes a riot victim it is Ice-Candy-Man
that saves her and rehabilitates her in Hira Mandi and finally we come to know that she has left
for Amritsar to be-with her parents, leaving lovelorn Ice-Candy-Man to his fate. The vulnerable
Ayah becomes virtuous gaining dignity' and Ice-Candy-Man complimenting her says: "She has
the voice of angel and the grace and rhythm of a goddess. You should see her dance. How she
moves!" and goes into a poetic outburst "Princes pledge their lives to celebrate her celebrated
face!" Hitherto unknown talent of the Ayah is divulged.
There are a number of characters in the novel but Godmother alias Rodabai the social worker
is the most mundane. She must have .emerged from the depths of Sidhwa's personal experiences
as a social worker. Some of the incidents in the novel, instead of being blended into the texture of
the novel, are superimposed making the creativity of the author prosaic. After all, the novel is a
statement about a thousand different objects and these elements are to be held in place by the
force of the writer's vision, if the vision falters, the novel collapses.
A writer's imagination involves his creativity, enterprise, insight, inspiration and originality.
To achieve artistic unity the writer has to realize that "Artistic creation is a process of synthesis;
by effecting harmony in diffused elements, the artist creates a unity in diversity and imparts 'form'
to the formless and the deformed." No doubt Sidhwa is quite enterprising and she has dealt with

41
hitherto untouched themes with a straight narration and her creativity is original but she has
failed to achieve artistic synthesis. It is not enough for a writer to create sensation he has seen that
there is a grain of truth even in malicious pleasure. "Experience is composed of sensations and it
is never one solitary sensation but a system or pattern of sensations. When the sensations are co-
ordinated and harmonized our experience is pleasant and when they are discordant and
dishevelled the experience is unpleasant.
Some incidents in Sidhwa's fiction are quite incongruous and inconsequential. While reading
her works one feels that it is a deliberate attempt of hers to give novelty to her writing. This
deliberate attempt of hers in The Crow-Eaters to explore the erotic world and sentiments of the
Parsi community is quite refreshing, In her narration in the first part of the novel, she explains
her point of view and excels in the technique of description which is graphic and realistic.
Sidhwa's men have distinct personality traits but her women are not extravagant—they are
ordinary, devoid of feelings. In their limited orbits they are socially active and lead only a super-
ficial existence. Even though they are active, they are flat characters. In a novel like The Pakistani
Bride where there is ample scope for the writer to explore, Sidhwa could not go deep into the
psyche of her female protagonist, allowing methodical narration of events in sequential order.
Jerbanoo, Rodabai and Carol are lively characters with natural instincts and imagination. They
are more familiar to Sidhwa and are within her range of experience.
Sidhwa's language becomes quite refined, and her analytical faculties become sharp when she
has to give insights into her statements.
Talking about Parsi community, which is her own community, Sidhwa makes appropriate
statements:
The endearing feature of this microscopic merchant community was its compelling sense of
duty and obligation towards other Par-sis. . . . There were no Parsi beggars in a country abounding
in beggars. . . . Notorious misers, they are paradoxically generous to a cause.
The characters in The Crow-Eaters are true to this statement. Her historic observation on
the Parsi community's plight during Partition is also authentic. When Billy asks Freddy "Where
will we go?" Freddy says softly, "We will stay where we are ... let Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs or
whoever rule. What does it matter?" Likewise Lenny's family and Rodabai's family were not
affected by the Partition. It is only the neighbours and close associates of these Parsis that got
affected. She has given roots to her characters in Lahore and made Lahore the enchantress.
The Pakistani Bride is about Muslim community and one realizes that Parsis are more
stabilized and privileged and organized than the Muslims. Sidhwa made an honest attempt to
explain Islamic sanctity about marriage: "We take marriage and divorce very seriously. It involves
more than just emotions. It's a social responsibility. The vision of the writer definitely creeps in
the novel however much the author tries to maintain a distance from the subject. The third
novel Ice-Candy-Man is about cosmopolitan context where there is no scope to think about a
particular community. The problem in the novel concerns all the citizens of Lahore and its
surroundings. There is no graphic description of Lahore in her works but for the mention of
"Tower of Silence." In the first two novels she gave us a detailed account of the nocturnal activities
that took place in Hira Mandi. It is only in the last novel that she has traced the original and
historical significance of this leitmotif.

42
The Novel Today and Ice-Candy-Man by Bapsi Sidhwa

The twentieth century has been called as the age of interrogation. In this new age of science
and reason, there has been a gradual crumbling of old and traditional values. Writers enjoy more
freedom than ever before. One can write a novel on any subject. Experimentation has become an
essential activity now in the all fields of knowledge. J.B. Priestley observes, "If we are asked what
has been happening to the English novel today, we are tempted to reply, 'Everything" and to let it
go like that."
In fact literature is an expression of life in its myriad shades and variety. George Eliot says that
literature is the nearest thing to life. It is a mode of amplifying human experience. Literature
and life are inextricably intertwined. Literature is a human document. One shares the joys and
sorrows of other people through literature. Novel has emerged as a powerful and effective
vehicle to study and understand the complexity of modern life. Now time is no longer conceived
as a movement of moments each of which passes away irretrievably. Time is now considered as a
continuous flow, a continuum.
The English novels today reflect the changes in the fundamental beliefs of the age. By
presenting these ideas in a popular literary form the novelist exercised a very considerable
influence on society. After the First World-War, two tendencies in literature were visible. One
group criticized the standards of conduct and belief. The second group created new forms of
expression and became self-assertive in its effort to propagate new creed to fill the vacuum caused
by the destruction of theold. Both the groups had a pagan attitude to life and exuberant
individualistic outlook. After 1930 the novelists showed a loss of carefree joyousness and they
turned away from hedonism and concern with individual values and either interest themselves in
religious orthodoxy or tried to find in Marxism a panacea for the ills that threatened society.
The influence of Freud gave way to Marx. A spirit of revolt against the existing order created
a sense of restlessness in postwar literature. The artist slowly lost his significance. Some writers
sought salvation in religion or philosophy or in dreams of uncompromising artistic truth. The
novel drew its material from diverse sources and showed a continuous progress.
Novel in the Indian sub-continent is a recent development. Literature in the Indian sub-
continent is the result of the bull work of two different cultural forces —Indian and the English. It
has its historical roots in the growth and development of literature in a country struggling to get
independence from the British rule. The rise of nationalism in India stimulated the minds of
Indian people. The new educated middle-class had become active in its literary pursuits. People
realized that love for one's dialect and language was good but they could not avoid English
language. They felt that they could express themselves to the rest of the world through English
language. After the First World-War, a new class of writers in India writing in English and in local
dialects emerged. One hears about the names of writers like Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Laxmi,
Balkrishan, R. K. Narayan, Raja Rao, Bhabani Bhattacharya etc.
The two World-Wars shook the entire world and it had its impact on Indian literature.
Political and social developments in the West influenced literature in the East. Indian literature
also began to show ideological orientation in its thematic concerns. Marxism, psychoanalysis of
Freud and Jung, theories of literary criticism influenced the sensibility of writers in Asia. "The
novel in India can be seen as the product of configurations in philosophical, aesthetic, economic
and political forces in the larger life of the country. Despite obvious regional variations, a basic
pattern seems to emerge from shared factors like the Puranic heritage, hierarchical social
structure, colonial education, disjunction of agrarian life and many others that affect the form of
a novel as well as its content," observes Meenakshi Mukherjee in her book Realism and Reality. It

43
is obvious that writers in Asiahave made an attempt to adapt an imported form to suit their
indigenous requirements.
After Partition in 1947, artists and writers in Pakistan engaged themselves to develop and
cultivate a new spirit, a mark of their newly born identity —Pakistani identity. Since Pakistan was
carved out of India, it could not cut away its Indian origin and kinship. "Language being a cultural
phenomenon, it is conditioned by its local and the socio-historical forces in operation locally.
Consequently, the literature of a particular language has its own special form," observe K. M.
George. India andPakistan share so much in common like language, music, culture, social milieu,
beliefs and problems. The only difference of opinion is on political issues. People on both the sides
share the same joys and sorrows, same dreams and aspirations. Only names of places have
changed in the narratives of Indian and Pakistani writers. Writers like Manohar Malgaonkar,
Arun Joshi, Anita Desai, Khushwant Singh, Bhabani Bhatacharya, Raja Rao, R.K. Narayan,
Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy do not seem new and foreign to the readers in Pakistan. Similarly
writers like Sadat Hassan Manto, Bapsi Sidhwa and Attia Hosain are not unknown
in India because we share the same concerns, tragic or pleasant.
Partition of India has been a traumatic experience for people on both the sides of Wagah
border. This unpleasant historical event has left deep scars on the psyche of people from both
these countries. Writers like Khushwant Singh, Bhisham Sahni, Chaman Nahal, Manohar
Malgaonkar, K. S. Duggal, B. Rajan, Attia Hosain and Bapsi Sidhwa have written on the theme of
Partition in their novels. They have tried to recreate reality and traumatic events based on their
perception and information. Pakistani writers like Sidhwa have tried to present their point of view
in their narratives. Bapsi Sidhwa is a Parsi and her concern for her Parsi community in her novels
is obvious. In her novel 'Ice-Candy-Man Sidhwa has tried to present a realistic picture of the
events that took place in West Punjab, now in Pakistan. The locale isLahore and its adjoining
villages. Sidhwa through the child-narrator Lenny depicts the scenario realistically.
In her interviews and writings, Sidhwa asserts that she was deeply hurt to see the portrayal
of Jinnah in novels written by Indian and western writers. She saw the film of M.K. Gandhi in
which Gandhi has been presented as a saint, a Mahatma and a great leader whereas Jinnah's
portrayal has been negative. She wanted a redressal of this mistake by presenting Jinnah as an
intelligent and a leader of his community. Sidhwa in an interview with David Montenegro
observes:
In Ice-Candy-Man, I was just redressing, in a small way, a very grievous wrong that has been
done to Jannah and Pakistanis by many Indian and British writers. They have dehumanized him,
made him a symbol of the sort of person who brought about the partition of India.
Sidhwa finds that Muslims in Punjab suffered more because the Sikhs retaliated with much
greater brutality. The novel Ice-Candy-Man brings out Sidhwa's qualities as a prolific writer and
a good story-teller. She also presents the moral vision of her Parsi community. Thus, novelists
in India and Pakistan continue to share their culture, heritage, dilemma, problems and dreams.
Tone of the Novel
In the very beginning of the novel Ice-Candy-Man, Bapsi Sidhwa's narrative genius grips the
attention of readers. Set in Lahore, the novel sets the tone and tenor of the events in the narrative.
The narrator in the novel Lenny manifests the tone of neutrality while describing the climactic
incidents of Hindu-Muslim riots. The Parsi community is worried over these new developments
and is unable to express its loyalty openly either to the British government or the nationalists. The
Parsi Anjuman, the congregation of the Parsis discuss the issue at the fire Temple in Lahore. The
Parsis are also worried about their business and economic security. At last, Col. Bharucha
concludes by saying: "Let whoever wishes rule! Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian! We will abide by

44
the rules of their land. This strikes the tone and note of neutrality. In fact, "The neutral attitude
of the narrator child Lenny, has its roots in this racial psychology of the Parsis. In this way, the
attitudue of the Parsi community revealed here is the externalized collective sub consciousness of
Lenny," observes Jagdev Singh in his paper entitled 'Ice-Candy-Man: A Parsi Perception on the
Partition of India.' One finds unbridled ventilation of the pent up rancour between the Hindus
and Muslims. In the beginning, the Parsis stay away from the turmoil but later they shake off their
passivity and neutrality and help the suffering people like the 'ayah'.
The Pakistani Identity of Bapsi Sidhwa

to an audience unfamiliar with that culture. Thus The Crow Eaters" as well as The Bride' and Ice-
Man was published in the United States in 1991 the title was changed to Cracking India, focussing
Indian atrocities committed in the Punjab, and secondly, by reappraising the character of Jinnah
both Pakistan and Jinnah. Sidhwa's political stance is clearly depicted through her treatment of
account of a train massacre during Partition. In The Bride, Sidhwa combines her feminist

45
insights.
Eaters with the theme of Partition and a feminist perspective, Sidhwa reveals herself as a writer
of the first rank.
They grant Nehru Gurdaspur and Pathankot without which Muslim Kashmir cannot
be secured.
Sidhwa, however, rises above petty nationalism. Ice-Candy-Man does not stress the Two-
exploited on the eve of Partition.
Sidhwa describes the destruction of the Muslim village of Pir Pindo Lenny visited earlier
during happier times. The villagers had been warned to leave, but they do not, and Ranna
describes the mass murder that takes place. Sidhwa does not narrate this incident through Lenny
but through Raana:

46
Ranna saw his uncle beheaded. His older brothers, his cousins. The Sikhs were
among them like hairy vengeful demons, wielding bloodied swords, dragging them
out as a handful of Hindus, darting about the fringes, their faces vaguely familiar,
pointed out and identified the Mussulmans by name. He felt a blow cleave the back
of his head and the warm flow of blood. Ranna fell just inside the door on a tangled
pole of unrecognizable bodies. Someone fell on him drenching him in blood.
Sidhwa took up the story of Ranna and retold it in a short story "'Defend Yourself against Me." In
this story Sidhwa also suggests that though the past cannot be forgotten, it can be forgiven. Let
not the crimes of the fathers be visited on their sons—but then the sons must be conscious of their
fathers' sins and ask for forgiveness.
Ice-Candy-Man: An Introduction
Lenni is an eight year old Parsi girl who leads a comfortable life with the four
members of her family before the Partition of India in Lahore. Lenni regularly goes for
walks with her Hindu Ayah Shanta. The Queen's garden near her house is their favourite
place. Lenny limps on one leg and her parents are worried about her. Dr. Bharucha puts
plaster on the leg a number of times but each time the results are not upto the mark.
Even surgery hasn't helped much. Dr. Bharucha assures the parents of Lenny that with
the passage of time, Lenny will walk normally.
The novel Ice-Candy-Man presents people from all communities —the Hindus,
Muslims, Sikhs and Parsis living in Lahore before Partition. 'Bapsi Sidhwa here
introduces the device of child-narrator. Lenny, the eight year old girl narrates the events
around her from a child's point of view. The novelist also shows the child growing,
becoming more conscious about the changing environment around her. Sidhwa
introduces the readers to characters like Shanta the Ayah, Imamdin the cook, the Ice-
Candy-Man Dilnawaz and Hassan Ali, his cousin brother. At the moment, people in
undivided India are seen engaged in the Quit-India Movement, and on the other hand,
the Muslim League motivates the Muslim Community to raise a demand for a separate
nation for the Muslims. Often the slogans of 'Pakistan Zindabad' are heard in the streets
but the communal harmony is intact. One day, one British police officer Rogers and Mr.
Singh a neighbourer of Lenny visit the house on dinner. They begin to quarrel on trifles.
This hot exchange of words is in fact a glimpse and foreshadow of the coming conflicts
in the near future. People have started discussions on the possibility of Pakistan and the
minorities begin to plan for shifting to safer places. It foreshadows the communal riots
between the Hindus and Muslims.
One day, riots break out in Lahore in a locality far away from Lenny's house. This
leads to the killing of innocent people on both the sides. The news of bloodshed spreads
like wild fire. The All India Radio also reports about cases of violence from different
parts of India. Soon the entire Punjab province is seen burning in the fire of hatred and
communal violence. Dilnawaz, the Ice-Candy-Man waits for his sisters on
Lahore railway station. When the train arrives from Gurdaspur, everyone on the
platform is shocked to see the ghastly, sight. The Train is loaded with mutilated bodies

47
of Muslim passengers. This shocks everyone and the friendly Dilnawaz turns into a
person possessed with a frenzy and a desire to kill the Hindus. He also abducts his friend
Shanta, the Ayah of Lenny and later takes her to Hira Mandi of Lahore, a locality of
prostitutes.
Ice-Candy-Man loved Shanta from the core of his heart but now she is a Hindu for
him. Vengeance has transformed him into a killer and a beast. Later with the help of
Lenny's relatives, Shanta is rescued and she reaches the relief camp at Amritsar. Lenny's
delicate mind is shocked to see all this. The Parsee community remains neutral during
this time. Lenni's life becomes a nightmare. She realizes that her Muslim neighbours will
not spare the lives of non-Muslims anymore. There have been a number of incidents
where the Muslims burn alive the non-Muslims. These traumatic incidents leave a
damaging impact on the sensitive person like Ice-Candy-Man, and he loses his sanity
and poise. He begins to roam about in the streets of Lahore to avenge the death of his
Muslim friends. Communalism and the narrow feelings of caste and creed put on a cloak
of greed, meanness and hatred which leads to violence and destruction on the large
scale.
Ice-Candy-Man: A Brief Summary

Bapsi Sidhwa's novel Ice-Candy Man deals with the partition of India and its aftermaths.
This is the first novel by a woman novelist from Pakistan in which she describes about the fate of
people in Lahore. The novel opens with the verse of Iqbal from his poem 'Complaint to God', with
this, the child-narrator Lenny is introduced. She is lame and helpless. She finds that her
movement between Warris Road and Jail Road is limited. She sees the Salvation Army wall with
ventilation slits which makes her feel sad and lonely. The narration is in the first person. Lenny
lives on Warris Road. The novelist describes about the localities in Lahore through the Child-
narrator. Lenny observes: "I feel such sadness for the dumb creature I imagine lurking behind the
wall." Lenny is introvert and she is engrossed in her private world.
One day, Lenny is in her pram, immersed in dreams as usual. Her Ayah attends to her.
Suddenly an Englishman interrupts them and he asks Ayah to put Lenny down from her pram.
But Ayah explains to him about Lenny's infirmity. Lenny is a keen observer. She has seen how
people are fascinated with the Hindu Ayah's gorgeous body. She notices how even beggars,
holymen, old people and the young men adore her for her feminine grace.
Colonel Bharucha is Lenny's doctor. He is a surgeon. Lenny is brought to the hospital for her
limp in one leg. In the first, attempt, plaster on Lenny's leg is removed but still she limps. Soon a
new plaster is cast over her leg. Lenny cries out of pain but her mother takes care of her.
Dr. Bharucha's surgery pains Lenny as she has become bed-ridden. The news of Lenny's
operation spreads in small Parsi community of Lahore and she has visitors but she cries for
Godmother. Lenny lying on the bed observes keenly the reaction of visitors and her parents. After
one month, Lenny is allowed to be taken in a stroller outside her house. Her eighteen year old
Ayah Shanta takes her to a zoo.
Lenny's Ayah Shanta has a number of admirers. Ice-Candy-Man is among her admirers.
Another companion of Lenny is her electric-aunt, a widow. She also picks up a brother. His name
is Adi and Lenny calls him Sissy. He goes to school and Lenny studies at home. When winter

48
comes, Ice-Candy-Man turns into a birdman and in the streets of Lahore, he is seen with birds.
Rich ladies give him money for these poor birds to be freed. Ice-Candy-Man is a chatter-box and
he can talk on any topic.
One day, the Parsi community assembles in the community hall in the Parsi temple. Two
priests prepare for the worship of fire. Lenny observes everything with curiosity. Then the meeting
of the Parsi community begins on their stand on Swaraj. Col. Bharucha holds the mike and
apprises all -about the latest political developments. After discussions and questions, all agree to
observe the middle path—to observe and see. They will not be with the Indian nationalists to
oppose the Raj. They fail to come out of their dilemma.
The Ayah takes care of the helpless child Lenny like a sister. Lenny's mother too loves her.
A portion of Lenny's house is lent to the Shankars who are newly married. Shankar's wife Gita
is seen welcoming him in the evening. The children observe this couple with curiosity. Gita is a
good cook and a good story-teller. She is popular with children. The reader is now introduced to
Hari, the gardner, Imam Din, the cook of Lenny's house. Here one finds focus on the character of
Imam din. He is sixty five years old. He is "tall, big-bellied, barrel-chested and robust." Imam Din
likes to play with children in his spare time. One day Imam Din takes Lenny to his village on his
bicycle. Lenny observes every thing keen on her way to the village. There she meets children
Ranna and his sisters Khatija and Parveen. This is the village Pir Pindo where Hindus, Sikhs and
Muslims live peacefully. Villagers have assembled beneath a huge sheesham tree to discuss about
the situation in other cities like Bihar and Bengal. They feel disturbed over the news of Hindu-
Muslim riots. The villagers blame the British government for 'inaction in the wake of communal
riots. The Chaudhry of Pir Pindo assures them about the safety of everyone in the village if riots
break out. Later Lenny and Imam Din return to Lahore.
Ayah has now two more admirers—achinaman and the Pathan. They are fascinated by her
feminine grace. They visit Lenny's house daily to talk to her. Lenny doesnot go to school. She goes
to Mrs. Pen for her studies. Her house is next to Lenny's Godmother's house on Jail Road—
opposite to Electric-aunt's house. Ayah accompanies Lenny to Mrs. Pen's house. After tuition,
Lenny goes to her Godmother's house for sometime. One day Mahatma Gandhi visitsLahore.
Lenny goes to see Gandhijee with her mother. She is surprised to see him because she has always
taken him to be a mythic figure only. Gandhi jee blesses them all and advises them to follow the
enema-therapy. Lenny fails to understand as to why people call him a saint. To her, he appears to
be 'half clown and half-demon'.
Now it is April and Lahore is getting warmer day by day. Ice-Candy-Man finds his business
prospering. By now it has become clear that India is going to be broken. Muslim league
wants Pakistan to Muslims. Imam Din, the cook at Lenny's house is worried over the news of
communal riots and plans a visit to his village Pir Pindo. Lenny insists to join him on his trip to
the village. She still cherishes the memory of her earlier visit to Pir Pindo. On Baisakhi, they visit
the Dera Tek Singh near the village. Dost Mohammad joins them. They enjoy the mela and the
feast. Now people apprehend trouble. One day the relatives of Imam Din arrive in Lahore to stay
with him. They are accommodated in Servant's quarters. Military trucks arrive in Pir Pindo to
evacuate Muslims to safer places but the Muslim peasants are confused. They can't leave their
home, property and harvest all of a sudden. Mr. Roger's mutilated body is found in the gutters.
He was the Inspector General of Police. This news sends shivers among the people of Lahore.
Children including Lenny find it a strange incident. Ayah loves Masseur's songs and Ice-Candy-
Man loves Ayah for her blooming youth. Ice-Candy-Man is disturbed over the developments in
the nearby areas. People start moving to safer places. Riots begin and this leads to confusion
among people.

49
Communal riots spread from towns to small villages like Pir Pindo. Muslims and Sikhs
become enemies thirsting for each other's blood. In Lahore, people begin to move to safer places.
Hindus and Sikhs leave their houses behind and reach Amritsar. People hear announcements on
All India Radio about the division of districts into India and Pakistan. The Parsee community
in Pakistan is safe but still worried about its future. Muslim mobs attack Hindu houses. A mob
stops outside Lenny's house and enquire about its Hindu servants. They ask about the Hindu Ayah
Shanta but the cook Imam Din tells them about her fake departure. Ice-Candy-Man comes
forward and asks Lenny about Ayah. Out of innocence, Lenny discloses about her hiding. The
angry Muslims drag her out of Lenny's house. This shocks Lenny and she repents for her
truthfulness. A truth can also ruin one's life, Lenny discovers. Ice-Candy-Man takes her to Hira
Mandi, the bazars of prostitutes. Ice-Candy-Man's mother was also a prostitute and Ice-Candy-
Man becomes a pimp. He is fond of reciting Urdu poetry.
In Pir Pindo village, Sikh crowds attack the Muslim community. Imam Din's family is in
trouble but nothing can be done. There is confusion. Muslims in Pir Pindo village get killed and
their women gang-raped. Children are butchered mercilessly. Ranna, the playmate of Lenny in
Pir Pindo is also wounded and buried under the heap of dead bodies. After some time, he safely
moves to other place. His journey of hide and seek has been dealt with in detail by Bapsi Sidhwa.
Sidhwa narrates Ranna's ordeal of escape in full fifteen pages. A little boy wounded and shocked,
running for life finds suddenly himself alone in the world. Earlier, it had been decided that the
women and girls of Pir Pindo would gather at Chaudhry's house and pour the kerosene oil around
the house to burn themselves. It was also decided to hide some boys and men in a safer place but
nothing worked. Muslims are killed, women molested and children butchered. Only Ranna
escapes and finds shelter in a camp in Lahore. When he reached Lahore, he observed, "It is funny.
As long as I had to look out for myself, I was all right. As soon as I felt safe, I fainted." Before
reaching the camp, Ranna had a tough time: "There were too many ugly and abandoned children
like him scavenging in the looted houses and the rubble of burnt-out buildings. His rags clinging
to his wounds, straw sticking in his scalped skull, Ranna wandered through the lanes stealing
chapatties and grain from houses strewn with dead bodies, rifling the corpses for anything he
could use ... No one minded the semi-naked spectre as he looked in doors with his knowing, wide-
set peasant eyes." Later, Ranna was herded into a refugee camp at Badami Baugh. Then "chance
united him with his Noni chachi and Iqbal chacha."
After the abduction of Ayah by the Muslim mob, Lenny remains sad and dejected. She is
shocked over the betrayal by Ice-Candy-Man. She finds him to be a changed man. The day he saw
the mutilated bodies of his Muslim brethern, he became a different person. His beloved Ayah
becomes a Hindu for him. "They drag Ayah out. They drag her by her arms stretched taut, and her
bare feet that want to move backwards—are forced forward instead." This sight proves to be
traumatic for poor Lenny and she repents for telling the truth to Ice-Candy-Man. She is guilt-
driven: "For three days I stand in front of the bathroom mirror staring at my tongue. I hold the
vile, truth—infected thing between my fingers and try to wrench it out: but slippery and slick as a
fish it slips from my fingers and mocks me with its sharp rapier tip darting as poisonous as a
snake. I punish it with rigorous scouring from my prickling toothbrush until it is sore and
bleeding." This act of Lenny shows her sense of guilt. There has been Papoo's marriage but Lenny
feels lonely without Ayah. By now Lenny has become mature both in body and mind.
Lenny's Godmother is an influential lady. She loves Lenny, she has established a network of
espionage in Lahore. She has information from each corner of Lahore. One day, Lenny's cousin
comes with a news that he has seen the Ayah in a taxi dressed like a film actress. After a few days,
Lenny too sees Ayah in a car. Now she tells everyone about it and the search for Ayah begins. One
Monday, Lenny visits her Godmothers house to tell her about the Ayah. She is told about the
Ayah's husband's visit to Godmother's house in the evening. Lenny finds it difficult to wait for the

50
evening. At six o'clock, the bridegroom of Ayah arrives. He is none but Ice-Candy-Man, now
dressed in flowing white muslin. He recites a verse from Urdu poetry and greets everyone. He
informs that she is married to him and has been accepted in the family of dancers. Godmother
scolds him for ill-treating Ayah and let her be raped. But he confesses: I am a man! Only dogs are
faithful! If you want faith, let her marry a dog." But Godmother reacts wildly by saying: "You have
permitted your wife to be disgraced! Destroyed her modesty! Lived off her womanhood! And you
talk of princes and poets! You're the son of pigs and pimps!" Ice-Candy-Man weeps and cries but
asserts that now he will make her happy by all means. Lenny has been listening to all this. She is
angry with Ice-Candy-Man to such an extent that: ‘There is a suffocating explosion within my eyes
and head. A blinding blast of pity and disillusion and a savage rage. My sight is disoriented. I see
Ice-Candy-Man float away in a bubble and dwindle to a grey speck in the aftermath of the blast.’
Ice-Candy-Man stands there with Jinnah—cap in his hand and "his ravaged face, caked with
mud, has turned into a tragedian's mask. Repentance, grief and shock are compressed
into the mould of his features." Then, Godmother plans a visit to see Ayah, now Mumtaz after her
marriage. Lenny insists of going with her to Hira Mandi. They reach Hira Mandi in a tonga. They
are led in a well-decorated room with the fragrance of sprinkled flowers. Ice-Candy-Man brings
his Mumtaz, the Ayah dressed as a bride before them. Lenny is shocked to see sadness in Ayah's
eyes. Lenny observes: "Where have the radiance and the animation gone? Can the soul be
extracted from its living body? Her vacant eyes are bigger than ever: wide-opened with what they
have seen and felt... She, buries her head in me and buries me in all her finery; and in the dark
and musky attar of her perfume."
Leaving Ayah with Godmother rand Lenny, Ice-Candy-Man goes to fetch tea. Now Ayah
pleads that she will not live, here anymore and she must go. Godmother asks her to think over it
again but Ayah (Mumtaz) insists of going back to her relatives in Amritsar. The visitors return
after assuring Ayah that she will be rescued.
Lenny's cousin asks her about a Kotha and her impression of it. Lenny understands by Kotha
to be a place of dancing girls. By now Lenny also understands that "the potent creative force
generated within the Kotha that has metamorphosed Ice-Candy- Man not only into a Mogul
Courtier, but into a Mandi poet. No wonder he founds poetry as if he popped out of his mother's
womb spouting rhyming sentences."
After her visit to Hira Mandi, Godmother contacts the government machinery. One day a
police party comes to Hira Mandi and takes Ayah away from. Ice-Candy-Man. She is put at the
Recovered Women's Camp on Warris Road which is well-guarded. Ice-Candy-Man visits the camp
to see his beloved but is beaten up badly by the Sikh sentry. Now Ice-Candy-Man has become a
dejected, wandering lover searching for his lost love. He has acquired a new aspect: "that of a
moonstruck fakir who has renounced the world for his beloved." Ice-Candy-Man places flowers
for Ayah over the wall of the camp every morning and his "voice rises in sweet and clear song to
shower Ayah with poems." This routine of offering of flowers and singing of love songs continues
for many days.
One day, Lenny learns that Ayah has been shifted to Amritsar with her family there. Ice-
Candy-Man has also followed her across the Wagah border into India to pursue his love. The novel
ends on this sad and tragic note. The novel contains a number of poignant scenes along with
scenes of murder and violence. "The novel is a masterful work of history as it relates political
events through the eyes of a child. “Ice-Candy-Man has also been called as a multifaceted jewel
of a novel. The novel deals with "the bloody partition of India through the eyes of a girl Lenny
growing up in a Parsee family, surviving through female bonding and rebellion."

51
Leading Themes in Ice-Candy-Man

Bapsi Sidhwa is among the important signatures in Pakistani literary world. Being a Parsi,
she is aware of her roots, past and the Parsi community. Ice-Candy-Man is her major novel which
introduces a child-narrator Lenny who narrates the events in the wake of Partition of India.
Sidhwa's concern for her Parsi community, place of women in Pakistani society, human struggle
for survival and dignity of man are major themes injier novels. In Ice-Candy-Man,Sidhwa
presents her Parsi community in a dilemma over the issue of support. Partition is immanent and
the question of loyalty haunts the Parsi psyche.
They are loyal to the Raj but now Parsis have to side either with India or the newly formed
Pakistan. Sidhwa depicts Hindu-Muslim riots without any social discrimination. As the
narrative progresses, history moves to the background and struggle for survival becomes the
focus of the narrative. There are a number of novels written about Partition of India like Train
to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh, Tamas by Bhisham Sahni,Azadi by Chaman Nahal, A Bend, in
the Ganges by Manohar Malgaonkar, The. Rape by Raj Gill, Ashes and Petals by H.S. Gill,Twice
Born Twice Dead by K.S. Duggal, The Dark Dancer by B.Rajan, Sunlight on a Broken
Column by Attia Hosain and Ice-Candy-Man by Bapsi Sidhwa. These novels realistically portray
and depict the upheaval that the Indian sub-continent experienced. It was the most shocking
and traumatic experience of division of hearts and communities. These literary works leave the
reader with the feeling of disquiet and disturbance. These novels deal with the tumultuous and
traumatic moments in the life of one generation. (A Critic) observes that these works not only
deal with the tumultuous times but also strips away the veneer of civilization that man hides
behind. They also hold a mirror to the element of savagery latent in man. "It seems, a stressful
situation reveals the animal streak just waiting to be unleashed. This is made all the more strong
by the support of a mob feeding on hatred."
Ice-Candy-Man deals with human emotions at play at different levels, heightened by
turbulent times. In the process of shaping history, human emotions and relationships are
relegated to the background. The tidal waves of violence, hatred and communal violence change
the feelings of fraternity. Aradhika observes: "Like some ancient Satanic rites of witchcraft, the
power to destroy, springs forth from an unsuspected fount within and the sheer pleasure of
humiliating and massacring the victim is so great that one forgets one's own mortality." Bapsi
Sidhwa in her novel Ice-Candy-Man delineates his characters and their antecedents with fidelity
and with a feeling of contemporaneity. In the narrative of Ice-Candy-Man, the reader is
introduced to the kind-hearted Khansama who is a veritable rebel, the loyal khalsa refusing to
leave Lahore, Tota Ram the frightened Hindu and a Parsi family oscillating between-two view-
points with neutrality hoping for their survival.
In Ice-Candy-man, the main characters are. Ice-Candy-Man and the 'Ayah', the maid-servant
with the Parsi family. Ice-Candy-Man is a handsome and immensely popular youngman He is a
generous fellow who is miles away from religious fanaticism. But one incident shakes his entire
existence and his belief in the goodness of man is shattered. He becomes a witness to the mutilated
bodies of Muslims in the hands of Hindus and he takes a vow to avenge the death of his Muslim
fellows. This bitter experience wrenches out the darker side of his personality. This shattering
blow transforms a kind and loving individual into a violent and frenzied person. On a crucial
moment in the narrative, he asks the Ayah: "there is an animal inside me straining to break free.
Marry me and perhaps it will be contained." Here Aradhika observes: "The ultimate betrayal is
not by the innocent trusting little girl but by the devil of hatred that cannot be contained." Now
the ice-candy-man plays the pivotal role of a raffish type man.
Like other novelists on Partition, Sidhwa also describes the ugly and terrifying face of
Partition by recollecting the traumatic and agonising memories of those moments. Sidhwa also

52
has tried to recreate history in emotion-laden and poignant scenes. The rumblings of Partition are
felt in the beginning of the narrative and the atmosphere proper to the kind of a tale is gradually
created. As the tension mounts, atmosphere becomes grim and awesome. Here one finds the worst
kind of genocide in the history of mankind. Narratives like Ice-Candy-Man transport readers
back into the corridors of time. This experience of being catapulted back into the dark and
forgotten recesses of time leaves the readers shocked and unbelieving on the reaction of man. One
witnesses the shocking and heart-rending scenes of the arrival of trains full of massacred Muslims
chugging into the plateform with crowds waiting for another gift from Amritsar. Man is
transformed into a brute, a savage lusting for blood. He is ripped apart, dissected to reveal animal
form. The colourful streets of Lahore look ominously dreadful and deserted. The Hindus are still
reluctant to leave their ancestral property where their generations have lived and prospered. Now
they visualise a future devoid of any hope. These painful experiences are like the agonising throes
of a new birth. It is still painful to recollect those traumatic and dreadful moments that turned the
noble ones into beasts. Indeed the Partition of India remains the most agonising experience in
history. A number of writers who wrote on Partition touch the gut of the problem in order that
such blunders should never be committed by 'wise leaders'. Jagdev Singh observes, "The Partition
of the Indian sub-continent in 1947 is one of the great tragedies, the magnitude, ambit and
savagery of which compels one to search for the larger meaning of events, and to come to terms
with the lethal energies that set off such vast conflagrations." These comments aptly throw light
on the central theme of the novel Ice-Candy-Man.
The theme of inter-community marriage is at the core of Sidhwa's novels like Ice-Candy-
Man, An American Brat and the Crow Eaters. Her handling of the theme of inter-community
marriages is relevant and contemporary. This sensitive issue arouses acrimonious debates in Parsi
Community. In Parsi faith, it is believed that a Parsi could be one only by birth. In mixed
marriages, the children lose their right to be members of Parsi community. The Parsis have a
patriarchal society. While dealing with the theme of marriage, Sidhwa maintains a balance
without revolting against rigid social codes. In her novel An American Brat,Sidhwa examines the
theme of inter-faith marriage in detail. Its protagonist Feroza migrates to America where she
intends to marry a Jew boy David Press. Her Parsi community opposes this marriage and Feroza
has to withdraw her move but she expresses her conviction to marry to boy of her choice only,
irrespective of religion.
In Ice-Candy-Man, Sidhwa presents the theme of interfaith marriage through the love
relationship between the Ice-Candy-Man and the Hindu Ayah. On seeing his fellow Muslims
massacred, the Ice-Candy man goes mad with rage and keeps his beloved Ayah in the brothels of
Hira Mandi in Lahore. Then he realizes his mistake and marries the Hindu Ayah but now love has
become powerless. The Ayah is rescued and is taken to a Recovered Women's Camp in Amritsar.
Thus, a number of themes have been well-integrated in the narrative of Ice-Candy-man.
Structure of Ice-Candy-Man
Ice-Candy-Man is Bapsi Sidhwa's famous novel which is politically motivated. As a Pakistani
writer, Sidhwa observes that M.K. Gandhi has been deified by Indian and British historians. When
she saw the movie on Gandhi, she was shocked to see the portrayal of Jinnah as a villain. She felt
that Jinnah was caricatured, and Gandhi was presented as a Saint. In an interview with David
Montenegro, Sidhwa observes:

53
In Ice-Candy-Man, I was just redressing, in a small way, a very grievous wrong that has been
done to Jinnah and Pakistanis by many Indian and British writers. They have dehumanized him,
made him a symbol of the sort of persson who brought about the partition of India.
Sidhwa believes that Muslims in Punjab suffered more because the sikhs retaliated with much
greater brutality. In her moral vision, she presents common men helping each other and she
exposes the politicians. She portrays life in familiar surroundings in undivided India with the
themes of marriage and the survival of the Parsi community.
The novel Ice-Candy-Man brings out Sidhwa's qualities as a prolific writer, heightened sense
of story and character and her moral vision of her community. Astute characterization is a trait of
Sidhwa's writing style. The novel has three distinct strands, according to Dhawan and Kapadia.
They are political, narrative and the child narrator. It is the only novel of Sidhwa in which she
employs a child-narrator. The child Lenny in the novel sees the adult world as a growing child. As
the story moves, the history of partition slips into the background and the human struggle for
survival becomes primary. The novel is written in the present tense about an historical event.
Novy Kapadia observes that Lenny can be compared to the persona that Chaucer adopts in his
Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. Kapadia observes that "the device of the child-narrator
enables Sidhwa treat the holocausts of Partition without morbidity, pedanticism or censure. It
also helps to maintain the balance between laughter and despair. Sidhwa's blending of astute
characterization and sharp humour provides insights into the Parsi psyche and makes the novel
both entertaining and revealing." Here Sidhwa attempts the modernist/post-modernist vein of
narrative experimentation.
The novel lce-Candy-Man comprises thirty-two chapters which provides a glimpse into
events of turmoil during the partition of India. Historic truth is only a back drop of the novel. The
narrative focuses on the tragic fate of the ice-candy-man. He is a Muslim youngman who is a close
friend of an eighteen-year old Ayah who works in a Parsi household to look after Lenny. Lenny
suffers from Polio and she has to depend on her Ayah. K. Nirupa Rani observes that "the parallel
theme in the novel is the slow awakening of the child-heroine to sexuality and pains and pleasures
of the grown-up and to the particular historical disaster that overwhelms her world." It is
interesting to note that Ayah is the centre of attraction in the locality. She has thirteen admirers
including Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Parsi youngmen.
The plot of the novel is compact and the central issues engaging and thought-provoking. In
Sidhwa's novels themes diverge from traditional to contemporaneity. Her main concern ranges
from a pre-Independence social scene to Partition and its consequences. The main action in the
novel takes place in Lahore though there are no graphic description of the area. Cicely Havel
observes, "Long before Sidhwa left Pakistan Bapsi Sidhwa's work had reflected the cultural
multiplicity in which she lived. It was only at the moment of international success and physical
migration that what might be called her non-aligned gaze became a ground of contest and she was
suspected of alienation." Yasmeen Lukmani praises Sidhwa for her showmanship and the quality
of 'larger than life' in her novels. The English critic Anatol Lievin Praises Ice-Candy-Man for its
'enormously refreshing' challenge to the 'prim and stilted' norm of modern Indian fiction. Anita
Desai observes, "Lame lenny, Sidhwa's autobiographically based heroine, can be related to Oscar
of Gunter Grass's Tin Drum". Cicely Havel observes about Sidhwa that "it is her Zoroastrianism
which enables Sidhwa to show the comic as a reflection of the tragic, just as her fortunate position
as a non-combatant allows her to stand aside from partisan accusation. Lenny's childish sexuality
mirrors Ayah's and her cousin's importunings are potentially explosive."
Thus, Bapsi Sidhwa has emerged as a new but important voice in commonwealth fiction. Her
novels have established Sidhwa's reputation as Pakistan's leading English language writer.

54
Ice-Candy-Man as a Political Novel

Ice-Candy-Man is Bapsi Sidhwa's famous novel. Its American publishers Milkweed Editions
(1991) published it under the title Cracking India. It is a serious political novel. Sidhwa uses the
child-narrator technique in the narrative of the novel. There are three strands in the novel namely
political, narrative and the child narrator. Anita Desai observes that lame Lenny who is Bapsi
Sidhwa's autobiographically based heroine can be related to Oscar of Gunther Grass’s Tin
Drum. The physical disability of Lenny not only isolates her but also gives "an additional obliquity
to the childish perspective which so many writers have used to make strange the supposed
rationalism of the adult world." Here the narrative has been presented from a child's point of view.
It is told in the present tense and in first person through the voice of a young girl Lenny, eight
years old.
As the story progresses, the history of Partition struggle becomes less important and the
human struggle assumes epical dimensions. She also narrates the events leading to India's
partition from a child's point of view. R.K. Dhawan and Novy Kapadia find Lenny's growing up
"marked as much by a loss of political and racial egalitarianism as by her developing sexuality."
So Lenny becomes the persona in Ice-Candy-Man who renders credibility by becoming a part of
reader's consciousness. Being a novel about a historical and political event, it contains enough
information about local and national politics and leaders. The Parsi community is seen to be in a
fix over the question of loyalty. Its leaders are not able to decide whether to support Swaraj or to
remain loyal to the throne. By now the situation has become clear and independence almost
imminent.
"The dilemma is acute and the paranoid feelings of the parsis, a minuscule minority
get accentuated. The Lahore Parsis have an acrimonious debate on the political
situation at their temple hall meeting."
In Ice-Candy-Man, Bapsi Sidhwa shows the Parsi community pondering over choices —to
support independence movement or to remain loyal to the Raj. Now a number of Parsis like
Colonel Bharucha, Lenny's father and Dr. Mody begin to support the nationalists. Some people
advise to observe the developments on the political arena. In the meeting, the Parsis agree to be
on the side of the ruler, whether British or Indians. It turns out to be a resolution of self-interest.
Here the Parsi community is shown as lacking political participation in the Indian independence
movement.
Bapsi Sidhwa in an interview with David Montenegn admits of her political intentions in her
writings as:
The main motivation grew cut of my reading of a good deal of literature on the
partition of India and Pakistan.. .What has been written has been written by the
British and the Indians. Naturally, they reflect their bias. And they have, I felt after
I'd researched the book, been unfair to the Pakistanis. As a writer, as a human being,
one just does not tolerate injustice.
In the narrative of Ice-Candy-Man, one finds references to the names of political leaders like
Mahatma Gandhi, Jawahar lal Nehru, Lord Mountbatten, Subhash Chandra Bose, Mohammed
Ali Jinnah. Sidhwa eulogise them but presents them with their weaknesses, Sidhwa is critical of
Gandhi when she speaks through one of her characters: "He's a politician yaar... it's his business
to suit his tongue to the moment." Lenny also passes comments on the personality of Gandhi when
she calls him "a mixture of a demon and a clown." When Bapsi Sidhwa saw the film Gandhi, she

55
was shocked to find Gandhi presented as a saint. She was pained to see the role of Jinnah in the
film as negative. She found Gandhi completely deified, sanitized into a saint. She confesses:
I felt, in Ice-Candy-Man, I was just redressing, in a small way, a very grievous wrong
that has been done to Jinnah and Pakistanis by many Indian and British writers.
They have dehumanized him, made him a symbol of the sort of person who brought
about the partition of India... Whereas in reality he was the only constitutional man
who didn't sway crowds just by rhetoric.
In short, Sidhwa tries to bring Gandhi down from the high pedestal and project him a purely
political figure like Jinnah. She does this from a Pakistani's point of view. Political and ethnic
considerations and bias emerge stronger than secular thinking. Sidhwa shows that the Muslims
in East Punjab suffered more because of the majority of Hindus and Sikhs. She gives detailed
descriptions of attacks on Muslims by Sikhs with 'much greater brutality.' Sidhwa believes that
Hindu leaders failed to be just in their role as statesmen.
In this novel, Sidhwa gives scant credit to politicians. Her moral vision is that it is the ordinary
person who "battles wrongs" like Lenny's Godmother who helps Ayah to escape from Hira Mandi
and move to a refugee camp in Amritsar or Lenny's mother who helps her Hindu neighbours flee
from violence stricken Lahore, not people in the corridors of power. The horrors of Partition are
aptly depicted by Sidhwa without histrionics or preaching and by some clever use of Urdu poetry.
The human cost is shown for example in young Ranna's story, the most harrowing account of what
atrocities are perpetrated by human beings when induced to remove restraints of civilized life
through external events or political propaganda. Like Tamas, Ice-Candy-Man is also a political
text which shows the consequences of political decisions. Bapsi Sidhwa also paints, a vivid picture
of the political scenario when the nationalists were struggling to break the shackles of slavery. She
also shows ambivalent attitude of the Parsi community towards the shift of power in 1947. She
presents the Parsis as cultural hybrids. Sidhwa writes that through her writings, she has tried to
give a voice to her readers in Pakistan along with a sense of self-esteem. She regrets that Pakistanis
have not been portrayed favourably by third world writers, and in Ice-Candy-Man, she has
redressed this mistake. She looks up and says:
"We are not worthless people because we inhabit in a poor country that is seen by
Western eyes as a primitive, fundamentalist country only."
The novel Ice-Candy-Man shows Sidhwa's qualities as a writer, her keen sense of
observation, sense of story, character, and her moral vision of her Parsi community. She has
emerged as a trend setter in Pakistani literary world.
Character-Sketches in Ice-Candy-Man
The narrative revolves around the character of Ice-Candy-Man who is a loving person. He is
in love with the ayah of Lenny. He is a man of varied interests. During winters when the sales of
ice-candies decrease, he becomes a birdman. He plays a number of roles to amuse people. He
speaks on politics of his days and imitates them. He is then transformed into "a metamorphosed
character adopting a poetic mould, confessing that he belongs to 'Kotha'—the royal misbegottens
located in Hira Mandi. After the riots, ice-candy-man saves the ayah and later she is sent
to Amritsar with her parents. The ice-candy man remains a lovelorn lover. Jagdev Singh shows
that through the Ice-Candy-Man, Sidhwa shows the changing patterns of communal discord:

56
The change from the pattern of communal discord to that of reconciliation is, however, traced
in the person of the Ice-candy man. Though his role in the cataclysmic event of Partition is painted
in lurid colours, his growing passion and love for Ayah is shown to redeem him from the morass
of senseless communal hatred. From a rough and rustic man, always ready to nudge Ayah the Ice-
Candy Man becomes a person of refined sensibility; he steeps him self in poetry.
When Ayah is wrenched away from him and sent to Amritsar, he follows her across the
border. That the Ice-Candy-Man is willing to leave the land, that he so much cherishes, for the
sake of his Hindu beloved, is not only an example of self-sacrifice but also symbolic of a future
rapprochement between the two warring communities—the Muslims and Hindus. Though Bapsi
Sidhwa shows the possibility of the emergency of a harmonious pattern of communal relations
between the Hindus and Muslims sometimes in the future, yet she leaves much unsaid about how
the change in the Ice-Candy-Man's personality comes about.
Thus, the novel Ice-Candy-Man shows how the ‘raw emotions in simple people can transform
them into extremists. Their perception of outer reality is different from those who manipulate
things to suit to their selfish interests. The novelist shows the impact of the trauma and shocking
sights which the Ice-Candy-Man witnesses. He sets out to avenge the genocide of his Muslim
brothers. The novel like other novels of Partition emerges as a compelling study of character and
event, irrespective of caste bias and religious affinity.
The story of the novel revolves around this central character. He belongs to Hira Mandi
of Lahore, the streets of the dancing girls. His mother had been one of them and his early years
shaped his personality according to his tastes. He is a jolly and friendly person. He is a gifted poet,
rather poetic in his interaction with others. He would recite a couplet from Urdu poetry whenever
required. He is an ardent lover of the Hindu Ayah of Lenny. He is a regular visitor of Lenny's
house for Ayah’s sake. He is fascinated by the charm and beauty of Ayah. In summers, he sells ice-
candy and in winters, he becomes a birds-man who sells sparrows and birds.
The first half of the novel presents the Ice-Candy-Man as a jovial and life-loving person. He
is known for his warmth and good-nature. This is one side of his personality. One incident
transforms the peace-loving ice-candy man into a selfish man and a savage. He happens to be on
the Lahore railway station when the train arrives from Gurdaspur. It doesnot carry passengers
but dead bodies of Muslims. There are no women but bags full of chopped female breasts.
This barbaric scene shocks him and he loses his sanity. He runs in the streets of Lahore to
avenge the death of Muslims. During the riots, he takes active part in killing Hindus and Sikhs the
worst part comes later. He joins a mob of Muslim goondas looking for Hindus. They stop in front
of Lenny's house and enquire about the Hindu Ayah. The faithful servant Imam Din lies by saying
that she has left for Amritsar. But Just then, Ice-Candy Man comes forward and asks Lenny about
Ayah. Lenny out of her innocence points towards the right direction. Ice-Candy man's trick works.
They drag Ayah from inside and is forcefully abducted. It is only after a couple of weeks that Ice-
Candy-Man marries her. But the damage has been done. Ayah is raped by many persons for days
and now she has to stay in the locality of prostitutes of Hira Mandi.
Lenny realizes the consequences of telling a bare truth. She is filled with a deep sense of
remorse and repentance. She even injures her tongue for telling the bitter truth. Now Ice-Candy-
Man also realizes his mistake. He wants to make her happy but she is heart-broken. She tells
Godmother of Lenny that she wants to go to Amritsar. Later, she is sent to Amritsar and Ice-
Candy-Man too crosses the Wagah border behind her. He has become a wandering woe-begone
lover looking for his beloved. The story of the novel shows how racial identity and religious
orientation can play havoc with the life of a person like Ice-Candy-Man.

57
2. Lenny
Lenny is the child-narrator in the novel. She is just like Chaucer's persona in tilling the stories.
This device of narrator has been extensively used in modern fiction. Lenny is the daughter of a
Parsee gentleman and she suffers from a limp in one leg. Even after surgery, conditions donot
improve. She lives in a close and compressed world. She is a keen observer. Her physical
movement is restricted due to her infirmity. It is only her Hindu Ayah Shanta who is her true
companion. When Shanta is abducted, she feels herself Ayah less and alone in the world.
The novel also shows the child Lenny growing from a child into a young woman. Bapsi Sidhwa
records even the small details in Lenny's life. In fact, Lenny is like a projector through which one
is able to see the internal world of Lenny and her response to external reality in a magnified form.
On many occasions, her immersion in thoughts look similar to that of Stephen in A Portrait of the
Artist As a Young Man. The narration of the story is in the first person and Lenny takes the
readers into her private and intimate world. The novel is also a tale of Lenny's disillusionment
and failure to reconcile with external reality which is bitter and unbearable.
3. Shanta, the Ayah
Shanta is the Hindu Ayah of Lenny who works in the house of a Parsee family inLahore. She
is sharp, beautiful and responsible. She is Lenny's mentor and guide in this harsh world. Ayah has
a number of admirers. Irrespective of religion, they all adore her. The communal riots
inLahore also transforms Ayah. She becomes an easy victim and is raped by angry Muslims. Later
she is married by Ice-Cany-Man and he keeps her in Hira Mandi, the place of dancing girls. Ice-
Candy-Man has killed her soul and her warmth is gone. Now he tries his best but his betrayal of
his beloved has burnt their world of dreams and romance.
When Lenny and her Godmother visit Shanta (now Mumtaz) in Hira Mandi, Lenny is shocked
to see her. She observes: "Where have the radiance and the animation gone? Can the soul be
extracted from its living body? Her vacant eyes are bigger than ever: wide-opened with what they
have seen and felt."
Ice-Candy-Man pleads before Godmother: "Please persuade her ... Explain to her... I will keep
her like a queen... like a flower... I will make her happy." With this, he starts weeping, but Mumtaz
has decided not to stay in Hira Mandi amymore. She asks Godmother to send her to Amritsar with
her relatives. Godmother is a very influential lady and after a few days, Ayah is sent to Amritsar.
This separation leaves Ice-Candy-Man heart-broken and forlorn like Pareekutti in T.S. Pillai's
novel Chemmeen.The novel ends on a sad note.
MINOR CHARACTER
There are a number of characters in the narrative of Ice-Candy-Man like Lenny's cousin,
Lenny's Godmother, Imam Din the cook, Hari the gardener, the Masseur, Dr. Bharucha, Mr.
Rodgers, Adi Lenni's Godbrother, Ranna the village boy from Pir Pindo, Mrs. Pen, Sher Singh,
Dost Mohammad, Yousaf and Butcher. They are parts of Lenny's world. Bapsi Sidhwa, is at her
best while delineating character sketches with their aspirations, moods and frustrations.
Everything that happens to them is perceived and felt through the eyes of the child-narrator
Lenny. Characterization in Ice-Candy-Man is superb with psychological insight into human
behaviour and human nature. Sidhwa also shows how a feeling of communal hatred transforms
good people like ice-candy-man into savages.

58
Ice-Candy-Man: A Feminist Perspective

Ice-Candy-Man offers a significant treatment of a gynocentric view of reality in which the
feminine psyche and experiences are presented with a unique insight. The women characters of
the novel are aware and confident of their individuality and cannot be easily subjugated. Lenny,
her Ayah Shanta, her mother and Godmother affirm their autonomous selfhood and exhibit
capability of assuming new roles and responsibilities. They also expose the patriarchal biases
present in the contemporary social perceptions.
Ice-Candy-Man commands attention and admiration on several counts. It is the second

novel by a woman writer (the first being Sunlight on a Broken Column by Attia Ho-sain), dealing
with the theme of Partition of India, but it is the first by a non-partisan writer as Bapsi Sidhwa,
being a Parsee, does not belong to either of the two communities which perpetrated mayhem on
each other. Therefore, it is likely to be a more neutral and objective account of the traumatic event
of Partition which caused divisiveness, disharmony, mutual suspicion, hardening and then tuning
into hostility of feelings of friendliness and good-neighborliness and the eventual holocaust.
While Attia Hosain does not delve deep into the gory details of the massacres, Sidhwa depicts the
events overtaking the Partition in their naked cruelty and ruthlessness. It is a bold attempt on the
part of a woman writer to take up a theme which is different from the traditional issues the women
writers generally assay—the issues of romantic involvements and the sentimental stuff. Also it is
no mean achievement on Sidhwa's part to depict the process of sexual maturation of a young girl
while living in a country like Pakistan where the measure of freedom for women is considerably
less than it exists in India. But above all, the novel becomes a significant testament of a
gynocentric view of reality in which the feminine psyche and experiences are presented with a
unique freshness and aplomb. I shall attempt to demonstrate in the course of the paper how the
gynocentric perspective determines the narrative strategy, resulting in the production of a truly
feminist text. For the purpose of contrast, I shall posit a male discourse on the same theme, that
is, Khush-want Singh's celebrated novel, Train to Pakistan. Strategy, even in the literary context
"retains all its other inferences related to military strategy of skilful use of a stratagem, or
a maneuver for obtaining a specific goal or result. Strategy is a move in a game, and the objectives
are not available at the surface level of the narrative. It occupies a space between language and
plot and between plot and character. Through the structural device (as is done by Jane Austen
in Mansfield Porkin which the moral control and power to order things passes from the male
characters into the hands of Fanny Price who had been marginalized in the beginning of the book)
Bapsi Sidhwa turns the female protagonists into the moral centre, while most of the male
characters either remain apathetic or indulge in destructive violence and dis-integrative action.
The analysis of Ice-Candy-Man reveals that the female characters pulsate with a will and life of
their own. While these characters are unselfconscious of the biological essential ism of their sex,
they cut loose the constraints imposed by the gender which is a social construct (and can therefore
be deconstructed), and which has come into existence through centuries of biased, motivated and
calculated orchestration of the aggressive patriarchal postulates. In a "patriarchal social set up,
masculinity is associated with superiority whereas 'femininity is linked with inferiority, and while
masculinity implies strength, action, self-assertion and domination, femininity implies weakness,
passivity, docility, obedience and self-negation. Ice-Candy-Man,though ostensibly a hero-
oriented novel, subtly but effectively subverts the ingrained elements of patriarchy, privileging
female will, choice, strength along with the feminine qualities of compassion and motherhood.
The central consciousness of the fictional world of Ice-Candy-Man is represented by a young
girl, Lenny, who is lame. The lameness of the narrator-protagonist becomes suggestive of the
handicap a woman creative writer faces, when she decides to wield the pen, because writing, being

59
an intellectual exercise, is considered a male bastion, outside the routine of a woman's submissive
domesticity. Her recuperation symbolizes the overcoming of the constraint on the intellectual
activity of writing by Bapsi Sidhwa. By making Lenny the narrator of the novel, the novelist lends
weight and validity to the feminine perspective on the nature of surrounding reality.
An essential difference between a feminist text and a male discourse is that in the latter it is
the male who is invested with the qualities of heroism, sacrifice, justice and action while generally
the female protagonists remain the recipients of the male bounty and chivalry, in a feminist text,
it is the woman who "performs" and controls and promotes the action by her active involvement
and concern and in the process it is she who acquires the attributes of heroism and glory. In Ice-
Candy-Man, the narrator's relationship with her cousin (he remains cousin throughout the novel,
without the specific identity of a name) upholds the principle of equality (or even superiority of
woman), as she does not allow him to manipulate her sexually and he remains a drooling figure,
adoring her for her vivaciousness. In no way does Lenny's lameness become a source of self-pity
or a constricting force on her psyche. She remains assertive, at times even aggressive and holds
her own when it comes to the crunch. And who is the formative influence on Lenny? Her Ayah,
Shanta.
The Ayah is a flame of sensuousness and female vitality around whom the male moths hover
constantly and hanker for the sexual warmth she radiates. She acts like the queen bee who controls
the actions and emotions of her male admirers: the Fal-lattis Hotel cook, the Government House
gardener, the butcher, the compactly minded "head and body masseur" and the Ice-Candy-Man.
The measure of Ayah's power is seen when she objects to the political discussion among her multi-
religious admirers as she fears discord the Ice-Candy-Man defers to her wish and says, "It's just a
discussion among friends . . . such talk helps clear the air . . . but for your sake, we won't bring it
up again." Epitomizing the strength of the feminity of a female, she infuses in Lenity the ideas of
independence and choice. Flirtatious and coquettish, the Ayah is fully aware and confident of
herself as an individual, who cannot be taken advantage of. At the same time, she is fiercely loyal
to the interests of the family she serves and is extremely protective of Lenny, as a mother would
be, besides being emotionally attached to her. She suffers during the Partition riots, she is
abducted by the cronies of the Ice-Candy-Man, ravished and raped by the hoodlums, kept as the
Ice-Candy-Man's mistress for a few months and then is forced to become the Ice-Candy-Man's
bride. Her name is changed from Shanta to Mumtaz and she is kept at a kothaeven after her mar-
riage. During the interregnum between her abduction and marriage, she, in the words of
Godmother, is "used like a sewer" by "drunks, pedlars, sahibs and cut-throats," with the
connivance of the Ice-Candy-Man. But as soon as the opportunity presents itself, she seizes, her
freedom and gets away from the man she does not love. She is firm and decisive. "I want to go to
my family.... I will not live with him," she tells Godmother. And this decision is in spite of the Ice-
Candy-Man's love for her who weeps, snivels and pleads humbly with the Godmother to let her
remain with him as he has married the Ayah. He receives a thrashing at the hands of the burly
Sikh Guard at the Recovered Women's Camp gate, where Ayah is admitted and turns into
amadfaqir, going to the extent of following the Ayah to Amritsar. Lenny's mother conforms to the
traditional Image of a fidel, faithful and serving wife who seems to be capable only of humouring
things out of her husband. She submits to the moods of the man she is wedded to, tolerating in
the process, the conven-tional hegemony given to the male of the species among human beings.
And here it appears, the writer could not muster courage enough to invest her (Lenny's mother)
with qualities different from those she does, considering the social ethos in the country of her
habitat. But the feminist in Sidhwa cuts a caper, and achieves her end in a subtle and complex
way. While in Train to Pakistan, it is Juggut Singh (Jugga) who, ennobled by his feelings of love
for his beloved Nooran, saves, at the cost of his own life, the whole train-load of Muslims migrating
to Pakistan in a bid to get away from the clutches of the violent riots, in Ice-Candy-Man, it is
Lenny's mother and Lenny's aunt who play the sterling humanitarian and heroic role of fighting

60
for the lives and property of Hindus. Clearing herself of Lenny's accusation that she has been
helping in the communal conflagration, she says: "we were only smuggling the rationed petrol to
help our Hindu and Sikh friends to run away. . . . And also for the convoys to send kidnapped
women, like your ayah, to their families across the border." Thus, it is the two women who
undertake the risky job of sav.ing lives in danger and the fact acquires significance in the fictional
scheme of things.
Towering high among the women protagonists is the vibrant figure of Lenny's Godmother
(one of her aunts) whose name is Rodabai. Godmother's personality sparkles with razor-sharp
wit, her indefatigable stamina, her boundless love for Lenny, and her social commitment. Her
sense of humour, her deer-like agility, in spite of her old age, and her power to mould, modify and
order not only individuals but even the system, when she so desires, earn her respect and
admiration of people around her. But besides these qualities she is endowed with profound
understanding of human existence and her wisdom is revealed when she consoles the Ayah, in the
aftermath of what has been done to her: "That was fated, daughter. It can't be undone. But it can
be forgiven. . . . Worse tilings are forgiven. Life goes on and the business of living buries the debris
of our pasts. Hurt, happiness . . . all fade impartially ... to make way for fresh joy and new sorrow.
That is the way of life." The most glorious example of her self-confidence, authoritativeness,
capacity to handle cri-sis-situations deftly is provided by her dealing with the Ice-Candy-Man and
the rescue of the Ayah she effects after she has been kidnapped and is kept at a kotha. The Ice-
Candy-Man is propped with the power of the pimp-community, consisting of lawless elements.
Endowed with a glib tongue, he is not an easy person to deal with. I would like to quote snatches
of the confronting conversation, in order to bring out, in full measure, the power to annihilate the
adversary Rodabai possesses:
Affected at last by Godmother's stony silence, Ice-Candy-Man lowers his eyes. His voice
divested of oratory, he says, "I am her slave, Baijee. I worship her. She can come to no harm with
me."
"No harm?" Godmother asks in a deceptively cool voice—and arching her back like a scorpion
its tail, she closes in for the kill. "You permit her to be raped by butchers, drunks, and goondas and
say she has come to no harm?"
Ice-Candy-Man's head jolts back as if it's been struck.
"Is that why you had her lifted off—let hundreds of eyes probe her—so that you could marry
her? You would have your own mother carried off if it suited you! You are a shameless
badmash! Nimakharam l Faithless!'-'
Godmother's undaunted visit to the disreputable "Hira Mandi" (the area of kothas) and the
rescue of the Ayah, once she is convinced that the Ayah is being kept by force against her will, are
commendable indeed. Godmother concentrates in her character what the feminists feel is very
important for a woman to realize her individuality: the feeling of "self-worth."
As against Sidhwa's novel, Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan is manifestly a male
discourse in which it is the men who are in command and it is they who occupy the centre of the
stage. The focus is on the hero, Juggut Singh mostly, and even though he is portrayed as
a budmash, the writer's sympathy and admiration are obviously for him: for his devil-may-care
attitude, his jauntiness, his physical stature (and later for his moral stature as well). When Juggut
Singh has been arrested for the dacoity and the murder in the village of Mano Majra, the novelist
comments: "Juggut Singh's head and shoulders showed above the turbans of the policemen. It
was like a procession of horses with an elephant in their midst—taller, broader, slower with his
chain clanking like ceremonial trappings. There is hardly a woman character in the novel who
matches the heights Juggut Singh reaches. It is a man's world of Juggut Singh, the budmash

61
turned into a moral hero, Hukam Chand, the Magistrate and the Deputy Commissioner who tries
his best to keep the situation under control in Mano Majra in the wake of turbulence caused by
the Partition, Iqbal, the Marxist, whose ideology fails him in this time of crisis, Bhai Meet Singh,
the priest of the village Gurd-wara, who wants to keep on the right side of the police and the police
sub-inspector, who is angry with the Sikhs of Mano Majra for not mauling the Muslims. The
relationship between Juggut Singh and his beloved Nooran is that of an overbearing lover and
submissive beloved. Once his lust overtakes him, he lays her, her protests notwithstanding, and
he talks to her peremptorily. Nooran's words about him confirm this point: "That is all you want.
And you get it. You are just a peasant. Always wanting to sow your seed. Even if the world were
going to hell yon would want to do that. Even when guns are being fired in the village. Wouldn't
you?" And when, frightened by the sound of gun-shots, and by the prospect of her absence being
noticed, she tells him that she will never come to see him again, he says angrily, "Will you shut up
or do I have to smack your face?" Let us now compare the relationship between Lenny and Cousin.
The latter's carnal cravings are thwarted determinedly by Lenny. "Ever ready to illuminate, teach
and show me things, Cousin squeezes my breasts and lifts my dress and grabs my elasticized
cotton knickers. But having only the two hands to do all this with he can't pull them down because
galvanised to action I grab them up and jab him with my elbows and knees; and turning and
twisting, with rny toes and heels." No woman character in Train to Pakistan attains heroic
stature; they remain sex objects, on altars of grand sacrifice and macho love or remain consigned
to the parameters of the conventional concept of womanhood. Clearly, the perception of woman
is patriarchal and, therefore, women are not individually realized beings. They remain on the
margin of the plot, while the task of further-ing the action is given to the male protagonists. (Of
course, Nooran indirectly galvanises Jugga into the significant humane act.) While Khushwant
Singh's I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale portrays a fully realized, towering character in the
person of Sabhrai, who remains an impressive figure throughout the book, with her qualities of
faith in the Great Guru, moral uprightness, empathy and religious poise, the women characters
in Train to Pakistan remain pale shadows of their male counterparts.
But then we come across the oppression and exploitation of her younger sister by Rodabai
(Godmother). In spite of the younger sister's slaving obedience (she is called Slavesister), she is
treated shabbily and frequently humiliated by Rodabai. Slave-sister's humiliation in the presence
of others becomes unseemly and unpalatable. She is leading the life of a bonded slave, forced to
suppress her self in every interaction (confrontation, to be precise) with the old lady; she is not
allowed to exercise her discretion or her will in any situation. Does this relationship serve any
creative purpose in the novel? On the face of it, it just appears to be a dispensable part of the plot,
whose removal would not affect the coherence or the compactness of the structure. But I think,
Sidhwa wants to convey an important message, or warning that the exploitation, manipulation
and suppression of one individual by another are not confined to the male-female relationship.
These can exist between a female-female relationship as well and become as vicious and
debilitating for the victim as when a male dominates and exploits a woman. The feminists, it
seems, are being made alive to the dangers of replicating the patriarchal principle and thus
perpetuating the class of the exploiters and the exploited amorfgst themselves. This makes
Sidhwa's feminist credo broader, fairer and more responsive to the human condition.
Ice-Candy-Man, thus, becomes a feminist text in the true sense of the term, successfully
attempting to bring to the centre-stage the female protagonists. These protagonists, while on the
one hand, come alive on account of their realistic presentation, on the other, tliey serve as the
means of consciousness-raising among the female segment of society. Literature is a powerful tool
in the hands of creative writers to modulate and change the societal framework, and Sidhwa
through her extremely absorbing and interesting work seeks to contribute to the process of change
that has already started all over the world, involving a reconsideration of women's rights and
status, and a radial restructuring of social thought. Sidhwa belongs to that group of women

62
creative writers who have started to depict "determined women for whom the traditional role is
inadequate, women who wish to affirm their independence and autonomy and are perfectly capa-
ble of assuming new roles and responsibilities." These writers wish to build a world which is free
of dominance and hierarchy, a world that rests on the principles of justice and equality and is truly
human.
Ice-Candy-Man: A Saga of Female Suppression and

Marginalization
Ice-Candy-Man projects the violent and chaotic days of India-Pakistan Partition in 1947.
Through the character of Lenny, Sid-hwa has given graphic details of the political changes
occurring in the country, as well as its effect on the citizens of India. The novelist has very
realistically illustrated women's plight and exploitation in the patriarchal society. Men establish
their masculine powers and hence fulfil their desires by brutally assaulting women. Men as
aggressors feel elated and victorious whereas women endure the pain and humiliation of the
barbarity enacted upon them. Sidhwa, as a novelist, talks of emancipation of women. Hence the
novel ends on a positive note. Women strive to come out of their plight and finally move forward
from their degraded and tormented state to start their lives afresh.
Feminism as a movement has played a very vital role in projecting the suppressed status of
women in the patriarchal society. In the domain of patriarchal culture, woman is a social
construct, a site on which masculine meanings get spoken and masculine desires enacted. As
Sushila Singh puts it in Feminism and Recent Fiction in English: "Human experience for
centuries lias been synonymous with the masculine experience with the result that the collective
image of humanity has been one-sided and incomplete. Woman has not been defined as a subject
in her own right but merely has an entity that concerns man either in his real life or his fantasy
life. Many contemporary writers have projected the plight of women based on caste, creed,
religion, gender-prejudices, community and beliefs, and are trying to suggest some pragmatic
solutions to them. Though the conservative social norms and myths of feminine behaviour are
challenged all over the world yet a change in the attitude of patriarchal society towards woman is
at a snail's pace. Bapsi Sidhwa's novel Ice-Candy-Man represents a series of female characters
who have survived in a chaotic time of 1947 in India, which can be registered as the period of worst
religious riots in the history of India.
Sidhwa has given a very realistic and transparent picture of carnage during Hindu-Muslim
riots in 1947. The novel mirrors men becoming adversary on the basis of their religion and also
represents the changing political scenario of the country. Emotional turmoil, individual weakness,
barbarities of communal riots and the brutalities inflicted on women amidst this iconoclastic
ruthlessness and communal frenzy have been very realistically projected by the novelist. The
whole story has been narrated by the female protagonist Lenny who relates the horrors of violence
and her personal observations and reactions. The protagonist not only observes but also analyses
men's lascivious and degrading attention towards women, voraciousness of male sexual desires,
women's plight as they are reduced to the status of sexual objects, and relates the peculiar
disadvantages, social and civil, to which they are subjected.
Lenny as a narrator moves from one phase of her life, i.e., childhood to adolescence. During
this journey, she understands the changes taking place in the society, men's attitude towards
women and women's subjection. The whole phase helps her to develop a more mature vision

63
towards life. She gives a closer look at the relationship between men and women which awakens
her young mind to develop a vision of her own.
The narrator relates her life as "My world is compressed." As a physically handicapped girl,
her world is restricted to the four walls of the house. As a child she spends most of her time with
her Godmother. She terms her Godmother's room as, "My refuge from the perplexing unrealities
of my home on Warris Road." As a child she had no inclination to have female possession though
from time to time she was advised to have one by the women of her family. She recalls: "I can't
remember a time when I ever played with dolls though relatives and acquaintances have persisted
in giving them to me." This reflects the sexual identity thrust upon her time and again. Her
schooling is stopped as suggested by Col. Bharucha, her doctor, because she was suffering from
polio. He concludes, "She'll marry—have children—lead a carefree, happy life. No need to strain
her with studies and exams." Lenny concludes that the suggestion made by Col. Bharucha sealed
her fate. It reveals the limitations associated with a girl's life. Development of feminine virtues
with female nature and carrying out the responsibilities associated with the domestic affairs are
considered as the only aim for women. Patriarchal society considers women as physically weak to
venture into the world outside the four walls of their houses and too deficient to make important
decisions. Hence women are relegated to the domestic sphere where they have to accept the
hegemony of a male counterpart. Since ages it is considered that it is a woman's duty to tend
house, raise children and give comfort to her family. Shashi Deshpande, a contemporary novelist,
suggests that women should be given enough space to realize their true personality. She points
out in an interview to Geetha Gangadharan:
The stress laid on the feminine functions, at the cost of all your potentials as an individual
enraged me. I knew I was very intelligent person, but for a woman, intelligence is always a
handicap. If you are intelligent, you keep asking, "Why, why, why" and it becomes a burden.
Simone de Beauvoir also holds the same view about social conditioning. According to her,
mothers are highly responsible for inculcating feminine traits of submission and self-abnegation
in women. She writes inThe Second Sex that the girl-child is often concerned in this way with
motherly tasks; whether for convenience or because of hostility and sadism, the mother thus rids
herself of many of her functions; the girl in this matter made to fit precociously into the universe
of curious affairs; her sense of importance will help her in assuming her femininity. But she is
deprived of happy freedom, the carefree aspect of childhood, having become precociously a
woman, she leaves all too soon the limita-tions this estate imposes upon a human being; she
reaches adolescence as an adult, which gives her history a special character.
Lenny as a girl learns that marriage of girls is of utmost importance to their
parents. Independence and self-identity are meant for men. The intense concern for her marriage
even in her childhood puts Lenny in dismay. She states, "Drinking tea, I am told, makes one
darker. I'm dark enough. Everyone says, 'It's a pity Adi's fair and Lenny so dark. He's a boy.
Anyone will marry him."
She" recognizes the biological exploitation of women as she grows. As a child she cherishes
her mother's love and her father's protection but the whole episode of Ice-Candy-Man and Ayah
destroys all her conceptions about love. She was shocked to perceive Ice-Candy-Man pushing his
wife Ayah into the business of prostitution. She concludes, "The innocence that my parents'
vigilance, the servants' care and Godmother's love sheltered in me, that neither Cousin's carnal
cravings, nor the stories of the violence of the riots, could quite destroy, was laid waste that
evening by the emotional storm that raged around me. The confrontation between Ice-Candy-
Man and Godmother opened my eyes to the wisdom of righteous indignation over compassion.
To the demands of gratification and the unscrupulous nature of desire. The site of Hindu and
Muslim women being raped during the riots petrifies her. She watches men turning into beasts

64
leaving no room for moral and human values. Women including Ayah were becoming prey of men.
Lenny was shocked to see the human mind which was built of nobler materials getting so easily
corrupted. Men were declaring superiority over each other by sexually assaulting women. Women
had nothing in their favour. Envy, malice, jealousy, rage for personal power and importance in
men were leading to violence and injury. Shashi Deshpande states:
rape is for me the grossest violation of trust between two people. Whether it is someone in
the family or your husband or any other man who commits a rape, it destroys the trust between
men and women. It is also the greatest violence because it is not only the woman's body but it is
her mind and feeling of her right to have a control on her body which is gone.
Sidhwa has also projected the aftermath of such inhuman and barbaric acts against women
after the riots. She has projected the farcical social behaviour which victimizes women alone for
any bodily violence and leaves them to wail with their bitter experience which gives them a feeling
of pain and sense of loss. Lenny is shocked to see the changing attitude of men towards one an-
other. Religious enmity easily erased the threads of friendship. She concludes:
And I became aware of religious differences. It is sudden. One day everybody is themselves—
and the next day they are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian. People shrink, dwindling into
symbols.
She knows that men of different religions can never become friends again. To take revenge
was their only motive in life. Lenny concludes, "Now I know surely. One man's religion is another
man's poison." Lenny is not ready to accept the prevailing social condition. As a grown up she
analyses the whole situation and draws some conclusions. She decides to hunt for her lost Ayah,
who also became a prey of the Hindu-Muslim riots. Lenny decides to talk to her mother regarding
Ayah. She wants to save Ayah from the terrible profession of prostitution as told by her cousin.
Lenny decides, "If those grown men pay to do what my comparatively small cousin tried to do,
then Ayah is in trouble. I think of Ayah twisting Ice-Candy-Man's intrusive toes and keeping the
butcher and wrestler at arm's length. And of those stranger's'hands hoisting her chocolate body
into the cart. . . . I decide it's time to confront Mother." Due to Lenny's continuous persistence at
home, she is informed about Ayah's whereabouts. The novel ends with Ayah being sent back to
her parents' home.
Throughout the novel, Lenny appears as a courageous and bold girl who is not ready to
succumb to the communal frenzy. She is inquisitive, daring, demanding and lively. Sidhwa has
given a feminist touch to the character of Lenny who moves forward in life despite various
hindrances and obstacles. As she observes the lives of various women around her, she
understands the limitations associated with women's lives in patriarchal society. She is shocked
to see men betraying and sexually assaulting women and exploiting them. Sidhwa as a writer
encourages women to transgress the line of marginalization. She states in an interview:
As a woman, one is always marginalised. 1 have worked among women to create an awareness
of their rights and protested against repressive measures aimed at Pakistani women and minority
community.
Lenny's mother is another interesting female character of the novel. As a servile housewife,
she limits her life to the four walls of her home. She reticently follows her husband, who is the
decision-maker of the family. Lenny's mother is a representative of those traditional women who
as subordinates never express their desire to establish themselves as better human beings. Sidhwa
seems to illustrate through. Lenny that men have to dilute their ego and women have to eschew
the image of weaker sex or deprived femininity. Mindsets need to be changed in order to establish
equality between the sexes. The patriarchal society should perceive women beyond the roles of
daughters, wives and mothers. Traditional male fantasies have created a particular image of

65
women to suit their interests—submissive, servile, docile and self-abnegating. These fantasies
have become alive, as women have been meticulously trained by the patriarchal/social system to
assimilate them. A big transformation is required at the social level, which will acknowledge
women as human beings with souls, desires, feelings, ambitions and potentials. Simultaneously
women should utilize their potentials beyond their domestic life to assert their individuality. The
novelIce-Candy-Man projects through Lenny's mother that women should have a purpose in life
besides domesticity which should be developed by them to the best of their abilities. Women need
to liberate themselves from the constraints of 'womanliness' which will erase the existing
discrepancies regarding their marginalization. Lenny's mother exhibits a change in her
personality by the end of the novel. She becomes acquainted with the political changes occurring
in the country during India-Pakistan division. She emerges as a social worker. Along with -Lenny's
Electric-Aunt, she helps the victims of 1947 riots. She provides people with petrol who wanted to
cross the border and helps the raped and exploited women. Lenny's mother shows a lot of
similarity with Bhabani Bhattacharya's female character Monju in So Many Hungers.Monju
appears as a fuller and maturer woman by the end of the novel. In the beginning she projects the
womanly traits of being happy and content with her life and family. But gradually, with the
passage of time, the pathetic incidences of Bengal famine and pictures of human life transform
her. She learns to think beyond the realms of her own life and as a human cannot remain blind to
and detached from the miseries and traumas of others. With a soul to feel and a mind to think it
is very difficult to shut oneself behind the door when people are screaming for help and rescue.
Similarly Lenny's mother could not resist herself from helping the victims of 1947 riots.
Sidhwa exposes the patriarchal practices of the society which marginalize their growth and
development and also represents women's psychology that has been toned by centuries of
conditioning.
Hence, we can conclude that Sidhwa as a writer has a constructive approach towards women's
predicament. Women may not just fill a place in the society but they should fit in it. By leading a
contented life they paralyze their lives but if they desire they will have courage to break through
their their plight and afford opportunity for betterment.
Ice-Candy-Man: The Geography of Scars and History

of Pain
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived. In Ice-Candy-Man, Bapsi Sidhwa
conjures life and time in the sub-continent during the British Raj from 1935 to 1947, the period of
the Partition of India and Pakistan. The narrative of the novel constitutes "the thick description
of history"' in all its ramifications in the dramatic portrayal of interaction among diverse strata in
various communities—their modes of the personality variants within a society by recording
individual opinion, habit, belief, behaviour and psychological disposition in the context of cultural
themes such as values, religion, politics and ethos.
In seizing the lost truth—the "other" in history, the text reveals an intuitive grip of the events
that makes it refreshingly different from the scores of other novels with similar concerns. Here I
am inclined to attribute this version of history to the writer's view of history as a woman that
makes the whole rendering further distanced from the stereotypes. The narrative encapsulates
with compelling sensitivity and empathy the protagonist girl child Lenny's initiation in the adult
world marked by a highly diverse and disparate cultural climate. The episodic structure of the
novel describes within the framework of the larger theme of Lenny's growth and attainment of
some understanding of human situations, the personal, political ideological pursuits, anxiety,

66
pain, stupidity, suffering, joy possessing the epoch before and immediately after the Partition of
India in Lahore. The shrewd but sensitive tendering of the past by girl child—its geography of
scars, its history of pain—raises doubts about the credibility of the projection of the child's
"point of view." One may find within the child's point of view a mature woman's perceptions or
authorial omniscient point of view permeating and overlapping and as a result, a volitional
blend of innocence and experience. In defence of this narrative approach, it could be observed
that events of past really expand later and thus we do not have complete emotions about the
immediate present. Only in the past we could invest meaning. Filled out in memory, the dead
could take a final form only later. In the female infant Lenny's perceptions the living could be
unformed, like herself in the making. Sliding into the adult's point of view, the narrative relates
the random history of the female subtexts to the potential narratives of love and betrayal in a
mode that enables both the narrator and the reader to discover patterns of cultural significance.
I
In versatile strokes of humour, fantasy, scatology and caricature, the upper middle class
Parsee community—Godmother, Old husband, Slave sister, Mother, Father, Electric-Aunt,
Cousin, Dr. Mody, Dr. Bharucha are portrayed. We are allowed to participate in their cultural
codes, allegiances, insecurity, and political and human ideals. The Parsees situated in a
metropolitan city of the then united India, sandwiched between two invidiously hostile
Hindu/Sikh and Muslim communities—a delicate juncture, were more vulnerable in the
contemporary political context becauseLahore had to play a major part in the Partition of India.
A period when such massive historical figures such as Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah loomed large,
Lenny's immediate world is made of a Hindu Ayah Shanta, with whom she has developed a close
bond, Imam Din, Masseur and Ice-Candy-Man, Shankar Haria, a Sikh neighbour Mr. Singh and
his children, English Officer Mr. Roger, Anglo-Indian Mr. and Mrs. Pen etc. The narrative in its
shifting focus makes us see the scene, hear the sound, and sense the flavour of a highly desperate
cultural configuration coexisting in their intrinsic vulnerability, cruelty and ideological or
religion-sanctioned logic. Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Parsee and English are all seen in terms of
experiences that are too versatile to be reduced to a category of funny, farcical, tragic or grand.
While fundamentalist propaganda and politics rage, divided loyalties breed brutality and betrayal,
arson, looting and the dislocation of common man. A poignant drama of personal loss and agony
of young Ayah Shanta intrudes in the larger scenario and transmutes the whole tone of the novel.
The awful profligacy, the ugliness, sordidness and deceit converge into an agony and ecstasy that
transcend physical and rational levels and expose us to secret logic of human desire and
depravity—the ghost of the past embodying inexorably the major character, Ice-Candy-Man. The
novel, from being a shrewd satiric record of the history of Indiaand Pakistan, becomes a lore of
elegiac dimension that has already been anticipated in Iqbal's lines serving as a prologue: "The
fire of verse gives us courage and bids me no more to be faint with dust in my mouth. I am abject:
to God I make no complaint/Sometimes you favour our rivals then sometimes with us. You are
free/I am sorry to say it so boldly. You are no less fickle than we." The last part of the novel
centring on Ice-Candy-Man makes us recognize the teleos of history that has cast him in
precarious times. His historical antecedents reveal skeletons on the cupboard of history. In the
plight of this bastard—a derelict whom we identify not only a victim of history and his own
doomed longings but also more significantly of the culpable, contemptible, misogynistic hypocrisy
of the Moghul ruling class that gave social sanction to the sordid subjugation of women to pander
to the lust and voyeuristic urges. And, subsequently, it bred a class of male and female bastards—
dispos-sessed and disowned, whose perpetuation of pimping and prostitution in the facade of
beauty, art and poetry concealed covet-ousness, helplessness and deceit. In the case of Ice-Candy-
Man nonetheless, there has to be no more degradation. The disarray of history and his own fatal
flaw assign him intense desolation but that also lift him to a sphere of spiritual plane. Rejection
by his unwilling beloved transform him into "a moonstruck Fakir who has renounced the world

67
for his beloved: be it a woman or God.". And Ice-Candy-Man's voice humming in our mind stirs a
certain sense of awe;
Don't berate me, beloved, I'm God-intoxicated:
I'll wrap myself about you; I'm mystically mad.
The opening chapters of the novel however do not provide a clue to understanding the
significance of the title. It is at the end that the whole panorama of the novel attains a metaphoric
image in the title. One may infer a similar implication of the title in Wallace Steven's "Emperor of
Ice Cream." The poem evokes the image of a slatternly woman at her wake attended by a man who
represents pleasure and by wenches who are apparently fellow prostitutes. The meaning suggests
the power of death over physical satisfaction. While the novel affirms the supreme value of human
freedom to make right moral choices, "Ice" in both the titles metaphorically suggests innocence,
cruelty, betrayal and the ultimate power of death that divests life of all illusions.
Lenny's version of life is a truth telling project. Her affliction with polio in infancy has made
her routine different from other children. She is in a privileged position and has also access to
social and prrvate gathering or the intimate lives of elders. She cannot be like others, she cannot
lie. Says Godmother, "I'm afraid a life of crime is not for you. Not because, you aren't sharp, but
because you are not suited to it.... A life sentence? Condemned to honesty??" Since her truth
telling brings about a disaster in some lives, she recognizes that she is "an animal with conditioned
reflexes that cannot lie." With ruthless candour, she describes her lameness, her exposure to her
difference as physically handicapped and also as a female—the nature of male-female
relationship—women as the object of lust, desire, the destructive outcome of sexuality. Lenny's
parents, Ayah Shanta, her admirers, cousin make her sense the subterranean motives and urges
both in political and personal lives. The city of Lahore in 1935 becomes alive, throbbing with life.
Lenny pushed in a pram by her Ayah covers jail road, Queen Road, Past Y.M.C.A, past the
Freemason's lodge (The Ghost Club) and across the mall to the Queen's statue in the park opposite
the assembly chambers. She watches every scene, she loves it; Queen Victoria’s statue imposes
the English Raj in the Park, Felleti's Hotel Cook, the government house Gardener, and an elegant,
compactly muscled head and body Masseur. Ayah Shanta and Lenny sit together. The Ice-Candy-
Man of the title lurks in the background selling his popsicles lounging on the grass, a man who
has to have an ominous significance in the story. In this Company, Lenny gathers knowledge of
the pre-Partition politics in India, and also the mysteries of adult sexuality: "Masseur's knowing
fingers, his voice gravelly with desire . . . consummate arm circles Ayah. Ayah's sound of pleasure."
Fine confident strokes describe the character: "Ayah, chocolate brown and short. Everything
about her is eighteen years old and round and plump. . . . And as if her looks were not stunning
enough, she has a rolling bouncing walk that agitates the globules of her buttocks under cheap
colourful saree and the half spheres beneath her short saree-blouse. The English man no doubt
had noticed." Lenny notices things that love to crawl beneath Ayah's sarees: lady bird, glow worms
and Ice-Candy-Man's toes: "They travel so cautiously that both Ayah and I are taken unawares.
An absorbing gossip. I am sometimes bribed into commerce with the Ice-Candy-Man." She senses
tension among the competing admirers of Ayah: "They look as if each is a whiskered dog circling
the other, weighing in and warning his foe." The awareness of the subtle exchange of signals
between man-man and man-woman mark her initiations into social-sexual codes. "I learn the
human needs, frailties, cruelties and joys."
Not only are the people inhabiting Ayah's world portrayed with vividness and spontaneity,
the mother and father, Godmother—childless, abrasive are made to look real. Lenny's special
relationship with the Godmother is recorded with genuine feeling: "The bond that ties her
strength to my weakness, my fierce demands to her nurturing, my trust to her capacity to contain
that trust-my loneliness ... to her compassion . . . stronger than the bond of motherhood." The
Electric-Aunt, addicted to navy blue, swift moving cousin, her son who makes Lenny know herself

68
as an object of sexuality—her difference. Adi, her brother, reminds her of her ugliness. "I am
skinny, wizened, sallow, wiggly-haired ugly. He is beautiful." The narrative varies from plain
matter of fact to metaphoric that amaze and amuse because of the indigenous mode of
perceptions: Lenny cannot imagine Ice-Candy-Man working alongside Ayah in her house.
"Mother'd throw a fit! ... with his thuggish way of inhaling from the stinking cigarettes clenched
in his fist, his fleshy scarves and neck of jasmine altar ... a shady almost disreputable type." The
sinister but charming implication of Ice-Candy-Man could be read in the portrait. "He talks news
and gossip flow off his glib tongue like a torrent. He reads Urdu newspapers and the Urdu Digest.
He can, when he applies himself, read the headlines of the Civil and Military Gadgets, the English
daily. The rising German forces." The very description constitutes spurious, promiscuous
personality who, we learn later, is a bastard born in Kotha and can enact glibly the .protocol of a
Nawab as well as of a -pimp. The focus on Shanta and Ice-Candy-Man serves Sidhwa's purpose of
connecting the personal with the national concerns and expand the boundary of her fictional
world. The novel is smoothly allowed to attain more space and contain not only the story of Ayah
Shanta's love for Masseur, Masseur's murder in the riots, attrition, her abduction and cruel
degradation but also the tense political scenario of the time. Things are happening at a charged
pace. It is the time when the political agitations in the Raj are gaining momentum: "The European
mystery is erased In secret of his conjuring trick is known." The arrival and exaltation of Gandhi
is received with mixed reaction—comic and wary: "Gandhiji reaches out and suddenly seizes my
arm in a startling voice. What a sickly-looking child, he announces. . . . Flush her stomach! Her
skin will bloom like roses." He is a man who loves women. And lame children. And the
untouchable sweeper... so he will love the untouchable sweeper's constipated girl child best ... It
wasn't until some years later . . . when I realized the full scope and dimension of the massacre...
that I comprehended the concealed nature of the ice lurking deep beneath the hypnotic and
dynamic femininity of Gandhi's non—violent exterior."
Nehru however is inscribed with obvious awe and admiration and contrasted with Jinnah.
The Nehru and Lady Mountbatten connection does not cease to excite most writers who deal
with India's history. Jinnah's profile is summed up in a few succinct lines—austere, driven, pukka
Sahib accented, deathly ill: Sidhwa's protagonist fancies a tragic-romantic story of Jinnah's love,
marriage and loss—his Parsee wife and that he died because of heartbreak. Unlike the
historiography, literature has chosen to conceive Jinnah in romantic terms. Sidhwa also takes his
clue from Sarojini Naidu who paid tribute to Jinnah in gushing language: "preeminently the clam
hauteur of his accustomed reserve,... an intuition quick and tender as a woman's humour gay and
winning as a child . . . dispassionate in his estimate and acceptance of life."
The conflict between Jinnah and Gandhi threatens the political climate. There is news of
breaking the country. Ayah informs her: "They will dig a canal." Lenny becomes aware of the
catalytic power of religious differences. It is sudden, one day everybody in themselves and the
next day they are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian. People shrink, dwindle into symbols. Ayah is
no longer just my all-encompassing Ayah. She is also a token. A Hindu. With the approaching
climate of disquiet, the fundamentalism is provoked. While the Parsee community maintains
caution, the Muslims Imam Din and Yusuf are turning into religious zealots: they take Friday
afternoon off for the Jumhaprayers. The vivid dramatic description illustrate Sidhwa's power of
capturing moments with photographic accuracy. One Friday they set about preparing themselves
ostentatiously. Squatting atop the cement wall of the garden tank . . . they wash their heads, arms,
neck, the cans and noisily clear their throat and noses . . . crammed into a narrow religious slot
they are diminished; as are Jinnah and Iqbal, Ice-Candy-Man and the Masseur.
Equally realistic details evoke the low caste female child, Papoo and her family belonging to
the sweeper class, they are alienated because of the caste hierarchy—"because they are entrenched
deeper in their low Hindu caste. While the Sharmas and Dau-latrams, Brahmins like Nehru, are

69
dehumanized by their lofty caste and caste marks." Sidhwa's pen sketches the heterogeneous
configurations—caste—community with astute understanding: The Rogers of Birdwood Barracks,
Queen Victoria and King George are English Christians. They look down their noses upon the Pens
who are Anglo-Indian, who look down theirs on the Phaibus who are Indian Christian, who look
down upon all non-Christians. The convoluted caste politics in colonial India, its grim
implications—the will to power associated with deeply entrenched insecurity—form a cultural
configuration from which Parsees as Sidhwa sees are fastidiously aloof: "In this milieu,
Godmother, Slavesister, Electric-Aunt and my family are reduced to irrelevant nomenclature: "we
are Parsee, what is God?"
The easy flow of the narrative coordinates and incorporates a wide sweep of characters and
episodes in interaction of diverse cultures, compulsions, implicated in the sociology and politics
of culture. Punjabi abuses build up the ambience of the sweeper caste: Papoo an eleventh year
daughter of Mucchoo shall be given to an older dwarfish man in marriage. Papoo is treated with
sordid cruelty. Mucchoo screeching at Papoo: "I turn my back; the bitch slacks off I say something,
she becomes a deaf mute. I'll thrash the wickedness out of you."
The scatology involved in story—telling intruding into the narrative here and there
unobtrusively makes us grasp the displaced communal prejudice with ugly potentials. The butcher
continues: "You Hindus eat so much beans and cauliflower. I'm no surprised your Yogis levitate.
They possibly fart into their way right up to heaven." Lenny observes Ayah Shanta is not laughing,
she senses endemic hostility between different religions. Everybody is a party to it. With
unrelenting accuracy Lenny describes a Brahmin: "our shadow glides over a Brahmin sitting cross
legged, . . . our shadow has violated his virtue. . . . He looked at his food as if it is infested with
maggots . . . and throws away the leaf." The interacting Sikh, Hindu, Muslim and Parsee give the
narration a caricature's edge and provide some moments of innocent humour: "The little Sikh
boys running about with hair piled in top-knots, are keeping mostly to themselves," or " Cousin
tells Lenny that the twelve o'clock heat of the sun addles their brains" or Muslim family with their
burka-veiled women they too sit apart. Dressed in satins and high heels, the little Muslim girls
wear make up." Equally identifiable in the subcontinent is the scene: "A group of smooth skinned
Brahmins and their pampered male offspring form a tight circle of supercilious exclusivity." Lenny
hears their yelling: Parsee, crow-eaters! The mutual misinterpretation of the communities
aggravates the confusion of the time.
The narrative's wittiest rendering is that of Parsee community, where slapstick and
scatological references give a bounce and realism to the mimetic description and this is where the
narrator feels most at home. The Parsee household, its cultural codes—patterns of
communication, jokes—render characters like Godmother, old-husband, Dr. Manek Mody,
Slavesister, Electric-Aunt, Cousin and Dr. Bharucha distinct individuality. Their idiosyncrasies,
failings and convictions are vividly dramatized. The hilarious moments also neutralize the tense
ambience of the outside world. Slavesister is often being subjected to reprimand. The narrator
finds Godmother in a good form:
His Sourship [Old Father] had his bath. Manek, you'd better take your term before Cleopatra
[Slavesister] decides to settle down to her business on the commode. "Really, Rodabai.... I hate to
say it, but you really are going too far. . . may I ask who you are to tell Manek not to meddle? Are
you somebody? Queen Cleopatra of Jail road perhaps?"
Milan Kundera in his essay "63 words" defines obscenity as the root that attaches us most
deeply to our homeland. This depiction tellingly brings to the fore the rootedness of the novelist
as much in the description of Mother's prayer of the Great Trouble Easers, the angels Mushkali
Assa and Behram Yazd.

70
II
The cultural praxis of the colonized people fighting hard to overthrow imperialism was
already afflicted with an endemic inner malaise. Their movement for freedom
and Independence was, in effect a combat between two nations, two races, two people, two
cultures and two ideologies over a territory India. The fight was over who owns India, who
rules India, who representsIndia. The rift makes itself apparent in the volatile moments of
sloganeering much before the event of Partition in 1947, as the image figures in the mind of child
Lenny:
Adi and I slip past the attention of our vigilants and join the tiny tin pot processions lhat are
spawned on Warris Road. We shout ourselves hoarse crying. Jai Hind! Jai Hind', or Pakistan
Zindabad!' depending on the whim or the allegiance of the principal crier.
And as the time passes, the sectarian passion gains further momentum,.every segment of the
city life comes under the spell of sporadic violence of actions and words. DIG Police Roger is
murdered—body found gutted. Muslim, Sikh, Hindu leaders rise for power and autonomy. Master
Tara Singh is quoted as saying, "We will see how the Muslim swines get Pakistan: we will fight till
the last mart." The arrival of Holi festival in 1947 is greeted with ominous ring by Muslims: Holi
with their blood! Allah Ho Akbar—Pakistan Zindabad. Violence grows more gruesome, The
narrative transcription of the lurking menace evokes a sense of fear, waste and vacuity. In terse,
taut narrative the sinister design of the time is apprehended: 'Lahore is burning The abandoned
houses of Sharmas, Dau-latrams. . . . that Delhi Gate . . . There's Lahori Gate . . . There's Mochi
Darwaza ... Isn't that where Masseur lives? Ayah asks.
'Yes that is where your masseur stays' Ice-Candy-Man said, unable to mask his ire. 'It is a
Muslim mohalla'.
Lenny's observations tellingly register the demonstrations of invidious hatred between the
communities:
a mob of Sikhs, their wild long hair and beard rampant, large fevered eyes glowing in fanatic
faces, pours into the narrow lane roaring slogans, holding curved swords, shoving up a manic
wave of violence that sets Ayah to trembling as she holds me tight. A naked child, twitching on a
spear struck between her shoulders, is waved like a flag: her screamless mouth agape she is staring
straight up at me.
And then slowly advancing mob of Muslim goondas: packed so tight that we can see only the
top of their heads. Roaring: Allah o Akbar! Yaaaa Ali!' and PakistanZindabad!'
The terror the mob generates is palpable—like an evil, paralyzing spell. The terrible
procession, like a sluggish river, flows beneath us. Every short while, a group of men, like a
whirling eddy, stalls—and like the widening circles of a treacherous eddy dissolving in the
mainstream, leaves in its centre the pulping red flotsam of a mangled body.
The violence further increases, the market places and residential area flash in explosions:
"Trapped by the spreading flames, the panicked Hindus rush in droves from one end of the street
to the other. . . . Some collapse in the street. Charred limbs and burnt logs are falling from the
sky." In Lenny's reflection, we discover the enormous desolation of this epoch:
Despite the residue of passion and regret, and loss of those who have in panic fled—the fire
could not have burned for ... Despite all the ruptured dreams, broken lives, buried gold, bricked
in rupees, secret jewellery, lingering hopes . . . the fire could not have burned for months and
months. But in my memory it is branded over an inordinate length of time: memory demands
poetic licence. And the Ice-Candy-Man is the medium of the news—his infor-

71
mation/misinformation—horrendous tales of macabre violence threaten the world of Lenny:

"There are no young women among the dead: Only two gunny bags full of women's breasts."
Lenny fancies: "I see mother's detached breasts: soft, pendulous, their beige nipples spreading,"
a totem of female victimization. The stories of girls and women found naked in the ditches are too
familiar. Ice-Candy-Man's stories grow more appalling as his shriveled dried up face looks
possessed. In this milieu however bathing of buffaloes in Lenny's household, father's coming back
by bicycle goes on as ever. Moti Mucchoo and Pappu (the untouchable) remain unruffled—
themselves victims and victimizing each other, they belong to no community. While Lenny shares
the troubled fears of Ayah Shanta and her knowledge that her lover Masseur was violently
murdered, she does not have the resources to understand the depth of Ayah Shanta's inconsolable
grief.
Ice-Candy-Man again appears on the scene, this time with a violent crowd and he
manipulates the child into speaking truth about Ayah Shanta's whereabouts and gets her
abducted:
They drag Ayah out. They drag her by her arms stretched taut, and her bare feet—that want
to move backwards—are forced instead. Her lips are drawn away from her teeth, and the resisting
curve of her throat opens her mouth like the dead child's screamless mouth. Her violet Sari slips
off her shoulder, and her breasts strain at her sari-blouse stretching the cloth so that the white
stitching at the seams shows. A sleeve tears under her arm.
The last thing I noticed was Ayah, her mouth slack and piteously gaping, her dishevelled hair
flying into her kidnapper's faces, staring at us as if she wanted to leave behind her, wide-open and
terrified eyes.
The multiple interconnected events fuse in the last part of the novel which along with
describing the plight of Rana's laceration and mutilation in the wake of riots drive home the
extremities of sadism let loose and the most brutal and barbarous illustration of violence figures
in the suburban villages Kot Rahim Makipura. In a young boy Rana's predominantly Muslim
village, the poor Muslim peasant families huddle, together, comforted by each other's presence,
reluctant to disperse: "the villagers remained in the prayer yard as dusk gathered about them. But
it is at the dawn the attack comes:
the panicked women ran to and fro screaming and snatching their babies, and the men barely
had the time to get to their ports . . . Tall men with streaming hair and thick biceps and thighs,
roaring Bolay so Nihal! Sat Sri Akal.
Rana abandoned by his mother and sisters halfway ran. In the frenzy of riots he saw his uncles
beheaded. His older brothers his cousins, "some one fell on him, drenching him in the blood."
Amidst the dead bodies, wailing women, raped and killed, Rana was running into the
moonless night. He arrived at his aunt's village just after dawn. He watched it from afar, confused
by the activity taking place, soldiers holding guns with bayonets sticking out of them, and was
diverting the villagers. This village was not under any attack, perhaps the army trucks were there
to evacuate the villagers and take them toPakistan. The moment he caught the light of recognition
in the eye of his Noni Chachi, the pain in his head exploded and he crumpled at her feet uncon-
scious.
Chachi washed the wound on his head with a wet rag. Clots of congealed blood came away
and floated in the pan in which she rinsed the cloth.
'I did not remove the thick scabs that had formed over the wound', she says. 'I thought I'd see
his brain!' The slashing blade had scalped him .... And old woman covered him with a white cloth,
said, 'Let him die in peace!' (205)

72
He survived however and is now with Imam Din after the Partition settles.
III
The country divided on communal lines on the eve of Independence brought in its wake the
twin traumas—the physical one of being dislocated and forced to migrate and the psychological
one of living in 'alien' conditions—which millions of people experienced living on both sides of the
religious divide. The riots subside, Ayah Shanta is found in Hira Mandi in the company of Ice
Candy Man and we encounter the sordid concealed regions of our history and politics that
subjected women and the poor to the worst kind of sadism and brutality and Ice-Candy-Man is
the heir to this history. The historically insignificant portions buried in the backyard of history
surface:
The Mogul princes built Hira Mandi—to house their illegitimate offsprings and favourite
concubines ... who cares for orphans? . . . They are nothing but prostitutes . . . young girls
kidnapped by pimps—forced into all kinds of depravities on pain of death.
The narrative of this juncture of the novel grows heavy with the oppressive power of past
history that vitiates the present. We share the narrator's apprehension: "Is Ayah Shanta's progeny
doomed to this life wherein beauty, sexuality, sublimity and sor-didness are mixed up? Since the
Ice Candy Man recognizes in her "the rhythm of a Godd.ess, the voice of an angel. . . . How she
moves. Like his ancestors he wants to celebrate her grace and the adolescent Lenny is
mesmerized: "I am hypnotized by the play of emotions on the Ice-Candy-Man's plastic face, by
the music in his voice. . . . Moghuls portrayed in miniature." But this history need not be. relived—
it stinks. It reebs of a cultural politics in which the gross physical needs of the kings and the princes
was the first priority. Lenny's Godmother is not going to abandon the mission of rescuing Shanta;
she can see through the mouth of romantic love fostered by men with the support of the woman
in a conspiracy of silence. Godmother is not going to be a party to the complicity in romanticizing
and idealizing oppressive sexual relations. The event beginning with highly nostalgic, hypnotic,
tone turns grotesque and frenzied, unmasking the cruelty beneath the facade of sentimental
eulogy: "Is that why you had her lifted off—let hundred of eyes probe her—so that you could marry
her? You would have your own mother carried off if it suited you!—Badmash!" Ayah be-comes a
living ghost: "can the soul be extracted from its living body." Finally Ayah is dispatched with her
scant belongings, wrapped in cloth bundle and a small tin trunk at the Recovered Women's camp.
The broken bones and pimply influence of the Ice-Candy-Man and his cronies is of no avail.
The Ayah's story ends exposing the latent cruelty and fetishes of history that always
ominously appear to be in the grip of blind forces—the hegemonistic politics—endorsing the per-
petuation of misinterpretation and appropriation of underprivileged and women. Getting to know
Shanta, Pappoo, Hamida on the one hand, the Godmother and her own mother on the other, help
the adolescent narrator reach an understanding of human situations. She must become the author
of herself. The writer appears to be identifying herself with the character. The character speaking
deeply, comes as close to the truth as fiction can come to the truth of the human heart. This
however coincides with the loss of innocence. The experiences related are the ''rite of passage" to
her. In gesting the pain of her world by facing it gives her strength and will to claim the power of
her own moral position:
The innocence that my parents' vigilance, the servant's care and Godmother's love sheltered
in me, that neither Cousin's carnal cravings, nor the stories of the violence or the mobs could
destroy, was laid waste that evening by the emotional storm that raged round me. The
confrontation between Ice Candy Man and Godmother opened my eyes to the wisdom of righteous
indignation over compassion—to the demands of gratification . . . and the unscrupulous nature of
desire.

73
Ice-Candy-Man is a sincere and successful effort to artistically portray the life in the
subcontinent at a crucial juncture in history without indulging in hostile parodistic melodrama or
extravagant, vociferous pyro techniques one may find in the recent subcontinental fiction.
Tharoor or Khushwant Singh appear to be guided by a self-conscious, subversive ideology,
Sidhwa's "truth telling" narration transcribes the destructive impulse of the time with such
compassion in an unpretentious idiom that even most anaesthetized or cynical reader feels
touched. Feeling flows in the narrative not intended to shock or to impress but to make us identify
the marginalized culture outside the mainstream as a part of history. The text aligns diverse
cultures, different epochs and captures a vast human context—socio political configurations,
ideologies, spiritual longings, righteousness within and without in untheo-rized, un-formulated
idiom, like a camera it impartially registers the subversive dynamics of time, in knowing it we
hope to derive from it some knowledge of ourselves as the product of a common history/politics
and common social constructs.
Ice-Candy-Man: A Parsi Perception on the Partition of

Sub-Continent
The Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 is one of the great tragedies, the magnitude,
ambit and savagery of which compels one to search for the larger meaning of events, and to come
to terms with the lethal energies that set off such vast conflagrations. There have been a number
of novels written on the horrors of the Partition holocaust on both sides of the Radcliffe line:
Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan (1956), Attia Hosain's Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961)
and Chaman Nahal'sAzadi (1975) present the Indian perception of the traumatic experiences
while Mehr Nigar Masroor's Shadows of Time (1987) projects the Pakistani version of the tragic
events, though both the versions are free from religious bias and written more in agony and
compassion than in anger.
What distinguishes Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice-Candy-Man (1988)' is the prism of Parsi sensitivity
through which the cataclysmic event is depicted. Ice-Candy-Man is, so far, the only novel written
by a Parsi on the theme of Partition. While the novel shows in the beginning the noncommittal
attitude of the Parsi community towards the flux in which the various communities of India found
themselves in the beginning of the twentieth century, it distills the love-hate relationship of the
Hindus and Muslims through the consciousness and point of view of Lenny, an unusually
precocious five-year-old Parsi girl.
While the novel has attracted attention from Indian scholars and media persons, the studies
themselves have been sketchy and inadequate. Madhu Jain in her review of the novel highlights
the dilemma the Parsi community faced at the dawn of Independence: "The Parsi dilemma is:
whom do they cast their lot with?" But perhaps because of the limitations of space, she does not
go beyond this observation to analyze how the pattern of communal relations were subjected to a
maddening change during the Partition. Although Khushwant Singh's review of the novel is
comparatively longer, yet it, too, refrains from tracing at length the changing pattern of communal
relations which form an integral part of this book.
In view of the obvious inadequacy of critical attention that this novel has received, this paper
attempts to analyze the framework of the changing pattern of communal relations that
continuously breathes underneath the narrative structure of this novel in order to evaluate its
strengths and weaknesses as an aesthetic whole.

74
Set in Lahore, Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice-Candy-Man sets the tone and tenor of the events described
in the very beginning of the novel. The tone of neutrality manifest in the narrator-character Lenny,
in describing the climactic incidents of Partition, is anticipated in the Parsi get together for the
Jashan Prayer, to celebrate British victory, at the Fire Temple in Lahore. While the Parsis have all
along been loyal to the British government, they, however, fear the Partition of India and,
consequently, are in a fix as to which community they should support. Col. Bharucha, the
domineering Parsi doctor and the President of the 'Parsi An-juinair sounds the note of caution:
"There may be not one but two or even three new nations! And the Parsis might find themselves
championing the wrong side—if they don't look before they leap!" An "impatient voice" in the
congregation replies sarcastically: "If we are stuck with the Hindus they'll swipe our business from
under our noses, and sell our grandfathers in the bargain: if we are stuck with the Muslims they'll
convert us by the sword! And God help us if we're stuck with the Sikhs!" It is at this moment of
Prufrockian dilemma that Col. Bharucha allays the fears of his community by advising them to
cast their lot with whoever rules Lahore: "Let whoever wishes rule! Hindu, Muslim, Sikh,
Christian! We will abide by the rules of their land!" Thus the note is struck. The Parsis are going
to be neutral in the tug of war among the three major communities of India. The neutral attitude
of the narrator character, Lenny, has its roots in this racial psychology of the Parsis. In a way, the
attitude of the Parsi community revealed here is the externalized collective sub-consciousness of
Lenny.
As the action of the novel unfolds, we confront a pattern of communal amity where the three
communities—the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs—are still at peace with one another. But the
intimations of an imminent death and destruction lurk in the symbolic significance of Lenny's
nightmares at the break of dawn. In one of these nightmares she faces an immaculate Nazi soldier
"coming to get me [Lenny] on his motorcycle." Another nightmare that she recalls from her
childhood which is more telling and suggestive is that of "men in uniforms quietly slice(ing) of a
child's arm here, a leg there." She feels as if the child in the nightmare is herself. She pictures her
Godmother as stroking her head as they "dismember" her. She says: "I feel no pain, only an
abysmal sense of loss—and a chilling horror that no one is concerned by what's happening." The
nightmare symbolizes the impending vivisection of India which was as cruel as the
dismemberment of that child. Lenny's lack of pain, however, is suggestive of her community's
indifference on account of its aloofness from the religio-political convulsion. This chilling horror
that she feels over no one being concerned by what is happening sums up the lack of concern on
the part of the authorities to check the unbridled display of barbarism during Partition. Still
another nightmare that Lenny has is that of a zoo lion breaking loose and mercilessly mauling
her: "the hungry lion, cutting across Lawrence Road to Birdwood Road, prowls from the rear of
the house to the bedroom door, and in one bare-fanged leap crashes through to sink his fangs into
my stomach. . . Whether he roars at night or not, I awake every morning to the lion's roar. He sets
about it at the crack of dawn, blighting my dreams." The hungry lion which invariably appears at
the crack of dawn seems to be a symbol of the flood of mutual hatred that the dawn of Indian
Independence released to cause havoc to the Hindus, the Muslims and the Sikhs on both sides of
the border. Thus, with these three nightmares that Lenny has, the novelist prepares the reader for
the gruesome and gory pattern of communal discord that became blatantly obvious during Parti-
tion.
Having planted these two authorial guide posts in the structure of the novel, Sidhwa deftly
hands over narration to Lenny, who narrates the story of the changing pattern of communal re-
lations. As the action of the novel moves forward, we perceive the pattern of communal amity that
still exists in rural India, between the Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs. On her maiden visit to Pir Pindo,
a Muslim village thirty miles east of Lahore, Lenny has her first experience of rural life. She finds
the Muslims of Pir Pindo and Sikhs from the neighbouring village of Dera Tek Singhsitting
together and sharing their concern about the worsening communal relations in the cities. Sharing

75
the village Mullah's concern about it is the Sikh priest, Jagjeet Singh. His words have the ring of
the religious concord in Pir Pindo and adjoining villages: "Brother, our villages come from the
same racial stock. Muslim or Sikh, we are basically Jats. We are brothers. How can we fight each
other?" As the conversation continues, we have a glimpse'of the contrasting communal attitudes
of townsmen and country-folk, in the words of the Chaudhry of Pir Pindo: "our relationships with
the Hindus are bound by strong ties. The city folk can afford to fight ... we can't. We are dependent
on each other- bound by our toil; by Mandi prices set by the Banyas—they're our common enemy—
those city. Hindus. To us villagers, what does it matter if a peasant is a Hindu, or a Muslim, or a
Sikh?" The village Chaudhry's remarks have a historical authenticity. The Unionist Party of
Punjab was a pro-farmer political party of the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs struggling against the
stranglehold of the Hindu money-lending class. That this party should have won at the hustings
in the 1937 Provincial Elections, despite a stiff resistance from the Congress and the Muslim
League, is indicative of the unstinted support that it got from the villagers of all the communities
inPunjab. A renowned sociologist, M.L. Darling echoes the Chaudhry's remarks when he says: "A
class of Hindu money-lenders had arisen in the Punjab which had enriched itself by exploiting the
helpless peasantry."4
In fact, the roots of communal amity in rural Punjab go so deep that the members of the two
communities are ready to sacrifice even their lives for protecting each other. "If need be, we'll
protect our Muslim brothers with our lives!" says Jagjeet Singh. "I am prepared to take an oath
on the Holy Koran," declares the village Chaudhry, "that every man in this village will guard his
Sikh brothers with no regard for his own life!" One gets the impression that rural Punjab is an
oasis of communal fraternity in the desert of communal hatred that is ever expanding to spread
its tentacles to engulf the two communities in the cities. At this stage of Indian history the pattern
of communal relations between the two rural communities, despite buffetings from outside, was
still that of harmony and concord.
The rumblings of communal discord soon reach Lahore. Lenny's parents often entertain
guests who are drawn not only from their own community but also from the British and Sikh
community. It is at one of these dinner parties that Inspector General Mr. Rogers expresses the
view that the differences between the Congress under the leadership of Nehru and the Muslim
League under Jinnah are pushing India to the brink of Partition. He feels that it is the English
who are acting as a lid on this cauldron of flaming passions between the two communities. 'Mr.
Singh, however, thinks that once India gains Independence, they will be able to settle all their
differences, as these have been created by the British: "You always set one up against the other . .
. you just give Home Rule and see. We will settle our differences and everything!"
Mr. Singh echoes the views of the Congress at that time that wanted to present the picture of
a conflict-free society before the British so as to hasten the process of gainingIndependence. The
Congress was conscious that internal divisions would delay the liberation of the country as the
British could justify their presence on grounds of maintenance of peace and stability. An Indian
historian, Mujeeb, highlights Mr. Singh's views vis-a-vis the Congress approach at that time:
"[these] considerations made the Congress hold that the minority problem could wait till the
country became independent."
Underlying the basic unity among the various religions of India is the Hindu Ayah and her
multi-religious throng of admirers. Taking theft" turn one by one: the Mali Hari, the Ice-Candy-
Man, the masseur, Sharabat Khan, Imam Din and Sher Singh, all converge on this focal point. The
Ayah is undiscriminating towards all and it is in this that she becomes a symbol of the composite
culture that India is. Interestingly enough, as the events roll ahead with a relentless speed, the
group of Ayah's admirers begins to dwindle. A similar symbol of the unity of Indian religions is
provided by the visitors to the Queen's Park where men of all religions and creeds rub shoulders
with one another. With the imminence of Partition, the Park presents a picture of different

76
religious groups keeping away from one another's company. The passions run high even when
men of different religious communities talk and chat with one another. A reference to Gandhi,
Nehru and Patel's influence inLondon evokes a retort from Masseur who feels that in ousting
Vavell, they have got a 'fair man' sacked. The Ice-Candy-Man goes a step further:
"With all due respect, malijee," says Ice-Candy-Man, surveying the gardener through a blue
mist of exhaled smoke, "but aren't you Hindus expert at just this kind of thing? Twisting tails
behind the scene . . . and getting someone else to slaughter your goats?" When the Government
House gardener tries to cool the passions by imputing the differences between the Hindus and
the Muslims to the English, the butcher with his "dead pan way of speaking" remarks:
"Just the English?" asks Butcher. "Haven't the Hindus connived with the Angrez to ignore the
Muslim League, and support a party that didn't win a single seat in thePunjab? It's just the kind
of thing we fear. They manipulate one or two Muslims against the interests of the larger
community."
Thus the novelist shows the gradual emergence of the pattern of communal discord in
urban India.
As the setting sun of the British Empire gathers its parting rays before sinking into oblivion,
the lumpen element around Ayah meet less frequently at the Queen's Park and more at the
'Wrestler's Restaurant.' The geographical shift in their get-together is a premonition of the
emergence of the pattern of communal discord. That British Queen whose statue stands
abandoned in the Park, is soon going to relinquish her suzerainty over India and the Wrestler's
Restaurant to which all flock now is a symbol of the wrestling ring that Partition is going to raise
on the joint borders of India and Pakistan. Discussing the fate of the Punjab in the event of
Partition, Masseur hopes that if thePunjab is divided, Lahore will go to Pakistan. The Government
House gardener, however, hopes that this will not come true as the Hindus have much of their
money invested there. At this the Sikh Zoo attendant, Sher Singh, shouts: "And what about us?
The Sikhs hold more farmland in the Punjabthan the Hindus and Muslims put together!"
When Masseur advises Sher Singh that it would be good for their community to cast their lot
with one country rather than be divided into two halves and lose thereby their "clout in either
place," Sher Singh, like the lions he tends, turns on him: "You don't worry about our clout! We
can look out for ourselves . . . you'll feel our clout all right when the time comes!"
Seeing Sher Singh in a high temper, the butcher, with his professional mercilessness, cites
the English, who call the Sikhs a "bloody nuisance." At this Sher Singh and the "restaurant owning
wrestler" threaten the Muslims with dire consequences in the event of Partition. The verbal
skirmishes between the butcher and the Masseur on the one hand, and the Government House
gardener, Sher Singh and the restaurant-owner on the other, show how deep the pattern of
communal discord among the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs has become. The course of the changing
pattern of communal relations seems to augur ill for the three communities as Partition looms
large on the horizon.
Filtered, as these widening differences are, through the prism of the Parsi character-narrator,
Lenny, her response to those relations becomes significant. Commenting on these changes,
Lenny, and by implication, the novelist herself, remarks: "Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, Iqbal, Tara
Singh, Mountbatten are names I hear. And I become aware of religious differences. It is sudden.
One day everybody is themselves and the next day they are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian. People
shrink, dwindling into symbols. Ayah is no longer just my all encompassing Ayah—she is also a
token. A Hindu."

77
That these changes should have sunk even into the mind of the tender and immature Lenny,
speaks of the extent to which the various communities of India had become conscious of their
individual identity at the cost of the composite culture they had evolved after centuries. As time
passes, Lenny becomes aware of the newfound religious fervour among Ayah's admirers. Not only
are the differences within the caste hierarchy of the Hindus accentuated but also the racial
differences among the Christians heightened. The English Christians look down upon the Anglo-
Indians, who snub the Indian Christians who, themselves, in turn, regard all non-Christians with
a supercilious air. In this atmosphere of heightened communal consciousness, the Parsis are
reduced to "irrelevant nomenclatures." Bapsi Sidhwa, thus, paints a miniature picture of the
pattern of communal discord that then prevailed and simultaneously turns the neutrality of the
Parsis. In the mock-epic manner, she holds up these differences to ridicule by showing how they
had even affected the classification of jokes: "Cousin erupts with a fresh crop Sikh jokes. And there
are Hindu, Muslim, Parsi and Christian jokes." The denudation that jokes undergo because of the
communal differences derides the very essence of these differences.
By showing the adverse influence of an imminent Partition, the novelist draws a line between
national politics and the relationship among different communities. Partition is shown to be the
result of irreconcilability of the adamant and rash leadership of India. In the dinner party, that
has been referred to earlier, Inspector General Rogers wonders how far Hindus and Sikhs will be
able to settle their differences with the Muslims so long as they acknowledge the leadership of
men like Master Tara Singh, Gandhi and Nehru. In fact, the malevolent nature of the differences
between the Congress and the Muslim League on the ordinary people of India is rightly
anticipated by Sharbat Khan when he cautions Ayah: "These are bad times—Allah knows what's
in store. There is big trouble inCalcutta and Delhi: Hindu-Muslim trouble. The Congress-wallahs
are after Jinnah's blood." Ayah, however, shakes off this caution with a casual remark:
"What's it to us if Jinnah, Nehru and Patel fight? They are not fighting our fight," says Ayah,
lightly.
However, Sharbat Khan does not agree with her assessment and is of the opinion that though
that "may be true but they are stirring up trouble for us all." Here he becomes a persona of the
novelist and comments that it was the intransigent sectarianism of the national leaders which
wrought havoc on the pattern of communal amity existing in rural India.
As the fever of Partition runs high, Lenny notices "a lot of bushed talk." Everywhere "men
huddled around bicycles or squat against walls in whispering groups." The fear of Partition and
the violence it would unleash drives the common man to think about his safety. On her second
visit to Pir Pindo, Lenny goes along with the members of Imam Din's family to Dera Tek Singh on
the occasion of Baisakhi. As they reach the village, the festival is already in full swing. It is in the
midst of these gay activities that Ranna senses the steel of suspicion and fear. Bapsi Sidhwa
captures this feeling thus:
And despite the gaiety and destruction Ranna senses the chill spread by the presence of
strangers; their unexpected faces harsh and cold. A Sikh youth whom Ranna has met few times,
and who has always been kind, pretends not to notice Ranna. Other men, who would normally
smile at Ranna, slide their eyes past. Little by little, without his being aware of it, his smile
becomes strained and his laughter strident.
The apathy of Ranna's friends is symptomatic of the tension which the arrival of the "Akalis"
in Dera Tek Singh has generated. Dost Mohammad, Raima's father, too, has noticed the intrusion
of a new factor in the communal atmosphere of Dera Tek Singh. When he refers to them during
his conversation with the genial-faced Granthi, Jagjeet singh, he learns about their sinister
designs from the affable Granthi:

78
The Granthi's genial face becomes uncommonly solemn. ... He says: ". . . The Akalis swarm
around like angry hornets in their blue turbans. . . . They talk of a plan to drive the Muslims out
of East Punjab.'. . . They say they won't live with the Mussulmans if there is to be a Pakistan. . . .
Trouble makers. You'll have to look out till this evil blows over."
The patterns of communal relations between Lenny's first and second visit to Pir Pindo are,
therefore, poles apart. While during her first visit, the Sikhs and the Muslims had pledged their
lives to save each other from any intruders, during her second visit, that enthusiasm has
evaporated in the heat of the violence that the Akalis hold out for anyone who comes in the way
of their resolve. The pattern of communal harmony has been replaced by the pattern of fear and
suspicion between the two communities.
It is in this surcharged atmosphere that the Akali leader, Master Tara Singh, visitsLahore.
Addressing a vast congregation outside the Assembly chambers he shouts: "We will see how the
Muslim swine getPakistan! We will fight to the last man! We will show them who will
leave Lahore! Raj Karega Khalsa, aki rahi na koi." His address is greeted with the roar of "Pakistan
Murdabad! Death to Pakistan! Sat Sri Akal! Bolay so nihal!" The Muslims, in turn, shout "So?
We'll play Holi-with-their blood! Ho-o-oli with their blo-o-d!" With both the communities having
taken up their positions, the ensuing festival of Holi becomes a blood-soaked festival. The pattern
of communal amity that existed before the Baisakhi of that year got shattered in the bloodbath of
Holi during Partition.
What follows Partition is the unbridled ventilation of the pent-up rancour between the two
communities on both sides of the border. While the Muslims of Pir Pindo—that fell on the Indian
side of the border—are subjected to mass slaughter by the marauding gangs of the Akalis from the
surrounding Sikh villages, the Hindus and Sikhs of Lahore undergo a similar harrowing
experience. Their fate gets blighted when a train load of corpses from across the border
reaches Lahore. Ice Candy-Man's relations lie dead in the heap of carcasses in the ill-fated train.
Imam Din's entire family has been wiped out in Pir Pindo. Ranna alone has survived to tell the
gruesome tale. While the ambers of Partition goad Ice-Candy-Man to join the marauding
hooligans out to kill and destroy the vestiges of the Hindu and Sikh presence in Lahore, Imam Din
remains calm in the face of all calamities. The distinction between the two becomes marked when
a gang of Muslim hooligans comes to abduct Ayah. Imam Din goes to the extent of telling a lie
about Ayah: "Allah-ki-Kasam, she's gone." In contrast. Ice-Candy-Man not only abducts her and
throws her to the wolves of passion in a Kotha but also kills out of jealousy his co-religionist
Masseur. Thus, the novelist shows that the defenders of Islam who turned Lahore into a burning
city were not even true proponents of Islam. Imam Din's character, therefore, shines in this novel
as that of Kamaln in B. Rajan's The Dark Dancer (1958).
While the flames of communal passions leap up in the skies of Lahore, the Parsis, who till
now, have maintained a safe distance from this communal conflagration, act as the Messiah of the
Hindus and Sikhs trapped in the burning city. They, as Lenny learns later on, help in their
transportation to India. Even Ayah is rescued by Lenny's Godmother and is sent to her parents
inAmritsar. Thus, inspired by a feeling of humanism, the Parsis shake off their passive neutrality
and become the agents of a healing process.
The change from the pattern of communal discord to that of reconciliation is, however, traced
in the person of the Ice-Candy-Man. Though his role in the cataclysmic events of Partition is
painted in lurid colours, his growing passion and love for Ayah is shown to redeem him from the
morass of senseless communal hatred. From a rough and rustic man, always ready to nudge Ayah,
the Ice-Candy-Man becomes a person of refined sensibility; he steeps himself in poetry. When
Ayah is wrenched away from him and sent to Amritsar, he follows her across the border. That the
Ice-Candy-Man is willing to leave the land that he so much cherishes for the sake of his Hindu

79
beloved is not only an example of self-sacrifice but also symbolic of a future rap.-prochement
between the two warring communities—the Muslims and Hindus. Though Bapsi Sidhwa shows
the possibility of the emergence of a harmonious pattern of communal relations between the
Hindus and Muslims sometimes in the future, yet she leaves much unsaid about how the change
in the Ice-Candy-Man's personality comes about.
Thus, the analysis of the changing pattern of communal relations shows a pattern of
communal amity between the Hindus and Sikhs on the one hand and the Muslims on the other in
the pre-Partition era, a growing impatience and mistrust between them on the eve of Partition
culminating in the pattern of utter communal discord during Partition and the pattern of
reconciliation in the breaking of the dawn of understanding between them in the distant horizon
during the post-Partition era. Related very closely to these changing patterns of communal
relations is the sea-change in the attitude of the Parsi community from the bald egg-shell of
passive neutrality to an active neutrality towards the pattern of communal discord swirling
around them during Partition.
Though Bapsi Sidhwa's novel does focus on the changing attitude of the Parsi community, it
leaves out the exploration of the dilemma that the Parsi community had to resolve regarding its
unnatural schismatic division between Indian and Pakistani Parsis. While the novel cannot be
faulted for that, one does feel0 the need of yet another Parsi novel on Partition which would ex-
plore and express this vital aspect.
Ice-Candy-Man: The Dehumanizing Effects of

Communalism
I was a child then. Yet the ominous roar of distant mobs was a constant of my awareness,
alerting me, even at age seven, to a palpable sense of the evil that was taking place in various parts
of Lahore. The glow of fires beneath the press of smoke, which bloodied the horizon in a perpetual
sunset, wrenched at my heart. For many of us, the departure of the British and the longed-for
Independence of the subcontinent were overshadowed by the ferocity of Partition.'
The above statement very potently sums up the harrowing recollection of partition by Bapsi
Sidhwa 'a Pakistani-Parsi Woman' and the leading diasporic writer of Pakistantoday (Bapsi
Sidhwa in an interview with Julie Rajan). Bapsi Sidhwa is a Parsi who was born in undivided
India and grew up in Lahore, Pakistan, married to a Parsi from Mumbai, India, divorced after a
couple of years, married a second time to a Pakistan-based Parsi and moved to the U.S.A., thus
having experiences of a lifetime in a comparatively short span of time. She has been a precocious
polio-ridden child with an uncanny knack for life around her. As a young girl, Sidhwa witnessed
first-hand the bloody Partition of 1947, in which seven million Muslims and five million Hindus
were uprooted in the largest, most terrible exchange of population that history has known. The
Partition was a result of a complicated set of social and political factors, including religious
differences and the end of colonial rule in India. Sidhwa was also a witness to these evils, including
an incident in which she found the body of a dead man in a gunnysack at the side of the road.
Characteristically succinct, she recalls the event, "I felt more of a sadness than horror." Her home
city of Lahore became, a border city in Pakistan, and was promptly flooded by hundreds of
thousand of war refugees. Many thousands of these were victims of rape and torture. Due to
lasting shame and their husbands' damaged pride, many victims were not permitted entry into
their homes after being "recovered." There was a rehabilitation camp with many of these women

80
adjacent to Sidhwa's house, and she states that she was inexplicably fascinated with these "fallen
women," as they were described to her at the time. She realized from a young age that "victory is
celebrated on a woman's body, vengeance is taken on a woman's body. That's very much the way
things are, particularly in my part of the world." These events left a permanent scar on the psyche
of the child Bapsi and years later she could not resist her powerful urge to record that decisive
moment in the history of the two nations and the result was her most influential and much-
acclaimed narrative—Ice-Candy-Man/Cracking India.
Ice-Candy-Man (1988) is one of those few books which have captured the events leading to
Partition so vividly and authentically the others being Train 16 Pakistan(1956) by Khushwant
Singh, A Bend in the Ganges (1964) by Manohar Malgonkar. The novel is considered by many
critics to be the most moving and essential book on the Indian Partition. Told from the awakening
consciousness of an observant eight-year-old Parsi girl, the violence of the Partition threatens'to
collapse her previously idyllic world. The issues dealt within the book are as numerous as they are
horrifying. The thousands of instances of rape, and public's subsequent memory loss that
characterize the Partition are foremost. In the hatred that has fueled the political relations
betweenPakistan and India since that time, these women's stories were practically forgotten. In
one of her infrequent bursts of poetry, Sidhwa writes, "Despite the residue of passion and regret,
and loss of those who have in panic fled—the fire could not have burned for. . . . Despite all the
ruptured dreams, broken lives, buried gold, bricked-in rupees, secreted jewellery, lingering hopes
. . . the fire could not have burned for months." Sidhwa replaces flowing, poetic sentences with
forceful criticism when she theorizes about what caused the fires to keep burning. Sidhwa
repeatedly condemns the dehumanizing impact that religious zealotry played in promoting mob
mentality, separation, and revenge during the Partition.
It is a book of many voices, poignant, humorous, and desperate. It is a tale of upheaval in
which every friend and enemy will be displaced. Eight-year-old Lenny, the spirited and imagi-
native daughter of an affluent Parsi family, narrates the story of the Ice-Candy-Man during the
1940s, as she witnesses Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs fight for their land and their lives.
As rumours of riots, fires, and massacres in distant cities become a reality, Lenny's tale follows
the course of her quickly shifting life.
This multi-dimensional novel evoked a very good response from the critics and won many
accolades for the author. Khush-want Singh, the celebrated author of Train to Pakistan, one of
the most powerful accounts of Partition, commends Sidhwa: "Ice-Candy-Man deserves to be
ranked amongst the most authentic and best [books] on the Partition of India" Another noted
Indian woman novelist Geetha Hariharan finds a contemporary relevance in the novel as she
comments: "Sidhwa captures the turmoil of the times, with a brilliant combination of individual
growing-up pains and the collective anguish of a newly independent but divided country. Sidhwa's
work, particularly the dehumanizing effects of communal ism, she movingly reveals in Ice-Candy-
Man is painfully relevant to our present-day India."
Sidhwa's narrator is Lenny, a Pars! girl with a 'truth-infected tongue' who turns eight on the
day Partition is announced. Lame in one foot and indulged by her reasonably well-off parents,
Lenny is ferried around Lahore by her beloved Hindu Ayah (nanny) whose 'spherical attractions'
draw a varied group of suitors eager to dispense ice-lollies, silk doilies, massages and other gifts.
Here's how we first meet Lenny:
Lordly, lounging in my briskly rolling pram, immersed in dreams, my private world
is rudely popped by the sudden appearance of an English gnome wagging a leathery
finger in my ayah's face. But for keen reflexes that enable her to pull the carriage up
short there might have been an accident: and blood spilled on Warns Road. Wagging

81
his finger over my head into Ayah's alarmed face, he tut-tuts: "Let her walk. Shame,
shame! Such a big girl in a pram! She's at least four!"
He smiles down at me, his brown eyes twinkling intolerance. I look at him politely, concealing
my complacence....
"Come On. Up, up!" he says, crooking a beckoning finger.
"She not walk much . . . she get tired," drawls Ayah. And simultaneously I raise my trouser
cuff to reveal the leather straps and wicked steel callipers harnessing my right boot.
Confronted by Ayah's liquid eyes and prim gloating, and the triumphant revelation of my
callipers, the Englishman withers.
Lenny's deformed foot sets her proudly apart from other children, spares her the tedium of
school—she receives private tuition by the odorous Mrs. Pen—and gives her entry into the world
of adults. Cared for by Ayah, she observes her romances and admirers as well as the lives of other
servants and relatives. There is Cousin who thinks he has turned into a honeycomb when he
discovers ejaculation and is besotted with Lenny, or Dr. Manek who can fart on cue.
With her throng of characters, Sidhwa paints a microcosm of Pakistani society, filtered
through Lenny's irreverent and innocent eye which values people regardless of their social
standing and rejoices in their lusts and longings. Born into the tiny Parsi community, Lenny is
outside the communal frenzy that follows, but emotionally torn by the violence engulfing her
friends. If Sidhwa is partisan, it is in her contempt of politicians pursuing separatist agendas,
dividing maps in state rooms.
The vortex of violence that soon follows sucks up Ayah and her Muslim admirer Ice-Candy-
Man just as it rips apart other lives. But Sidhwa stays true to her characters: they refuse to give up
on life, stop joking or turn into tragic symbols. All of which brings home the horror of what they
survive. As men lose their senses, raping, killing, and looting, women reveal their strengths,
building links across the divided communities, sheltering survivors, insisting on continuity.
The novel captures the dispirited effects of communal frenzy that follows the Partition
through the innocent eyes of Lenny, much more likelier creator, polio-ridden, precocious and a
keen observer of the happenings around. Lenny's disadvantage, as she is physically handicapped,
turns out to the benefit of the readers. She is looked after by her Hindu ayah, "chocolate-brown
and short. Everything about her is eighteen years old and round and plump. Even her face. Full-
blown cheeks, pouting mouth and smooth forehead curve to form a circle with her head. Her hair
is pulled back in a tight knot. . . she has a rolling bouncy walk that agitates the globules of her
buttocks under her cheap colourful saris and the half-spheres beneath her short sari-blouses." As
the above description suggests, her ayah is exceptionally beautiful and sensuous, capable of
attracting people. Lenny is conscious of this fact as she reveals: "The covetous glances Ayah draws
educate me. Up and down, they look at her. Stub-handed twisted beggars and dusty old beggars
on crutches drop their poses and stare at her with hard, alert eyes. Holy men, masked in piety,
shove aside their pretences to ogle with her lust. Hawkers, cart-drivers, cooks, coolies and cyclists
turn their heads as she passes, pushing my pram with the unconcern of the Hindu goddess she
worships." Among her admirers Ayah has Ice-Candy-Man, Masseur, Imam Din, Hari and many
more. It is through her that young Lenny gets a feel of the life of the cross-section of Pakistani
society. They feed and cater to her idyllic world of romances. They are what they are to her—
human beings, full of human strengths and weaknesses. She loves them their company, their
frailties, little disputes, jokes, funny stories and their jealousies to command the love and
attention of Ayah. She never cares for their religious faith, their distinct loyalties and political
talks till she hears the disturbing talk of Partition of the nation. Things don't remain the same as

82
this news spreads like a bush fire in her town. Her idyllic world of childhood innocence gives way
to the tormenting adult world of Partition riots. The individual identities merge with the identities
of the community and soon the society is sharply divided on the communal lines. Lenny cannot
understand it, as she reflects:
There is much disturbing talk. India is going to be broken. Can one break a country? And
what happens if they break it where our house is? Or crack it further up on Warns Road? How will
I ever get to Godmother's then?
I ask Cousin.
"Rubbish," he says, "no one's going to break India. It's not made of glass!"
I ask Ayah.
"They'll'dig a canal . . ." she ventures. "This side for Hindustan and this side forPakistan. If
they want two countries, that's what they'll have to do—crack India with a long canal"
Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, Mountbatten are names I hear.
And I become aware of religious differences.
It is sudden. One day everybody is themselves—and the next day they are Hindu, Muslim,
Sikh, Christian. People shrink, dwindling into symbols. Ayah is no longer just my all-
encompassing Ayah—she is also a token. A Hindu. Carried away by a renewed devotional fervour
she expends a small fortune in joss-sticks, flowers and sweets on the gods and goddesses in the
temples.
The news of atrocities on Muslims nearAmritsar and Julliindhar are heard inLahore. The
details are so brutal and bizarre that it is, hard to believe. After a fortnight or so an army truck
dumps a family outside the gate of Lenny and she recognizes them to be the distant kins of Imam
Din from a village in Punjab. The process of uprooting has started. The familiar faces have started
dwindling or have changed beyond recognition. The people who were simply friends have now
turned Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs or Christians, fighting for their land and faith even at the cost of
their established social relationships. Lenny has a bitter realization by now: "One man's religion
is another man's poison." (117, my italics) Suddenly the whole atmosphere is charged with
religious slogans. The Sikhs are wielding their kirpans shouting 'PakistanMwdabadl Death
to Pakistan! Sat Siri Akaal! Bolay se nihaall' And Muslims are roaring:'Allah-o-Akbar! Yaaaa
Ali!' and 'PakistanZindabad. The Hindu houses are put on fire in Lahore in retaliation to what
happens inPunjab. Sid-hwa captures this poignant moment in a very touching paragraph of the
novel:
Trapped by the spreading flames the panicked Hindus rush in droves from one end
of the street to the other. Many disappear down the smoking lanes. Some collapse in
the street. Charred limbs and burnt logs are falling from the sky.
The whole world is burning. The air on my face is so hot I think my flesh and clothes will
catch fire. I start screaming: hysterically sobbing. Ayah moves away, her feet suddenly heavy and
dragging, and sits on the roof slumped against the wall. She buries her face in her knees.
Communal frenzy has rocked the two sides and geographical division has led to division in
souls of the people. People are being butchered, men, women, children, old, young, handicapped,
diseased, indiscriminately on the either sides. Houses are set on fire, looted. Women have been
the worst sufferers as they have been raped brutally and their limbs amputated. Ice-Candy-Man
is no more the simple admirer of Ayah whom she scolds at times for his unruly behaviour, he has

83
become a militant Muslim fighting the cause of his faith and land. One day he comes breathless
in sweat and dust to announce the worst outcome of these communal riots:
'A train from Gurdaspur has just come in' he announces, panting. 'Every one in it is
dead. Butchered. They are all Muslim. There are no young women among the dead!
Only two gunny-bags full of women's breasts!'
One by one most of the Hindus and Sikhs in Lahore have either left, killed or forced to convert
in this bloody battle. Hari, the gardener, has been forced to adopt Muslim faith and has now be-
come Himat Ali. Even Ayah is not spared and is kidnapped by a mob with the help of Ice-Candy-
Man, her lover, to suffer humiliation, defilement and mental torture. At that instant she is not the
woman whom Ice-Candy-Man always desired, she is a Hindu woman who deserves to be treated
the way Muslim women have been treated by Sikhs and Hindus. She is forced to become Mumtaz,
the wife of Ice-Candy-Man and also to dance and sleep with numerous people until she is
recovered from that hell by Godmother. Masseur's body is found by the roadside in a gunny sack.
Thus this surge of communalism spoils the harmony and peace of Lahore completely. Thousands
have been uprooted and rendered homeless, thousands have lost their lives, thousands have been
compelled to leave a legacy of lifetime in that one moment. Lenny realizes this change as she goes
to the Victoria Park with her new ayah Hamida. The whole atmosphere has changed; she is not
able to find any familiar face among those who are occupying her favourite spot. As she narrates:
"Beaden Road, bereft of the colourful turbans, hairy bodies, yellow shorts, tight pyjamas, and
glittering religious arsenal of the Sikhs, looks like any other populous street. Lahore is suddenly
emptied of yet another hoary dimension: there are no Brahmins with caste-marks—or Hindus in
dhotis withbodhis. Only hordes of Muslim refugees."Lahore is seething with aliens who have lost
their settled homes in India and have been forced to go to Pakistan. Having lost their property,
prestige and nearest and dearest ones in this riot they are struggling hard to recover from this
sudden jolt. They are occupying the abandoned houses of Hindus and Sikhs who have
left Lahore to meet the same fate at the other end.
The novel describes the horrors of the Partition very well and the reader is drawn into the
tale. The fears, the insecurity, and the hatred that was bred in the people by the politicians of that
time for their own vested interests is very much caricatured in the novel. The changing loyalties
of the circle of friends who in the end become fiends brings forth the true horror of Partition when
friends became traitors. The description of the massacre of Ranna's village shows how humans
behaved like savages, killing their own countrymen. The Ice-Candy-Man sees a perfect op-
portunity to claim what he thinks is his. The Partition also psychologically affects the Ice-Candy-
Man as his family is murdered brutally on the train. It turns him into a cruel person he then joins
in the fray and kills Hindus, some of them his friends. All in all the Ice-Candy-Man is very much
affected by the Partition and he uses the violence as a mechanism to claim Ayah but it backfires.
Thus here a sad tale of Partition is shown, where the crimes of the people killed the national
spirit and no matter what was tried, it still remains as a deep scar on the psyche of the people. As
Jinnah himself put it, 'Pakistan has been the biggest mistake of my life.' Partition of India is truly
the sorest point in the subcontinent's history, when a new nation was born amidst turmoil and
violence that later both countries have regretted and will do so for the rest of their existence. So
will the Ice-candy-man regret his deeds for the rest of his miserable life.
The Ice-Candy-Man shows us the naked human emotions that are revealed whenever
passions run high and it also shows how they can be good and evil in the same person. The novel
has a simple narrative, enhanced by the use of humour, which effectively tells us the story of the
Ice-Candy-Man. It precisely captured that decisive moment in history when 'one day everybody
is themselves—and the next day they are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian', when identities that
existed side-by-side get sharpened like swords against each other. It is a story which has been

84
repeated in various attempts at genocide and 'ethnic cleansing' the world over, and which, in the
case of India and Pakistan uprooted seven million Muslims and five million Hindus and Sikhs as
they fled from massacres to cross newly-created borders.
The legacy of this tumult is the continual chafing of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, with periodic
eruptions of violence stirred up now-and-then by political interests and local gangsters. So
supposedly sensitive is the issue that government media in India will often demurely speak of
'attacks by members of one community against members of another'. This is a story in which
individuals and their community identities are inseparable, a story of emerging nations as well as
a story of single characters.
Not only Lenny, but everyone in this novel experiences substantial change in the context of
the Partition. Ayah's traumatic transformation at the hands of Ice-Candy-Man, the suitor, who
finally possesses her, and Ice-Candy-Man's own moral erosion through the Partition, figure the
situation of all people involved in the ill-planned Partition, which resulted in migration, deaths,
and incidents of rape and torture, all on a massive scale.
The links between individuals and nations are emphasized both by multiple plots and points
of view. Specifically, while Lenny is the clear protagonist and narrator for most of the novel,
Ranna, a Muslim child, whose experiences were particularly violent and traumatic, tells his own
story. A significant aspect of the novel is the marginality of Britain and the Raj in the plot;
colonialism sets this trauma in place, but postcolonial characters are its focus.
Thus the novel Ice-Candy-Man to a great extent focuses on the dehumanizing effects of
communalism. The novelist is aware of the sensitivity of her readers on the two sides and has
quite skilfully interwoven a gripping tale of everlasting impact. Being a Parsi, a microscopic
minority, Sidhwa for the most part of the action has been a neutral observer and has at the same
time a license to comment on the .events without being termed a propagandist or communalist.
As she herself says in one of her interviews:
"The struggle was between the Hindus and the Muslims, and as a Parsi (member of
a Zoroastrian sect), I felt I could give a dispassionate account of this huge,
momentous struggle."
Again at another place she almost reiterates the same thing: "As a Parsi, I can see things
objectively. I see all the common people suffering while the politicians on either side have fun."
But this does not mean that Parsis were silent spectators in this grimmest and most cruel human
drama. They had their own share of things. Bapsi Sidhwa also wants people to know what Parsis
had to offer during that period. We find Lenny's mother and Godmother helping the suffering
women even at the risk of their own lives. It is ultimately Godmother who rescues Ayah from the
clutches of Ice-Candy-Man and manages to send her to her family. Lenny's mother helps her
Hindu and Sikh friends with gasoline etc. so that they can safely leave Pakistan. Lenny is suspi-
cious of her mother's activities, as she secretly slips out of the house at odd hours, and charges her
for her involvement in the bloody battle at that she explains her mission and her voice is not
intended for Lenny alone it is for the whole world: "I wish I'd told you ... we were only smuggling
the rationed petrol to help our Hindu and Sikh friends to run away. And also for the convoys to
send kidnapped women, like our Ayah, to their families across the border." The novel, apart from
being a classic of partition novel, is a celebration of writer's own community and its humanity and
loyalty for the nation and the people it inhabits and shares things with.

85
Ice-Candy-Man: Communal Frenzy and Partition

Throughout history, fanatics as well as ideologues, pushed to the emotional brink of daring
their lives, have taken the plunge, which has triggered off a chain reaction of rigid mental fixations
and attitudes. Bapsi Sidhwa's novel Ice-Candy-Man examines the inexorable logic of Partition as
an offshoot of fundamentalism sparked by hardening communal attitudes.
First published in 1988 in London, this novel is set in pre-Partition India in Lahore. It belongs to
the genre of the Partition novel like Manohar Malgonkar's A Bend in the Ganges (1964),
Chaman Nahal's Azadi (1975), and Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan(1956). However in
English fiction it is the second novel on Partition by a woman author from sub-continent. The
other novel is Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961) by Attia Hussain. Both these sensitive
women writers share similar perspectives on the calamities of Partition. The denouement of
both novels is quite similar. Both stress a similar vulnerability of human understanding and life,
caused by the throes of Partition which relentlessly divided friends, families, lovers and
neighbours.
Ice-Candy-Man is a novel of upheaval which includes a cast of characters from all
communities. There are Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Sikhs and Parsis, so a multiple perspective
of Partition emerges as viewed by all the affected communities. Bapsi Sidhwa uses a narrator to
tell the tale. A precocious Parsi girl, eight years old with a handicapped foot, narrates the story of
her changing world with sophistication and wonder. Lenny is like the persona that Chaucer adopts
in his Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, rendering credibility by being almost a part of the
reader's consciousness. With the wonder of a child, she observes social change and human
behaviour, noting interesting sidelights, seeking and listening to opinions and occasionally
making judgements. Her childish innocence is like the seeming naive display of Chaucer's
persona, a source of sharp irony. The device of the child narrator enables Bapsi Sidhwa treat a
historical moment as horrifying as Partition without morbidity, pedanticism or censure. The
highlight of the novel is that the author throughout maintains a masterful balance between
laughter and despair. The subtle irony and deft usage of language creates humour which does not
shroud but raucously highlights the traumas of Partition. Sensitively the author shows the human
toll of Partition, when a concerned Lenny asks: "Can one break a country? And what happens if
they break it where our house is?"
The Parsi paradox of whether to support "Swaraj" or to maintain their loyalty to the British
Raj is also humorously delineated. A piquant touch is given to this dilemma. With the impending
news of Independence, the paranoid feelings of the Parsis, a minuscule minority, get accentuated.
The Parsis inLahore at a special meeting at their temple hall in Warris Road, have an acrimonious
debate on the political situation. The meeting is interesting as it expresses the insecurity of the
Parsis not because of communal antagonism, but the apprehension of their status at the departure
of the British. Already the unstinted loyalty to the colonial power is declining. Col. Bharucha and
Lenny's father blame the British for bringing polio to India. So at the meeting, India's smallest
minority tries to redefine their strategy which Col. Bharucha claims as "We must hunt with the
hounds and run with the hare."
The ambivalent attitude of the Parsis towards Partition and Independenceemerged at the
main-hall meeting at the Fire-Temple. Col. Bharucha, the President of the community in Lahore,
advocates status quo. He warns fellow-Parsis to shun the anti-colonial movement and nationalist
agitation. His reasoning is based on expediency. If there is "Home Rule," political glory, fame and
fortune will be acquired by the two major communities, Hindus and Muslims. He considers Home
Rule as a power struggle, saying "Hindus, Muslims and even the Sikhs are going to jockey for
power and if you jokers jump into the middle you'll be mangled into chutney!"

86
He also advocates caution, because of the Parsis's long

standing attitudes of loyalty to the British. This attitude stemmed from the Zoroastrian religious
belief of loyalty to a ruler and a close relationship between state and community. The other cause
for loyalty to the British was purely economic. The Parsis primarily traced their secured status as
a prosperous minority to British rule, identified as the "good government" of the African prayer.
So loyalty was a self-evident precept to the Parsis. Thus Col. Bharucha does not want any Parsi of
Lahore to offend British sensibilities by espousing nationalist causes. In a tone of admonition he
says, "I hope no Lahore Parsi will be stupid enough to court trouble—I strongly advise all of you
to stay at home and out of trouble."
In her first novel The Crow Eaters (1978), Bapsi Sidhwa portrayed the dying businessman
Faredoon Jnnglewalla vehemently protesting against the nationalist movement and exhorting his
offspring to remain loyal to the British Empire. Col. Bharucha has a somewhat similar attitude.
However withIndependence imminent and Partition inevitable, there is a subtle change in the
attitude of the Parsis of Lahore. The patriarchal advice of Col. Bharucha is opposed. Dr. Mody
promptly poses a plea for involvement in the freedom struggle. He says, "our neighbours will think
we are betraying them and siding with the English."
The banker Mr. Toddywalla says that the Parsis should support the Indian community which
appears to be in a dominant position or will acquire political power afterIndependence. So he asks
the assembled congregation to formulate attitudes and actions on Independence based on self-
interest. Finally the assembled Parsis resolve to remain in Lahore and abide by the rules of the
land. Wafting in self-esteem they agree to Col. Bha-rucha's suggestion, '"Let whoever wishes rule!
Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian. We will abide by the rules of the land."
Some Parsis in the congregation express apprehension about remaining
in Lahoreafter Independence and wish to migrate either to London or Bombay (where majority of
their coreligionists lives). However such fears get over-ruled and the herd mentality desire of
staying only in Bombay is also rejected. The final resolution is one of adaptability and
compromise. The President of the Lahore Parsis Col. Bharucha says, "As long as we conduct our
lives quietly; as long as we present no threat to anybody; we will prosper right here." Through this
animated conversation, Bapsi Sidhwa reveals the implicit, lurking fear of the Parsis, a vulnerable
minority losing their identity and getting swamped by the majority communities—either Hindus
in India or Muslims in Pakistan. So even amongst the Parsis the smallest minority in
undividedIndia, the Partition sparked off an impulse for migration from their
homelands.Bombay was opted for, primarily due to safety in numbers rather than the safeguards
of democratic India. Historically however the movement to Bombay, as the novelist also indicates,
was minimal. The Parsis remained in urban areas of India andPakistan, trying to preserve their
identity by not meddling in political matters. The advice of Mr. Toddywalla is followed, "But don't
try to prosper immoderately. And remember don't ever try to exercise real power."
Amidst banter, repartee and humour Bapsi Sidhwa subtly portrays the underlying fears of the
Parsis about Partition and Independence. The depiction of their mental turmoil can be compared
to John Masters's depiction of the plight of the Eurasians commonly called Anglo-Indians before
the British left the subcontinent. Bapsi Sidhwa shows how the Parsis are similar captives of
circumstances in the upheaval of Partition.
Adaptability being part of their social code, the Parsis of Lahore adjust to the changing
circumstances after Partition. InThe Crow Eaters, Bapsi Sidhwa had only hinted at the necessity
of changing allegiances after Independence but in Ice-Candy-Man, the change in attitudes is
depicted. Col. Bharucha and Lenny's father curse the British for bringing polio to India. Lenny
suffers from polio and the disease is considered as another example of British treachery. There is

87
already a sense of involvement, with the new reality as Lenny's parents, godmother and Parsi
friends try to bring some semblance of sanity in Lahore.
With witty remarks and subtle usage of language, Bapsi Sidhwa presents the impact
of Independence and Partition in vivid images. The altered social reality becomes even more
striking, as narrated by the innocent eight-year-old Lenny.Independence becomes evident to
Lenny when she visits the Queen's Garden: "I cannot believe my eyes. The queen has gone! The
space between the marble canopy and the marble platform is empty. A group of children playing
knuckles, squat where the gunmetal queen sat enthroned." So within her restricted space, Lenny
aptly reveals the fading away of an Empire and its value systems. The theme of separation caused
by Partition is also revealed in a simple but vividly poignant observation by Lenny. During her
romp at the Queen's Garden, she notices the absence of the cosmopolitan gathering.
Through the wondering eves of the precocious Lenny, the novelist shows the disruption of a
settled order and traumatic separations of friends, the legacy of Partition.
The impact of Partition is psychologically understood and narrated through the feelings of a
child, who is a member of a minuscule minority. The sense of loss is aptly demonstrated as Lenny
and her brother Adi wandering through the garden observe. "Adi and I wander from group to
group peering into faces beneath white skull-caps and above ascetic beards. I feel uneasy. Like
Hamida I do not fit. I know we will not find familiar faces here." The uprootedness of Partition is
revealed as Lenny drifts through the Queen's Garden searching in vain for familiar faces and
acquaintances. Even in the child there is a feeling of insecurity. She clings to the hands of her Ayah
and cajoles her not to marry the Masseur. A Muslim, the Masseur is one of Ayah's numerous
admirers and promises to marry and protect her during the throes of Partition. Overhearing this,
Lenny desperately urges Ayah not to get married, as it would mean separation. Later when Ayah
is abducted it is Lenny who urges her family to search for her. Lenny's responses show the
dislocation of life during Partition. The Partition novels focus onPunjab and the dislocation of life
and human feelings in that region. So Bapsi Siclhwa's novel is similar to the novels in this genre.
The only difference is that the pointless brutality of communal frenzy is parodied as it is unfurled
and narrated by the child-narrator Lenny. She and her younger brother Adi watch "the skyline of
the old walled city ablaze and people spattering each other with blood." Fire destroys Hindu,
Muslim and Sikh houses and shops at Shalmi. "The entire Shalmi, an area covering about four
square miles, flashes in explosions." Fire knows no religion. The shrieks and shouts of the Sikh
mobs when listening to Master Tara Singh at Queen's Garden give Lenny as many nightmares as
when she recollects the roaring of the lions in the zoo. With such subtle comparisons and ironic
exposures, Bapsi Sidhwa shows the brutalization which communal frenzy causes. Even lovers turn
hostile. Ice-Candy-Man, the Muslim lover of the Hindu Ayah, watches Shalmi and Mozang Chowk
burn with "the muscles in his face tight with a strange exhilaration I never want to see." The
transformation of a fun-loving man who frolicked and acted the buffoon in the park into an ogre
due to communal frenzy is aptly revealed by Lenny's honor at the sadism in his face. A vivid image
which is a stark reminder of the brutality of the times. This is the way Bapsi Sidhwa handles the
delicate theme of Partition, through subtle insinuations, images and gestures. So the stark horror,
of loss, bloodshed and separation is portrayed without verbosity, sensationalism, lurid details and
maudlin sentimentality. The sensitive portrayal of the horrors of Partition enhances the
poignancy and cruelty of the event without the author ever appearing pedantic or pretentious.
Allegory is another literary device used by Bapsi Sidhwa to depict the trauma of Partition.
The child-narrator Lenny is also affected by the violence at Lahore: "The whole world is burning.
The air on my face is so hot I think my flesh and clothes will catch fire. I start screaming:
hysterically sobbing." The scenes of violence and arson and above all the venomous hatred of
friends who had months earlier rationalized about the impossibility of violence, have a frightening
impact on the young Parsi girl Lenny. Violence breeds violence and Lenny is also a victim. Her

88
rage is directed at her collection of dolls. In a frenzy she acts: "I pick out a big, bloated celluloid
doll. I turn it upside down and pull its legs apart. The elastic that holds them together stretches
easily. I let one leg go and it snaps back, attaching itself to the brittle torso." The destructive urge
overcomes Lenny and she is not satisfied till assisted by her brother Adi she wrenches out the legs
of the doll and examines the spilled in-sides. This violent act by Lenny is an apt allegory on the
mindless violence of Partition. With a morbid sense of humour, Bapsi Sidhwa reveals how the
violence of Partition has serrated the roots of people of different communities, irrespective of
ideology, friendship and rational ideas. In such a depiction, Bapsi Sidhwa resembles the horror
portrayed by William Golding in The Lord of the Files(1954). Golding indicated that there is a thin
line between good and evil in human beings and it is only the structures of civilizations which
prevent the lurking evil from being rampant. At the end of The Lord of the Flies,boys of Jack's
tribe like barbarians got a sadistic delight in hunting Ralph. The situation is saved as a Naval
officer reaches the island and by his presence curbs the pointless brutality of the abandoned boys.
Golding had written this novel after World War II and the allegorical meaning was evident. In the
world of fiction, a grown-up stepped in to curb the atrocities and brutality of the boys, but when
countries commit atrocities there is no restraining power. Lenny's destruction of the doll also has
allegorical significance. It shows how even a young girl is powerless to stem the tide of surging
violence within, thereby implying that grown up fanatics enmeshed in communal frenzy are
similarly trapped into brutal violence. Lenny breaks down and cries at her pointless brutality, a
sombre message by the novelist that unless there is re-thinking, brutality and insensitivity
becomes a way of life, such is the conditioning of communalism.
Another Partition novel, Attia Hosain'sSunlight on a Broken Column (1961), also uses a
narrator-heroine to similar effect. Attia Hosain's narrator-heroine Laila reveals the trauma of Par-
tition through her memories and insights of her Taluqdar family disintegrating. Like in the Ice-
Candy-Man, the enigma of Partition is sensitively shown. When Zebra, her cousin married
inPakistan, returns to Hasanpur, she quarrels with Laila about protection of Muslim culture and
language. The disagreements were no longer youthful verbal quarrels but echoed bigger divisions.
Laila surmises the cruelest aspect of Partition when she says, "In the end, inevitably we quarrelled,
and though we made up before we parted I realized that the ties which had kept families together
for centuries had been loosened beyond repair." Like Lenny, the grown-up Laila is also both
nostalgic and restless. Laila ruminates and wanders in her disbanded ancestral home Ashiana
after Partition. Memories come flooding back. However her nostalgia is controlled. Whilst walking
through the rooms of Ashiana. she remembers the past, but does not wish for the old order to
return. Her new-found identity and struggle to be Ameer's lover and wife, curbs any desire for a
return to the cloistered feudal order. Instead it broadens her horizons of life. She comes to detest
dogmatism, either in the name of religion or radicalism. Her views and perspective of life
developed after intense personal struggle enable Laila to tackle the loss of her husband Ameer and
the trauma of Partition. So both narrator-heroines, Lenny and Laila, react against communal
responses and the horrors of violence. The mature Laila rationalizes against communal tension
whereas the young Lenny instinctively reacts against the horrors of communal violence.
There are other similarities between the two novelists, Bapsi Sidhwa and Attia llosain. Both
realize there are no easy solutions to communal holocausts except intense struggle against
dogmatism. Laila's concerted attempts at breaking from traditional customs, the negation of
despair and recognition of struggle are upheld by Attia Hosain. Her narrator-heroine does not
lapse into a glorification of the past or take refuge in mysticism, epicureanism or jingoism.
Similarly Bapsi Sidhwa shows there are no winners in the communal holocausts of Partition. This
is revealed by clever juxtapositioning of images.
At the festival of Holi, instead of splattering friends with bright colours, people are splattering
each other with blood. Bapsi Sidhwa shows the human loss in Partition:

89
Instead, wave upon scruffy wave of Muslim refugees flood Lahore—and

the Punjab west of Lahore. Within three months seven million Muslims and five
million Hindus and Sikhs are uprooted in the largest and most terrible exchange of
population known to history. The Punjab has been divided.
Bare facts present the horror of the greatest communal divide in history. Bapsi Sidhwa aptly
shows the inexorable logic of Partition which moves on relentlessly leaving even sane people and
friends helpless and ineffective. Jagjeet Singh with a furtive group of Sikhs visited a Muslim village
Pir Pindo under cover of darkness to warn them of an impending Akali attack. Pir Pindo is
attacked at dawn and swamped by Sikhs. Men, women and children are killed. Similarly Sikh
families are attacked inLahore. The neighbours of the Sethis, Mr. and Mrs. Singh leave with their
two children and a few belongings. Other goods are left behind with Lenny's parents. Sher Singh
the zoo attendant flees from Lahore, due to insecurity, after his brother-in-law is killed. Similarly
the student fraternity of King Edward's Medical College is disrupted. Prakash and his family
migrate to Delhi and Rahool Singh and his pretty sisters are escorted to a convoy to Amritsar. In
Lenny's household the gardener Hari is circumcised and becomes Himat Ali, and Moti becomes
David Masih, the politics of compromise and survival. Ayah's lover the Masseur's mutilated dead
body is found in a gunnysack. The moneylender Kirpa Ram flees leaving guineas and money
behind. Even middle-class families like the Shankers flee in haste. Partition is shown as a series
of images and events depicting human loss and agony. The dislocation of settled life is aptly
revealed by Lenny's understanding of the demographic change in Lahore. In awe she observes,
"Lahore is suddenly emptied of yet another hoary dimension: there are no Brahmins with caste-
marks—or Hindus in dhoties with bodhis. Only hordes of Muslim refugees." Lahore is no more-
cosmopolitan. Even the Sikhs have fled. The child-narrator senses the difference and pain caused
by the huge exchange of populations.
Bapsi Sidhwa also subtly delineates the psychological impact of the horrors of Partition on
the lives of people. The communal frenzy has a distorting effect on people—and leads to feelings
of suspicion, distrust and susceptibility to rumours. Even the children, Lenny, Adi and their
cousin are intrigued and suspicious of any minor deviations from normal behaviour. Mrs. Sethi
and Aunt Minnie travel all over Lahorein the car but do not take the children with them. Deprived
of long drives, Lenny and her cousin are intrigued at the movements of their mothers. Ayah
enhances the sense of mystery when she states that the dicky of the car is full of cans of petrol.
The author shows that in a highly surcharged atmosphere, suspicion and distrust become inevita-
ble. The Ayah is also suspicious about the movements of cans of petrol by the two Parsiladies. If
she suspects they are distributing petrol to the arsonists she does not state so. The three children
are stupefied by this revelation and let their imagination run wild. Finally they come to the same
conclusion. "We know who the arsonists are. Our mothers are setting fire to Lahore!—My heart
pounds at the damnation that awaits their souls. My knees quake at the horror of their imminent
arrest."
Bapsi Sidhwa cleverly parodies the feelings of suspicion and distrust of the children for their
mothers. The imaginary fears of Lenny, Adi and their cousin are a source of humour but also a
grim reminder of how rumour becomes institutionalized in a highly surcharged atmosphere. The
children only fantasize about their mother's dangerous acts but the author shows how rumour
preys upon the frenzied minds of men vitiated by communal hatred. On the radio there is news of
trouble at Gurdaspur, which the Ice-Candy-Man and his friends at once interpret as "there is
uncontrollable butchering going on in Gurdaspur." There are further rumours of a train full of
dead bodies coming to Lahore from Gurdaspur. The Ice-Candy-Man returns panting after a
frantic cycle ride and adds to the horror, by describing atrocities on women and stating that the
dead are all Muslims. The acquaintances of Queen's Garden believe this rumour and harbour

90
revenge against Sikhs. They now look with hatred on longstanding friend Sher Singh, compelling
the latter to flee from Lahore."
In the vitiated communal atmosphere, insanity prevails as ordinary men lose their rationality.
Such a degradation is best exemplified in the rage of Ice-Candy-Man who says:
"I'll tell you to your face—I lose my senses when I think of the mutilated bodies on
that train from Gurdaspur . . . that night I went mad, I tell you, I lobbed grenades
through the windows of Hindus and Sikhs I'd known all my life! I hated their guts."
Revenge becomes the major motivation for the Ice-Candy-Man and his friends. The role of
rumour and the consequent pattern of violence as depicted by Bapsi Sidhwa is compact and
realistic.
Sidhwa's novel written at a period of history when communal and ethnic violence threaten
disintegration of the subcontinent, is an apt warning of the dangers of communal frenzy. Bapsi
Sidhwa shows that during communal strife, sanity, human feelings and past friendships are
forgotten. At the Queens Park in Lahore, friends and colleagues had argued endlessly about the
impossibility of violence against each other and of fleeing from their homeland. Yet ironically,
whilst the elders— Masseur, Butcher, Ice-Candy-Man. Sher Singh and Ayah—gossip about
national politics the child-narrator senses the change in the days before Partition:
"I can't put my finger on it—but there is a subtle change in the Queen's Garden."'
The admirers of Ayah, in the pursuit of love temporarily sidetrack communal feelings and
"Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Parsi are as always, unified around her." The others without such
motivations are deliberately sitting with members of their own community, huddled together
preserving cultural and religious identities. The Brahmins form their own circle of exclusivity.
Burkha-clad Muslim women and children have their own group. The saddest fact as observed by
Lenny is that even the children do not mix whilst playing.
Lenny attempts social interaction with a group of Sikh children but Masseur tries to pull her
away. Sikh women ask her name and the name of her religion. When the child states that she is a
Parsi, the Sikh women express amazement at the discovery of a new religion. It is then that Lenny
instinctively realizes the social divide between communities. Rationalizing her feelings she says,
“That's when I realize what has changed. The Sikhs, only their rowdy little boys
running about hair piled in topknots, are keeping mostly to themselves."
The author implies that the events at Queen's Garden are a reflection of a crystallization of
feelings at a larger scale inLahore and other cities of India.
Cultural and religious exclusivity leads initially to indifference and later to contempt which
becomes the breeding ground for communal violence and bigotry. With a subtle parody, Bapsi
Sidhwa conveys the dangers of social exclusivity. The Ice-Candy-Man, in striking attire, enters the
Queen's Garden, 'Thumping a five-foot iron trident with bells tied near its base." He is in the guise
of a holy man. The author implies that in an atmosphere which encourages religious bigotry, even
charlatans emerge as holy and godmen. The difference between appearance and reality is slim.
The Ice-Candy-Man's antics provoke amusement but it is a pointer to the duplicity of people in
the name of religion.
Ayah's admirers maintain a facade of unity by cracking ribald jokes on community
characteristics. However they also become vicious—and prey to communal frenzy in the near
future. The Ice-Candy-Man is part of the frenzied mob which abdicates Ayah and keeps her in the
brothels. So even the passion of love is powerless against religious bigotry. Later in the novel, the

91
Ice-Candy-Man attempts to make amends, he marries Ayah, changes her name to Mumtaz, and
recites love poetry to her. But even here love is shown as powerless. Ayah has revulsion for her
newly acquired Muslim identity. With the help of Lenny's godmother she is taken to a Recovered
Women's Camp and then sent to her family in Amritsar. The Ice-Candy-Man, now a "deflated
poet, a collapsed pedlar" follows her to Amritsar in vain. Their relationship is serrated forever,
one more victim of communal frenzy and Partition. Love does not conquer all, when communal
and obscurantist passions are aroused.
With a sprinkling of humour, parody and allegory Bapsi Sidhwa conveys a sinister warning
of the dangers of compromising with religious obscurantism and fundamentalism of all catego-
ries. Otherwise a certain historical inevitability marks this historical process. Though her novel is
about the traumas of Partition, Bapsi Sidhwa reveals that communal riots are contemporaneous
and that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
The Narrative Techniques in Ice-Candy-Man

Bapsi Sidhwa, the internationally-acclaimed Pakistani Parsi writer, has secured an enviable
position for herself among the literary circles today. She has proved that her minority experience
as the member of a tiny Parsi community in Pakistan, far from being a visible trouble-spot on her
creative psyche, offers her enough to celebrate her talent. She feels that it has given her a unique
sense of 'detached attachment' for her country and its people. Her creative odyssey. which started
with The Crow-Eaters (1978), has grown from strength to strength in her successive works like
Pakistani Bride (1983), Ice-Candy-Man (1988) and An American Brat (1994).
Bapsi Sidhwa's third and till date the most celebrated and widely quoted novelIce-Candy-
Man/Cracking India (1988) is one of the most powerful narratives of recent times. The novel
captures one of the most decisive moments in the history of India and Pakistan—Partition—in a
very compelling way through the eyes of an eight-year old disabled girl, Lenny. As Tariq Rahman
comments in a review: "The novel is an imaginative response to the traumatic events of the
Partition of India in 1947, and Sidhwa has used surrealistic techniques, to make it an adequate
symbol for the effect of external events on human beings." Another very perceptive comment
comes from Sliashi Tharoor, a noted columnist and novelist: "Ice-Candy-Man is a novel in which
heartbreak coexists with slapstick . . . and jokes give way to lines of glowing beauty ("the moonlight
settles like a layer of ashes over Lahore"). The author's capacity for bringing an assortment of
characters vividly to life is enviable. In reducing the Partition to the perceptions of a polio-ridden
child, a girl who tries to wrench out her tongue because it is unable to lie, Bapsi Sidhwa has given
us a memorable book, one that confirms her reputation as Pakistan's finest English language
novelist."'
Lenny's development from childhood to adolescence coincides with India's struggle for
independence from Britain and the partitioning of the country into India andPakistan. The
skilfully interwoven plots give each other substantial meaning. Partly be-cause'Lenny comes from
a Parsi family, a religious and ethnic minority that remained relatively neutral in post-Partition
religious conflicts, she has access to people of all ethnicities and religions, both within Lahoreand
in other locales. More significantly, she has access to a wide variety of viewpoints, both pre-and
post-Partition, through her Ayah, a beautiful woman whose suitors are ethnically and religiously
diverse. From the lap of her beautiful Ayah, or clutching her skirts as Ayah is pursued by her
suitors through the fountains, cypresses and marble terraces of the Shalimar Gardens, little Lenny
observes the clamorous horrors of Partition. It is 1947. Lenny lives in Lahore, in the bosom of her

92
extended Parsi family: Mother, Father, Brother Adi, Cousin, Electric-Aunt, Godmother and
Slavesister. Working for them, or panting after Ayah, are Butcher, the puny Sikh zoo attendant,
the Government House gardener, the favoured Masseur, the restaurant-owning wrestler and the
shady Ice-Candy-Man— Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, friends and neighbours— until their
ribald, everyday world disintegrates before the violence of religious hatred.
Lenny's passionate love for Ayah, and the loss of innocence that accompanies their changing
relationship through the Partition, is an energetic centre to the plot. Lenny's relationships with
her mother, her powerful Godmother, and her sexually invasive cousin are also important to the
novel. Lenny's polio forms a significant early narrative thread. Other minor but compelling
subplots include Lenny's parents' changing relationship, the murder of a British'official, Raima's
tragic tale, and the child marriage of Papoo, the much-abused daughter of one of Lenny's family's
servants.
Sidhwa's focus in this symbolic novel is not so much on the story as it is on the narrative
techniques, for they contribute to the work's total effect. Foremost among them is the first-person
present-tense narration. Lenny, is—or was—a child when the events described take place, and the
events are seen through her consciousness, the present tense providing immediacy and a certain
simultaneity between past and present. By the end of both the novels, the narrator knows much
about human treachery, mainly through the impact of external events. Lenny learns of the per-
verse nature of amorous human passions from her experiences with her cousin, who courts her
with a determination comparable only to the Ice-Candy-Maiv s pursuit of Ayah. How religious
fanaticism can breed hatred and violence is evident in the killing of the Hindus in Lahore and the
Muslims in thePunjab of the Sikhs. The dehumanizing impact of communal riots is reflected in
the story of Lenny's friend Ranna, a harrowing account of the human atrocities that can be
perpetrated when all civilized restraints are removed through external events or political propa-
ganda.
Bapsi Sidhwa chooses Lenny, a polio-ridden, precocious child as the narrator of the novel
because she provides her with a scope for recording the events leading to bloody Partition riots
with utmost objectivity, without an air of propaganda. Moreover, she comes from a Parsi family
and so is free from any religious or ethnic bias. Like most of the children of her age, she has a
truth-infected tongue. In many respects, she resembles her creator who had a bad polio, which
affected her normal movement compelling her to stay at home under the care of an Ayah for the
most part of her childhood life, busy in delicately nursing her world of idyllic romances. Bapsi was
of the same age when the nation was divided into two and had the first hand experience of the
Partition-riots. As she recalls: "I was a child then. Yet the ominous roar of distant mobs was a
constant of my awareness, alerting me, even at age seven, to a palpable sense of the evil that was
taking place in various parts of Lahore. The glow of fires beneath the press of smoke, which
bloodied the horizon in a perpetual sunset, wrenched at my heart. For many of us, the departure
of the British and the longed-forIndependence of the subcontinent were overshadowed by the
ferocity of partition." The events of Partition had left an indelible mark on the psyche of child
Bapsi and kept compelling her to unburden herself from the harrowing experiences of those days.
Lenny, in fact, is the per-sonae, voicing the inner urge of the author. Bapsi Sidhwa herself explains
why she chose Lenny as the narrator of the novel: "I'm establishing a sort of truthful witness,
whom the reader can believe. At the same time, Lenny is growing up—learning, experiencing, and
coming to her own conclusions."' Though it sounds cautioning to identify the narrator with the
author, the intersections of the two. at various points of the narrative seem to be deliberate and
not a mere coincidence, because the novel is as much about personal history as it is about memory
and imagination. The author has no secrecy whatsoever regarding her resemblance with the

93
narrator as she admits in an interview, "the scene where people ride into the house to kidnap Ayah
did happen in real life, although I have fictionalized it."
In Ice-Candy Man, Lenny is the narrative persona. Her narration starts in her fifth year and
ends after her eighth birthday. She recalls her first conscious memory of her Ayah thus: "She
passes pushing my pram with the unconcern of the Hindu goddess she worships." She also
remembers her house on Warris Road in Lahore and how she used to find refuge in her God-
mother's "one-and-a-half room abode" and succeeded in getting away from the "gloom" and the
"perplexing unrealities" of home. These perplexities include her own polio affliction, which she
uses as ah armour against a "pretentious world," her mother's extravagance, her father's dislike
of it, her strain to fill up the "infernal silence" during her father's "mute meals" by "offering
laughter and lengthier chatter" ("Is that when I learnt to tell tales?"). These perplexities also
involve the household staff. It includes her very dear Ayah, an eighteen-year-old dusky beauty,
Shantha, Imam Din, the genial-faced cook of the Sethi household, Hari, the high-caste Hindu,
Moti, the outcaste gardener, Mucho, his shrew of a wife, Papoo, his much abused child—and the
Ice-Candy-Man, a raconteur and a "born gossip" who never stops touching Ayah with his
"tentative toes"—and masseur, a sensitive man who loves Ayah and is loved by her, much to the
chagrin of Ice-Candy-Man; and last but certainly impressive Ranna, the boy whom Lenny
befriends when she visits his village with Imam Din and numerous others. Lenny leads us on,
dwelling on interesting facts mingled, as it were, with picturesque language. The main events,
besides the end of the Second World War, India's Independence and Partition of the subcontinent
into Pakistan and India, revolve around Ayah. She is—not unlikeIndia itself—a symbol of larger-
than-life reality, truly "perplexing." Lenny also notices that, "beggars, holy men, hawkers, cart-
drivers, cooks, coolies and cyclists" lust after her. Hasn't India been a much-looted country, which
finally is forced to make a new beginning? With such emerging connotations, the novel sustains
our interest at the personal and political levels.
For Lenny, in a few years' time a whole world, which is also her world, undergoes a sea change
marked by "blood dimmed anarchy." Her focus switches from her own "sense of inadequacy and
uiiworth" and the "trivia and trappings" of her learning, to the world outside, which she finds is
dark and dangerous. With greater perception, she notes the fast, unstoppable and violent changes
that leave her and those around her, particularly Ayah, "wounded in the soul."
As observed by lyengar, in a novel "Action, passion, contemplation, feeling, even the
unconscious mind find place." In Sidhwa's novel, one finds different shades of human thought,
feelings and behaviour truthfully voiced. Every character in the novel lets us glimpse into his inner
reserves and we are constantly surprised at the reality of it. Passages describing blood-shed and
murder highlight the brute in human beings. After Master Tara Singh's rousing address against
the division of Punjab, the mob turns "maniac." Even the police were targeted. And then there is
towering inferno in Lahore. Lenny observes:
The whole world is burning. The air on my face is so hot. I think my flesh and clothes
will catch fire. I start screaming: hysterically sobbing—how long does Lahore burn?
Weeks? Months?
The working of native psyche is well brought out by an ingenious use of various devices by
Sidhwa in this novel. She shows us, with graphic clarity, how little Lenny's mind sees, grasps and
ponders over the world around her through her nightmares, witticisms, description of people,
their mannerisms and feelings in idioms and metaphors, both homegrown and alien. An enslaved
coiintry's total plight is shown in the line
Queen Victoria's statue imposes the English Raj in the park.

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Before the conflict, Muslims and Sikhs lived in peaceful harmony. They celebrated and
participated in each other's festivals such as Baisakhi and Id. But once the big trouble started "One
man's religion is another man's poison." All this scuffle between two countries was caused and
furthered when "the Rad-cliff commission deals out Indian cities like a pack of cards." And at the
end of a gory day "the moonlight settles like a layer of ashes over Lahore."
Besides idioms which evoke a terrible national tragedy, Bapsi Sidhwa also makes use of
devices such as nightmares, jokes involving bathroom humour, poetry by the popular Urdu poet
Iqbal, Parsi entrance into India, their customs, prayers, fire temples, and funerals in Towers of
Silence, elaborate discussions and debates on national politics by the haves and the have-nots,
detailed accounts of villages such as Pir Pindo inhabited by people of different religions, and the
bitter change of later times, forced conversions, forced child marriages and many other minute
yet grave details, which succeed in bringing to the reader a whole gamut of tragi-comic and tragic
incidents. As the narrative progresses, everything is filtered through the consciousness of Lenny.
Her interest in things around her is somewhat unnatural as we find her recording each and every-
thing like a video camera. There are no restrictions on her movements and she seems to be
enjoying all the happenings around. She can attend the Parsi meeting to discuss the future course
of action in the wake of Partition conflicts and can also loiter around parks, cheap hotels, and such
other places along with her ayah and can have access to the popular opinion. Because of her
physical disability and precocious nature, she is loved and cared by all, and even her parents do
not keep restrictions on her. She is even allowed to accompany Imam Din in his visits to Pir Pindo,
a village in Punjab. This visit provides her with an opportunity to meet Raima, the boy who later
becomes a tool in the hands of the novelist to detail the events of inhuman brutality heaped on
the Muslims across the border by the Sikhs, thus complementing the account of Partition narrated
by Lenny.
The narrative design that Bapsi Sidhwa follows in the novel apparently looks very simple and
straightforward, but on a closer look one realizes that its simplicity is merely deceptive. Although
the main narrator is Lenny, the voice that emerges from the novel is far from being a monologue.
There are moments when it is hard for the readers to believe that a little girl like Lenny can utter
the words that have been put into her mouth. Like the one that is quoted here: I am held captive
by the brutal smell. It has vaporized into a milky cloud. I float round and round and up and down
and fall horrendous distances without landing anywhere, fighting for my life's breath. I am
abandoned in that suffocating cloud. I moan and my ghoulish voice turns me into something
despicable and eerie and deserving of the terrible punishment. But where am I? How long will the
horror last? Days and years with no end in sight.
And again:
My nose inhales the fragrance of earth and grass—and the other fragrance that distils insights.
I intuit the meaning and purpose of things. The secret rhythms of creation and mortality. The
essence of truth and beauty. I recall the choking hell of milky vapours and discover that heaven
has a dark fragrance.
Passages like this make the reader aware of the presence of the author in the child, Lenny
voicing her adult reactions to her childhood situation. Of course Sidhwa narrates the novel in the
first person putting everything in the mouth of the child protagonist, but one thing is for sure that
she does it with a serious purpose. She does not want to sound political and controversial, yet
cannot turn herself back from the purpose at hand, i.e., to present the other side of the truth
regarding the Partition riots—the Pakistani or in her own right the neutral point of view. It is
another thing that at times she sacrifices even the decency and decorum of a literary artist, just

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flaunting the emotions of millions of people. Like we find in her observations and comments about
Gandhi and Nehru. Lenny reflects on Gandhi:
He is small, dark, shrivelled, old. He looks just like Hari, our gardener, except he has
a disgruntled, disgusted and irritable look, and no one'd dare pull off his dhoti! He
wears only the loincloth and his black and thin torso is naked.
Gandhijee is certainly ahead of his times. He already knows the advantages of dieting. He has
starved his way into the news and made headlines all over the world.
Despite the occasional limitations like the one we have noticed above, this goes without
saying that "no other novel catches as this one does India's centuries-old ways of living with
religious difference before Partition." Lenny is inquisitive and notices everything: clothes, smells,
colour, the patina of skin, sex everywhere, and eyes—olive-oil-coloured, sly eyes, fearful eyes. In
writing which is often lyrical, always tender and clever, with a nuance here, a touch there, Sidhwa
shows us the seedbed of the Partition massacres—an abused Untouchable, the ritual disem-
boweling of a goat, a priest shuddering over the hand of a menstruating woman. This laughing,
gentle tale, told through the eyes of innocence, is a testament to savage loss, and a brilliant
evocation of the prowling roots of religious intolerance.
Thus though Bapsi has been accused by some diehard Indian nationalists of presenting a
Pakistani view of history, we must not forget that this is a novel and not a work of social documen-
tation; it limits itself to one child's perspective through which the dissenting, disagreeing voices
she hears are refracted; and what Aamer Hussein says, "insofar as a novel can be objective, Bapsi
is in the grand tradition of the Progressive writers on both sides of the border, scrupulously fair
to all parties concerned, approaching politics with the empathy and compassion of a humanitarian
feminist." In fact the point of view Bapsi adopts, is one of the novel's most successful ploys. We
believe we are witnessing the events of Partition through the eyes of an innocent child, but
strategically placed flash-forward signal, in a subtle manner, that the adult Lenny is actually
reliving the past in order to make sense of the events that baffled her when she was too small to
comprehend; simultaneously, she restricts herself to the experiences and sensory perceptions of
the child she was. Thus we are given a double—even dialogic—perspective that layers innocence
on experience, introspection on hindsight.
Ice-Candy-Man: A Reassessment
The Pakistani English novel has its roots in history and in the Pakistani consciousness, for it
began as a vehicle of political awakening during the national struggle for Independence and thus,
initially, the principal inspiration was not creative but expositoiy. Now that English fiction from
sub-continent has come of age, and more than come of age, the possibilities of retrieving
experiential moments of history through fictional strategies are innumerable. From vast,
comprehensive and exhaustive papers, I am narrowing my focus down to a short, intensive one,
more thought-provoking, perhaps, than any write up with an expansive sweep. For the novelist,
from sub-continent, writing in English, the theme of India's Partition is imbued with the magical
quality of a reflection in a mirror—it is true and yet not true. Every novelist has his own blend of
fact and fiction to offer, the guiding factor which is a process of selection and elimination creating
its own reality, but usually presenting a coherent version of events. This qualifying factor of
"memory's truth," I believe, is a cardinal principle prevailing as a determinant in all fictional art
and applies to all creative works.

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The road from life to art, from author to creation, can mean turning the past alive by
providing a transparent window on reality rather than an indecipherable code. The literary artist
proceeds through craft sophistication to an optimum level of fictive reality, a reality that is "true-
to-life." Nothing is explained, what is shown must be perceived, apprehended and the reader's
pleasure is often in proportion to what is left unsaid, or ambiguously hinted at.
Bapsi Sidhwa, a Parsi domiciled in Pakistan, is a novelist who has an abundance of inventive
and narrative energy manifested in her fiction, which warrants the careful critical attention of
those interested in new possibilities for imaginative prose which resorts to viable fictional
means—largely realistic—for tracing the compelling force of historical events on individual lives
and presenting a collage of the lives and experiences of men and women caught in the web of
history. It is Sidhwa who gave to the Pakistani novel in English a distinct identity.
Bapsi Sidhwa's novels are notably different from one another in content and form, in subject
and treatment. Her first novel. The Crow-Eaters, published in 1978, deals with the lives and
fortunes of the Parsi Junglewalla family in British India. The narrative adroitly adopts comic and
ironic modes directed towards the realization of Zoroastrian values in the lives of the members of
the community. The novel is also an exposition of the anglicized Parsi way of life in Pakistan as
Dina Merita's And Some Take a Lover (1992) is a comment on the upheaval in the world of the
community caught in the political welter of the Quit India movement.
Sidhwa's second novel, The Pakistani Bride (1983), is very different from her first in that it
makes no assertion of the Parsi identity. In fact, it has no Parsi character at all. It is about a young
Pakistani girl, a Muslim refugee, who is adopted by a Pathan during the Partition turmoil. The
novel testifies to Sid-.hwa's understanding of and insight into the Pakistani ethos, no doubt, but
when released it did not really make waves. Next came Ice-Candy-Man (1990) which was
followed by The American Brat in 1994. The American Brat dramatizes the conflict of the value
systems of the East and the West and this conflict of cultures has its impact not only on the social
plane but on the personal life of the protagonist as well.
Coming back to Ice-Candy-Man, the response to this novel was absolutely mind blowing. The
author in this work showcases the Pars! attitude—the Parsis, here representing a minority com-
munity—to the imminent Partition and to the concept of 'Swaraj'. Set in pre-Partition Lahore, in
the period which Subhash K. Jha in his review of the work refers to as the period of "The satanic
rites of fragmentation in the Indian subcontinent,"' the novel clearly highlights the vulnerability
of human relationships that can be torn asunder at the slightest pretext. Also, here again, as in
Dina Mehta's novel and in Bapsi Sidhwa's earlier novel,The Crow-Eaters, we see the ambivalent
attitude of the Parsis towards the British. They find it difficult to choose their loyalties—"Swaraj
or the British Raj?" At a special meeting organized at the Temple Hall in Warris road an
irresolvable battle-of-words on the political situation ensues. Col. Bharucha's advice to the Parsis
is to keep their distance from the slush of the nationalist agitation. Dr. Mody, on the other hand,
pleads for commitment to the cause of the freedom struggle for the transparent reason that "our
neighbours" will think we are betraying them and siding with the English." And finally, at the
instance of Toddywalla, the banker, the Parsis decide to opt for a path of compromise. Here, it
may be relevant to point out that Sidhwa's novels voice the views of the particularly affluent,
urban, middle-class Parsis.
Reams have been written on the Partition—in resentment, in anger, in affliction, in erudition
or as a cathartic exercise, or again, even as an attempt to exorcise ghosts, phantoms of the
agonizing past that refuse to be ignored. Bapsi Sidhwa's account of the holocaust is a tale with a
difference—it is a concatenation of events seen through the insouciant eyes of an eight-year-old
Parsi girl Lenny (who could very well have been Bapsi Sidhwa herself), who is baffled and
perplexed by the adult world of turnabouts and shifting loyalties as also by changing emotions

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and widening gulfs. Caught between the conflicting demands of the major communities of the
country, the Parsis in a pathetic minority have no misconceptions regarding the choices they con-
front. Under their affluence and prosperity won by competence and industry lurks a sense of
insecurity when the country is on the verge of a painful partition: "If we are stuck with the Hindus,
they'll convert us by the sword. And God help us if we are stuck with the Sikhs!" Finally, under the
mature guidance of Col. Bharucha the Parsis of Lahore decide to stay on there and cast their lot
with whoever rules Lahore—Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian. "People now shrink dwindling into
symbols" and human beings suddenly turn on one another.
Lenny, polio-stricken in infancy, is cared for by her eighteen year old nubile, voluptuous,
buxom, chocolate-brown Ayah, who is mostly spending time with her ward under Victoria's statue
in Queen's Park. Interestingly, she is always surrounded by a host of male admirers—the Fallettis
Hotel cook, the Government House gardener, the elegant, compactly-muscled Masseur and the
"lank and loping" Ice-Candy-Man, later additions to the community of suitors being the
Chinaman and the Pathan, Shar-bat Khan. "Ayah's presence," we are told, "galvanizes men to mad
sprints in the noonheat" and she brazenly succumbs to the advances of each in turn—and each is
conscious of the fact that "a whiff off Ayah carries the dark purity of creation." The group
surrounding her "remains unchanged,... as always unified around her." Primarily, however it is
the Masseur and the Ice Candy Man who vie for Ayah's attention though it is the former who
happens to be more privileged of the two.
The easy familiarity, the bawdy humour and the friendly banter in the narrative soon undergo
a change in tone and direction and each one has an acrimonious dig at the other's religion and
nation. Every verbal exchange involuntarily slips into talk ofIndia and Pakistan. Attitudes
crystallize and the earlier distinction at Queen's Park between "baba-log" with their starchy Ayahs
and the n-ative children with their Ayahs in limp cotton sa-ris soon dissolves and now are seen
only Muslim women in 'purdah' separated from the Sikh community that breaks away from
Hindus.
In Lenny's house, too, the placid harmony amongst servants from different communities
disintegrates and each concentrates on surer signs of his own religion. Ayah never forgets to burn
joss sticks around the statues of her own gods. The pogramme begins and takes on a vertiginous
speed with the perpetrators of the crime never being tracked down. The "we are brothers" theory
fails. Gandhi visitsLahore and Lenny, seeing him, is distressed at what she calls "this improbable
toss up between a clown and a demon."
Nothing works—the nation is in flames,Lahore is burning, Mazang Chowk is turned to ashes.
The Muslim mob comes to Lenny's house to assault the Hindu servants but Ayah is safely hidden
at the back of the house. Lenny, with her penchant for truth is, however, soon cajoled into
disclosing Ayah's hideout to the Ice-Candy-Man, who, despite promises to protect her, has her
dragged out and carried away only, perhaps, to be made an inmate of a brothel . Later it is heard
and believed that the police rescue her from the Ice-Candy-Man who had forcibly married her and
sends her back to her family inAmritsar. The irresolvable end leaves us guessing as to whether
Ayah was accepted into the family at home or did life become for her "the torture of Sisyphus,"
never ending.
Bapsi Sidhwa, in Ice-Candy-Man,experiments with the reality of the times to create a
timeless reality of her own universe. History undertaken by the fiction writer and explored as
material, refers always to the particular in which there is an attempt to present history as sensory
detail, as visual image, as time which reverberates in our time.
Sidhwa, does not, in her novel resort to the immediacy of journalistic methods. Images in the
novel do not, like in a journalistic report, follow a conveyor-belt succession. She takes the slant of
humour and the obliqueness of satire. The humour is sometimes mistaken for ribaldry but an in-

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depth analysis of the novel shows that all the humour, laughter and mirth employed is with a
purpose. It is through their ribald humour and rustic wisdom that Ayah's as also Lenny's
companions enable the little girl to chronicle the tragedy of the Partition.
The novelist's satire is of a characteristically cruel and unforgiving nature—Lenny's world
centres around her relationship with her loving Ayah, and ardent cousin suitor (who transposes
Lenny from dolls to condoms) and a Godmother with her companion connotatively referred to as
Slave sister. Lenny grows up when she learns on her own the lesson that divides her Hindu Ayah,
from her Parsi employers and her Muslim revengers. To put it broadly, the novel is "about the
slow awakening of the child heroine both to sexuality and grown up pains and pleasures and to
the particular historical disaster that overwhelms her world." T.N. Dhar's conclusion in his
book, History-Fiction Interface in Indian English Novel that "the novelist deals with history by
using narrative modes which are essentially non-mimetic, such as comedy, satire and allegory" is
unflinchingly applicable to Sidhwa's Ice-Candy-Man for in it the non-mimetic mode represents a
"reality" that transcends historical space for it is "memory's truth" again as Salim Sinai
inMidnight's Children calls it and in the end "it creates its own reality." Thus, there is no knowable
reality. Only personal observations. It is these personal observations that make Lenny grow up
and interpret her perception of the duplicities and deceptions of a savage adult world. Wading
through the sea of events and experiences, she soon acquires a heuristic perspective in life which
enlarges her consciousness and awareness of things around. Her experiment with truth has ended
in misery.
Even though Ice-Candy-Man is primarily a novel of the Partition, the Partition as a historical
event and not an emotional convulsion, one may, for an observation, turn to R.K. Narayan's
emphatic statement that "'a mere story is not the point of fiction; people and emotions are what's
important." Emotion in this novel is conspicuous by its absence in the man-woman relationship
and it is this very absence that is a comment on the image of woman as portrayed in this work.
Ice-Candy-Man skilfully recreates the ethos of the Partition as a historical event affecting the
lives of the characters in the novel but apparently, the novelist, in her bid to crystallize objective
reality has markedly ignored the experimental realm of the highly victimized woman—the Ayah
of the Parsi family at Lahore—who suffers excruciating pain and agony at the hands of the mob
that tears her apart. As if this physical abuse by the mob was not enough, the Ice-Candy-Man
clinches her lot by condemning her to prostitution. Though later he tries to make amends by
marrying her, the harm has been done. She is, one presumes, left with a lacerated heart and mind
but nowhere does the novelist elaborate on her injured psyche. And yet, we may absolve the
novelist of this charge for, perhaps, this was not a part of her scheme of things.
The Parsi world in the novel is clearly more about women than men. Characters like Lenny's
father, Old Husband and even Manek Mody are relatively insignificant when compared to
Godmother and Mother. But it is the men, and especially the Ice-Candy-Man, who perpetrate the
suffering of the women. Lenny's father's indulgence in adultery and his lashings endured by her
mother are instances that make strong the case against the victimization of women. But none
speaks out, and Ayah, too, moves "from speech to silence." Silence in the novel is designed to be
more eloquent than speech.
The combination of laughter and ribaldry, wit and wisdom is in the novel an unmistakable
pointer to the degree of levity with which a woman is treated. As mentioned earlier, each one of
the suitors in the novel makes frivolous advances to Ayah but none treats her as an individual in
her own right. She remains throughout a symbol of sex, an "object" to be ogled rather than an
individual to be regarded and respected.
There is no attempt on the novelist's part to show her as an approximation to the Indian
concept of the female "Shakti." There is no attempt either, as in Jayanta Mahapatra's poem,

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"Temple," to plumb the agony and the enigma in the Indian woman, "a riddle on its pedestal' (as
Mahapatra refers to her). Apparently, there is no agitation regarding her, anywhere in the novel—
there is only raillery and reporting of a dispassionate kind. Deep down, however, there is
something very unnerving about the betrayal of the Ice-Candy-Man who, Sidhwa tells us "appears
to have grown shades darker, and his face is all dried up and shrivelled-Iooking." The supposedly
staid and cool narrative operates at a plaintive decibel mixing illusion and reality, fiction and fact
as the flow of events demands. Thus, underlying the thematic historical perspective of Ice-Candy-
Man is the trauma of reassessing the past in terms of experiential reality underpinning the larger
historical reality.
Sidhwa conceives of historical representation not only as a welter of statistical events but as
a repertoire of inexhaustible possibilities in terms of happenings as well as human experience,
central and peripheral—all merging into an organic totality which forbids a linear interpretation
of the past and offers instead an entirety of existence.
Ice-Candy-Man has strong women characters who

want to forge their independent identity. Discuss
Ice-Candy-Man has strong women characters who want to forge their independent identity.
In a patriarchal set-up which is essentially discriminatory against women and emphasizes on
conditioning them for life-long and willing subjugation to men, the women of Ice-Candy-Man are
not only conscious of their desires, but also eagerly assertive about their independent handling of
situations.
The male characters, despite the fact that they initiate almost all events of the novel, remain
peripheral and apathetic, lacking the will to change and transcend their circumstances. The
women characters "subtly but effectively subvert the ingrained elements of patriarchy, privileg-
ing female will, choice, strength along with the feminine qualities of compassion and
motherhood.” Ice-Candy-man can undoubtedly be termed as a feminist novel—the traditional
novel eulogizes the heroic qualities of men only, while in feminist narratives women acquire
such attributes by their active involvement in and control of situational contexts. Lenny, the
narrator inIce-Candy-Man is also the centre of the novel, retaining her independent identity in
diverse situations. Her attitude towards her nameless cousin significantly portrays the feminist
need for assertive equality. At this point it shall be interesting to note that all women's writing
may not be necessarily feminist. A piece of writing which justifies, propagates or perpetuates
discrimination against women cannot be termed as feminist. Only that artistic work which
sensitizes its readers to the practices of subjugation and opposes them can be treated as being
feminist in nature. Ice-Candy-Man not only sketches and critically reviews the dehumanizing
patriarchal norms engendering a discriminatory social climate, but also portrays the struggle
against them, as well as the desire to manifest an assertive self-will on the part of its women
characters.
Lenny, the child narrator of the novel, witnesses the barbaric cruelties of the Partition days,
including the inhuman commodification of women. Yet what emerges as the dominant note or
thematic motif in the novel is not the victimization of women, but their will and sustained effort
to fight against it and overcome it. Most of the other Partition novels in English, as well as in other
languages, have concentrated largely on the helplessness of women pitched against oppressive
male forces. Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan,Manohar Malgonkar's A Bend in the Gangesin
English, and the short stories of Saadat Hasan Manto and Kishan Chander in Urdu highlight the
trauma women had to undergo during the catatonic times of Partition. Even the more

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contemporary authors have not been able to escape it. They have talked about the national trauma
of Partition using the device of the child narrator and taking the linear time narration. Sidhwa on
the other hand treats the theme of Partition with a clever juxtaposition of images and an
underlying ironical humour without compromising with the innate independence of women.
Lenny is a handicapped girl representing a miniscule minority. She is also free from the effect
of social conditioning most of the sub-continent girls have to undergo. She is a young, curious and
vivacious child, eager to know what is happening around her and participating in it vigorously.
The socio-religious divide creates in her an awareness of her own identity, but even prior to that
she had become conscious of the creation of the gender, the socially accepted role of women and
girls, and also of her burgeoning sexuality. She is aware that her "world is compressed." This
awareness is intensified when Col. Bharucha prophesies her future, "She'll marry, have children—
lead a carefree, happy life. No need to strain her with studies and exams." Lenny observes the
gender-based relationship in the society and accepts it as a peripheral part of her experiences,
without allowing it to colour her own individuality. She notices how in Col. Bharucha's clinic a
woman has to discuss her child's health through her husband. During her visit to Pir Pindo she
notices how Khatija and Parveen, the adolescent sisters of Ranna, like the other girls in the village,
already wear the responsible expressions of much older women "affecting the mannerisms of their
mothers and aunts." They are perplexed by Lenny's cropped hair and short dresses.
These early impressions of Lenny, presented with multiple strains of irony, humour and wit
exhibit her awareness of gender stereotypes. She perceives many differences in the personality
traits and interests of men and women. However Lenny is neither influenced nor conditioned by
her perception of gender based social stereotypes—that she assertively retains her interests is
evident in her attitude towards her Ayah, Hamida and her cousin. When godmother arranges a
meeting with Ayah, Lenny insists on accompanying her. She feels that Ayah has been wronged
and ashamed by her friends and she shares her humiliation. She wants to "comfort and kiss her
ugly experiences away." She does not think that sexual exploitation should remain a stigma for
any woman, "I don't want her to think she's bad just because she's been kidnapped." She also
keeps Hamida's past a secret under the impression that if revealed her mother may sack her. Her
sympathy bonds her to all the women characters in the novel.
Very early in the novel the reader notices Lenny's consciousness of her own burgeoning
sexuality. Her open background and liberal upbringing make her receptive to her early sexual
stirrings. She enjoys the admiring covetous giances Ayah receives from her admirers and displays
traditional feminine smugness and coquetry. She vividly portrays Ice-Candy-Man's toes, Avail's
furtive glances towards Sharbat Khan and the Masseur's intimacy with Ayah. Her relationship
with her cousin, allowing clandestine forages into physical intimacies, shows her mental
independence. During their walks to the bazaars and gardens she irreverently points out boys and
men to her cousin whom she finds attractive. She sums up her attitude neatly when she says,
"Maybe I don't need to attract you. You're already attracted." Cousin angrily complains to
godmother, "She loves approximately half of Lahore . . . why can't she love me?"
Despite the pressures of socially constructed gender-roles and expectations the awakening of
an individuality which is pulsatingly present in Lenny can be felt in other women characters too.
Lenny's mother belongs to the privileged economic strata of the society. She can engage several
servants to look after the children and other daily chores. She is kept busy with her social
obligations—entertaining guests and partying exhaust her time. Lenny's physical handicap has
generated a sense of guilt in her which often surfaces in her conversations. She says to Col.
Bharucha, "It's my fault, I neglected her—left her to the care of Ayah." Lenny admires her delicate
beauty, but resents her "all-encompassing" motherliness. She is initially possessive about her
mother but soon learns to cope with it. Her mother's voluptuous appeal generates a subtle jealousy
too in her psyche:

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“The motherliness of Mother....How can I describe it? While it is there it is all-

encompassing, voluptuous. Hurt, heartache and fear vanish....The world is
wonderful, wondrous—and I perfectly fit in it. But it switches off, this
motherliness....”
Mother's motherliness has a universal reach. Like her involuntary female magnetism it
cannot be harnessed. “... I resent this largess. As father does her unconscious and indiscriminate
sex appeal. It is a prostitution of my concept of childhood rights and parental loyalties. She is my
mother—flesh of my flesh—and Adi's. She must love only us!”
Lenny is given ample personal space by her mother. Though decisively controlling and
channelizing her children's lives, she allows them to frolic around and view life from their own
standpoints. Lenny is permitted to accompany Imam Din twice to a village Pir Pindo, her visits to
parks and restaurants with Ayah are also unchecked. She is also able to effortlessly control the
entourage of servants and run her household effortlessly. Despite her liberated handling of
children and a modern life-style, she is very much a traditional wife, humouring constantly the
wishes of her husband. She is almost servile in her attitude towards her husband, coquettishly
appeasing him and trying to create an atmosphere of pleasant mirth around him. Lenny
sceptically looks on when her mother chatters in saccharinely sweet tones to fill up the "infernal
time of Father's mute meals."
Though Lenny is not able to decipher it, her remarks hint at the presence of an inner void in
her mother's personality. Most of the women writers have hinted at the presence of an inner
hollowness in the lives of women, which is often shielded by the deceptively beautiful screen of
their social graces and obligations. For women like Mrs. Sethi, social elegance is not simply a
pleasure, it is also a bondage, because herein they are forced to accept their role as female.
The conversation during the party the Sethis organize for the Rogers and the Singhs explicitly
suggests that it is a woman's erotic capacities, not her intellectual calibre, which is integrated with
the life of society. Her driving sprees along with the Electric-Aunt to smuggle petrol in order to
help their stranded Hindu and Sikh friends, and the rehabilitation of Hamida shows her
humanitarian understanding of the situation, and also a desire to do something meaningful.
A major part of the novel's discussion is centred on Lenny's Ayah Shanta. She is a Hindu girl
of eighteen and everything about her is also eighteen years old. Though she is employed with
considerate masters, her condition is that of an unprotected girl whom everybody treats only as a
sex object. Looking at Ayah, Lenny also becomes conscious of her sexuality:
“The covetous glances Ayah draws educate me. Up and down, they look at her. Stub
ended twisted beggars and dusty old beggars on crutches drop their poses and stare
at her with hard, alert eyes. Holy men, marked in piety, shove aside their pretences
to ogle her with lust. Hawkers, cart-drivers, cooks, coolies and cyclists turn their
heads as she passes, pushing my pram with the unconcern of the Hindu goddess she
worships.”
While the sexuality of Lenny's mother lies beneath the veneer of sophistication and unfulfilled
longings, Ayah's is transparent and self-serving. She is fully aware of her sexual charm and uses
it without any inhibition to fulfill her desires. She has accumulated a good number of admirers
who regularly assemble in the Victoria Garden—the Ice-Candy-Man, the Masseur, the
Government House gardener, the restaurant owner, the zoo-attendant, and a knife-sharpening
Pathan are her regular admirers. Lenny also learns to identify "human needs, frailties, cruelties
and joys," looking at these people during her outings:

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I learn also to detect the subtle exchange of signals and some of the complex rites by
which Ayah's admirers co-exist. Dusting the grass from their clothes they slip away
before dark, leaving the one kick, or the lady, favours. ... I escape into daydreams in
which my father turns loquacious and my mother playful.
Ayah uses her charm to obtain easy gains—cheap doilies, cashew nuts, extra serving of food
etc. She successfully uses her charm as a strategy of survival and manipulation till the violence of
Partition destroys her familiar world. Her portrayal also represents the male exploitation of
female sexuality. Ice-Candy-Man manages to kidnap her with the help of some hooligans and
forces her into prostitution. Despite her conviction that she is now an impure person, she retains
her will to go back to her family and face life anew. Her refusal to admit defeat despite physical
and emotional mutilation and her determination to probe into future alternatives imparts a moral
courage to her.
Godmother and Slave sister—Rodabai and Mini Aunty—are other major female characters in
the novel who are presented with a sense of glee. The one-and-a-half-room abode of her
godmother is termed as her haven by Lenny, her "refuge from the perplexing unrealities of my
home onWarris Road." She is also a surrogate mother for Lenny in a mutually fulfilling rela-
tionship. Her portrayal is presented to us by Lenny in a fascinated manner, as if she is an idolized
entity. She is presented as an old lady, plainly attired in Khaddar sarees, covering herself from
head to foot, possessing a penchant for sharp wit, accurate repartee and a profound understanding
of human psyche.
She makes it her business to know everything about everybody, and tries to help people
whenever she can. She donates blood, seeks admission to a boarding school for Ranna, traces the
Ayah and manages to send her back to her people. She is a formidable person too and scolds the
Ice-Candy-Man for disgracing the Ayah, "Oh? What kind of man? A royal pimp? What kind of
man would allow his wife to dance like a performing monkey before other men? You're not a man,
you're a low-born, two-bit evil little mouse!"
Despite Slavesister's protest she permits Lenny to accompany her to Ayah's place. She is also
a sensitive person. When she realizes that Ayah, despite her marriage with Ice-Candy-Man, does
not want to live with him, decisively sets about to rescue her. Pier Paolo Piciucco comments that
the plot of the novel comes to a head because of the Godmother. Her visit to the Ayah has the
trappings of a trial: she sits and acts as a judge. Unlike other female figures of the novel
Godmother has transcended her sexuality and emerges as an authoritative presence, able to
achieve her desires. She incarnates the ideal of strength in female characters.
Godmother's attitude towards Mini Aunty, whom Sidhwa has very aptly termed as the Slave
sister, draws the reader's attention for its incongruous eccentricity. In her dealing with people
outside her immediate family circle she displays compassion and understanding, but her attitude
towards her husband and her sister is shorn of such sentiments. She fully dominates her
household in which her husband is only a peripheral presence. She is insensitive, churlish and
cruel to her sister and constantly bosses over her. Her sister does all the household chores, while
she only criticizes her nastily:
If you think you have too much to cope with you can live someplace else.
Don't think I've not been observing your tongue of late! If you're not careful, I'll snip
it off. . . . God knows, you've grown older— and fatter—but not up! This child here
has more sense than you.
Lenny adores her godmother as she tights her battles for her though it cannot justify the Slave
sister's exploitation.

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Muccho, the sweepers, and her daughter Papoo are other female characters who can be
mentioned here. Muccho takes Papoo as her rival and saddles her with all the household chores,
beating and abusing her on slightest pretexts. Ayah and other servants constantly try to save the
young child from this abuse but often their efforts are fruitless. Once she had to be admitted to
hospital for two weeks as she had concussion as a result of her mother's severe beating. But despite
this senseless maltreatment, Papoo cannot be browbeaten into submission. She is strong and
high-spirited, but as Sidhwa suggests very early in the story, "There are subtler ways of breaking
people."
Muccho arranges her marriage with a middle aged dwarf whose countenance betrays cruelty.
Papoo is drugged with opium at the time of ceremony to suppress her revolt. Lenny curiously
studies Muccho's face during the wedding ceremony and is startled to find a contented smile on
her lips—"smug and vindicated." The sketch of Muccho suggests that women themselves are un-
consciously bound by their conditioning and saddle their daughters with a repetitive fate, treating
marriage as a panacea of all ills.
The women-characters of Ice-Candy-Man draw our attention to the facts of victimization of
women and their compulsions to define their lives according to the pre-fixed gender roles. They
also expose the patriarchal biases present in the archetypal social perceptions. Lenny, the child
protagonist, recognizes these social patterns and exhibits the vivacity to transcend them. She also
records the multi-faceted trauma women had faced during the unsettling and devastating days of
Partition. The narration of the story by a girl-child ensures that the surrounding world would be
seen through a feminine eye. The novel presents women as a "twice oppressed category on stage:
firstly, as human beings suffocated by violence and secondly, as women burdened by the bond
and impositions of a patriarchal society."
Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel, in one way or other, advocate

the women rights. Discuss.
Bapsi Sidhwa is an award winning Pakistani novelist striving above all to bring women's
issues of the Indian subcontinent into public discussion. She was born in 1938
in Karachi, Pakistan (then part of India), but her family migrated shortly thereafter toLahore. As
a young girl, Sidhwa witnessed first-hand the bloody Partition of 1947, in which seven million
Muslims were uprooted in the largest, most terrible exchange of population that history has
known. The Partition was caused by a complicated set of social and political factors, including
religious differences and the end of colonialism in Sub-continent. Sidhwa writes about her
childhood, "the ominous roar of distant mobs was a constant of my awareness, alerting me, even
at age seven, to a palpable sense of the evil that was taking place in various parts of Lahore".
Sidhwa was also witness to these evils, including an incident in which she found the body of a
dead man in a gunnysack at the side of the road.
Characteristically succinct, she says of the event, "I felt more of a sadness than horror". Her
home city of Lahore became a border city in Pakistan, and was promptly flooded by hundreds of
thousand of war refugees. Many thousands of these were women - victims of rape and torture.
Due to lasting shame and their husbands' damaged pride, many victims were not permitted entry
into their homes after being "recovered." There was a rehabilitation camp with many of these
women adjacent to Sidhwa's house, and she states that she was inexplicably fascinated with these
"fallen women," as they were described to her at the time. She realized from a young age that

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"victory is celebrated on a woman's body, vengeance is taken on a woman's body. That's very much
the way things are, particularly in my part of the world". It appears as if realizations such as this
inspired Sidhwa's later activism for the cause of women's rights.
Sidhwa claims to have had a rather boring childhood, with the exception of the years of strife
surrounding the Partition, due partly to a bout with polio, which kept her home schooled. She
cites Little Women as being the most influential book of her childhood, as it introduced her to "a
world of fantasy and reading--I mean extraordinary amounts of reading because that was the only
life I had". She went on to receive a BA from Kinnaird College for Women, inLahore. At nineteen,
Sidhwa got married, and soon after gave birth to the first of three children. While traveling
in Northern Pakistan in 1964, Sidhwa heard the story of a young girl who was murdered by her
husband after an attempted escape. She looked into the story and discovered that the girl was a
purchased wife, a slave. This discovery moved Sidhwa into action. She began to tell the girl's story
in the form of a novel.
Along with prevailing expectations of women's place during that time in Pakistan, the
responsibilities of raising a family prompted Sidhwa to write in secret. Although Sidhwa speaks
four languages, she made a conscious decision to write in English, partly due to the increased
probability of worldwide exposure to issues that concerned her within the subcontinent. At that
time there were no English language books published in Pakistan, so after Sidhwa finished writing
the novel, she published it herself as The Bride. The novel was critically acclaimed for its forceful
style and its undeniable ability to speak eloquently of human warmth amid horrible
circumstances. She received the Pakistan National Honors of the Patras Bokhri award for The
Bride in 1985.
Soon after publication of The Bride, Sidhwa began work on her second novel, The Crow
Eaters. The novel is named after derogatory slang referring to the Parsi people, in reference to
their supposed propensity for loud and continuous chatter. The Crow Eaters is a comedy, which
hundred thousand based predominantly in Bombay.
The Crow Eaters tells the story of a family within the small Parsi community residing within
the huge city of Lahore. Complete with historical information and rich with bawdy, off-color
humor, the novel is never boring, as Sidhwa's acute sense of humor constantly changes from the
subtle to the downright disgusting. Nothing is above this humor, which often times leaves the
reader feeling guilty for laughing out loud. The main character, Faredoon, relentlessly torments
his mother-in-law Jerbanoo, especially about her self-indulgent complaints of impending death.
Some of the most hilarious moments involve Faredoon's detailed and gory description of her
funeral. The Parsis practice charity in life as well as death, and their funeral custom of feeding the
body to the vultures reflects this belief.
Bapsi Sidhwa's third novel marked her move into international fame. Ice-Candy-Man was
published in several other countries in 1988 under the title Ice-Candy-Man. Book sellers stateside
feared that an American audience would mistake the unfamiliar occupational name (meaning
popsicle vendor) for a drug pusher.
The novel is considered by many critics to be the most moving and essential book on the
partition of Sub-continent. Told from the awakening consciousness of an observant eight-year-
old Parsi girl, the violence of the Partition threatens to collapse her previously idyllic world. The
issues dealt with in the book are as numerous as they are horrifying. The thousands of instances
of rape, and public's subsequent memory loss that characterize the Partition are foremost. In the
hatred that has fueled the political relations between Pakistan and India since that time, these
women's stories were practically forgotten. In one of her infrequent bursts of poetry, Sidhwa

105
writes, "Despite the residue of passion and regret, and loss of those who have in panic fled-- the
fire could not have burned for. . .Despite all the ruptured dreams, broken lives, buried gold,
bricked-in rupees, secreted jewelry, lingering hopes...the fire could not have burned for months. .
."
Sidhwa replaces flowing, poetic sentences with forceful criticism when she theorizes about
what caused the fires to keep burning. Sidhwa repeatedly condemns the dehumanizing impact
that religious zealotry played in promoting mob mentality, separation, and revenge during the
Partition. Sidhwa's widely varied narration alternates between opulent description, subtle humor,
and bone-chilling strife. The narrator, Lenny, is astute beyond her years, yet the questioning
nature of the child is portrayed so skillfully that it allows the author to effectively deal with serious
subjects both firmly and with subtlety, whichever suits her purpose. When she discovers that her
mother is illegally stockpiling gasoline, Lenny wrongly assumes that her mother is responsible for
the bombings that are plaguing Lahore. This image is both funny and disturbing, highlighting the
strange mixture of innocence and fear that Lenny is dealing with. When the citizens
of Lahore become more apprehensive of the impending Partition, they stratify strictly upon
religious lines.
Lenny's perceptions of the differences in people changes at the same time. In reference to a
Hindu man's caste mark, Lenny proclaims, "Just because his grandfathers shaved their heads and
grew stupid tails is no reason why Hari should." "Not as stupid as you think," says Cousin. "It
keeps his head cool and his brain fresh". Seemingly simple passages such as this one succinctly
and with humor hint at a child's precise realization of the discriminatory nature of the caste
system. The novel is made up of hundreds of such cleverly phrased passages, which make the book
quite enjoyable to read despite the clarity with which the troubling passages are depicted.
Women's issues, the implications of colonization, and the bitterly divided quagmire of
partisan politics that the British left in their wake are reevaluated in the novel, picked apart by the
sharp questions of a child. Sidhwa's credibility in the eyes of the press and literary critics of the
subcontinent is remarkably accentuated by virtue of her being a Parsi, a woman, and a first-hand
witness to the violence. The Parsis remained neutral during the Partition, a fact well remembered
by two countries. Sidhwa uses this impartial position to its fullest, contributing greatly to the
national discourse on the matter. Critical analysis of Ice-Candy-Man deals with a wide variety of
topics in the novel, including several analyses of Sidhwa's subtext on male/female authority
issues.
Sidhwa travels frequently to Pakistan in her capacities as a women's rights activist. Sidhwa
works with women to help foster an awareness of their rights, including the organization of large-
scale awareness-raising public protests. She also utilizes her position as an acclaimed writer to
make numerous public statements in the Pakistani media aimed against repressive measures that
harm women and minority communities. She has worked as the voluntary secretary in the
Destitute Women and Children's home in Lahore for years, and was appointed to the advisory
committee to Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on Women's Development.
Since moving to the United States in 1983, Sidhwa has received numerous literary awards
both in the U.S. and abroad. In 1987 she was awarded both a Bunting Fellowship at
Radcliffe\Harvard and a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts that allowed her to finish
Cracking India. In 1991 Sidhwa received the Sitara-i-Imitaz,Pakistan's highest national honor in
the arts, along with the Liberaturepreis in Germany. In 1993 she published her most recent novel,
An American Brat, a comical reflection on the confusing friction that different cultures impose
upon a Pakistani girl in the United States. The same year she received the Lila Wallace-Reader's
Digest Writer's Award, which, pleasantly enough, also included one-hundred-five thousand
dollars. The author has received numerous other awards for her writing.

106
In her most recently published essay, for Time Magazine, she reflects on the Partition's
victims of rape. "What legacy have these women left us? I believe that their spirit animate all those
women that have bloomed into judges, journalists, ngo official, filmmakers, doctors and writers-
- women who today are shaping opinions and challenging stereotypes".
The female characters in Ice-Candy-Man

pulsate with a will and life of their own.
Discuss.
Ice-Candy-M.an is a major novel on the Partition which treats history of both India
and Pakistan. It had been a shocking and traumatic experience shared by both the
nations. Ice-Candy-Man by Bapsi Sidhwa is a Pakistani version of this traumatic
experience like Bhisham Sahni's Tamas, Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan as Indian
versions of this bitter reality. Like any other upheaval, political or religious in nature,
Partition of the Indian sub-continent proved to be a disaster for both the Hindus and the
Muslims. Women and children had been the worst sufferers and easy victims in
communal riots. In her novels Sidhwa dwells on the Partition crises, the Parsi milien with
its social idiosyncracies and the problems of Muslim women in Pakistan.
In her first novel The Bride, Sidhwa deals with the repression of women in the
patriarchal Pakistani society. This novel is based on a true story narrated to her during
her stay in a remote area of Karakoram mountain range. She was told about this sad tale
of woe and strife of a girl by army engineers and doctors. A girl from the plains
of Pakistan was taken across the Indus for marriage by the local tribals after her marriage,
the girl ran away. She hid herself in the rugged mountains and she whs continuously
chased by her husband and his men. Shewas caught while crossing a rope bridge on
the Indus river. Her husband severed her head and threw her into the turbulent waves of
the Indus. But Bapsi Sidhwa has made some departure from the real story. In her
narrative, the girl does not die but escapes to the other side. In her fictional presentation
of the story, Sidhwa has introduced the tribes of the Karakoram with their customs and
beliefs. The novel The Bride "provides an incisive look into the treatment of women. It is
the most contentious of Sidhwa's novels, the most critical towards unjust traditions that
undermine the structure of community. The novel relates how Zaitoon, trained as an
obedient Muslim girl, is captivated by the fantasies of her protector father's visions of the
lost mountain paradise," observes R. K. Dhawan. Fawzia Afzal Khan calls The Bride a
challenge to "The patriarchal culture and values of Indian—Pakistani society."
In her novel The Ice-Candy-Man, Sidhwa deals with the problem of communal riots
in the wake of Partition. It is a politically motivated novel. Sidhwa's depiction of
communal riots is touching as well as shocking. Children and women suffer the most. The
horrors of Partition are depicted without histrionics. Lenny, the child narrator is eight
year old. She suffers from Polio and records her observations about her surroundings in
a detached manner. She observes social change around her and narrates it from a child's

107
point of view. Lenni's mother, Mrs. Sethi and other Parsi women help Hindu and Sikh
families and kidnapped Hindu women to move to safer places. Lenny's Godmother
rescues the Hindu Ayah who had been forcibly married to her Muslim friend, the seller of
ice-candies. Ayah reaches Amritsar safely.
Feroz Jussawalla observes that Ice-Candy-Man (1988) is the truest bildungsroman

in Bapsi Sidhwa's Parsi trilogy of The Crow Eaters, An American Brat and Ice-Candy-
Man. Bildungsroman focuses on awakening and awareness of the changing environment.
It also records the growth of a child into a mature individual. Lenny also awakens to a
new identity. Sidhwa's heroines and heroes awake and get rooted in one's self. Feroz
Jussawalla calls the tales of Sidhwa's Parsi protagonists as "the rites of passage of the
Parsis of Bapsi Sidhwa's fiction. In her writings, Sidhwa asserts that though Pakistan got
independence in 1947, women in Pakistan still "continue for their independence struggle
till today." Her novels present a condemnatory view of the practices of the patriarchal
Pakistani society. In her novel The Pakistani Bride, Sidhwa writes: "Women the world
over, through the ages, asked to be murdered, raped, exploited, enslaved, to get
importunately impregnated, beaten up, bullied and disinherited. It was an immutable law
of nature. She also expresses her views about her writings that she is not writing feminist
literature. Rather her novel Ice-Candy-Man is an important testament of "a gynocentric
view of reality in which the feminine psyche and experiences are presented with a unique
freshness and aplomb," according to subhash Chandra. He observes that Sidhwa turns
the female protagonists into the moral centre, while most of the male characters either
remain passive or indulge in violence. The female characters in Ice-Candy-Man pulsate
with a will and life of their own.
The brutal realities of the Partition depicted in Ice-Candy-Man

with a candour, do not overshadow the resilience of spirit
exhibited by several characters in the novel. Discuss.
Ice-Candy-Man describes the harrowing tale of Partition days when the lofty ideal of
nationalism was suddenly bartered for communal thinking, resulting in unprecedented devasta-
tion, political absurdities and deranged social sensibilities. Sid-hwa has sensitively portrayed the
political anxiety and social insecurity which was shared by all the divided people during the
Partition days.
The days preceding the largest forced migration of population in human history, and the
demographic dislocation it entailed, had their own complexities. People who have survived this
holocaust, or witnessed it from a distance try to exorcise this past through memories.
Imaginative and literary recreation helps people to recover "some of the lost density of
life. Perhaps this is the reason that prominent literary figures in India and Pakistan have
constantly taken up themes related with Partition and try to. Replicate their memories in all
details. Chaman Nahal's Azadi, Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan, Manohar Malgonkar's A
Bend in the Ganges, B. Raj an's The Dark Dancer, and Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines are
expressions of different sensitivities about Partition.

108
However, Ice-Candy-Man is different from these works as it presents the turbulent upheaval
of Partition from the viewpoint of a handicapped Parsi girl child. Stressing the vulnerability of
human lives, and maintaining a fine balance between laughter and despair, Sidhwa presents
various nuances and complexities related with a decision of political pragmatism through Lenny,
a child narrator and chronicler. Lenny looks at characters belonging to different communities
through the prism of her own Parsi sensitivity. Shorn of biases the child's narration also imparts
an authentic credibility to the novel. Like most of the other novels, Ice-Candy-Man also presents
the horrifying details of cruelty, human loss and dislocation, but it does so with a subtle irony,
witty banter and parody, forcing the readers to desist from maudlinly sensitive reactions, and to
concentrate more on the inscrutability of human behaviour. It also describes a society which has
lost its courage, and therefore only crumbles away. It not only presents the barbaric details of
atrocities perpetrated by one community over other, but also delineates various manifestations of
pettiness and degenerated values which, like termite, had hollowed the inner structural strength
of the society.
Ice-Candy-Man narrates a society which has deflated chivalrous attitudes, encourages petty
self-serving tendencies and indifferent tolerance of pogroms so long the self stays alive with a
whole skin; a society which was given what it deserved—a sanguine and blood-curdling mindset,
which made Partition of India a grim reality. The characters and events of the novel suggest that
"vanity, hypocrisy and self-deception . . . somehow constitute a truer reality than altruism, self-
sacrifice and heroism, even when these are known to have existed. This reinterpretation, Andrew
Rutherford argues, of historical and psychological reality by art involves an opposition not only
between high and'lower mimetic modes, but between the low mimetic and the ironic, highlighting
what he terms as "a disbelief in the psychological probability of the ideal.
Khushwant Singh in his review in The Tribune has commented that Ice-Candy-Man deserves
to be ranked as amongst the most authentic and best on the Partition of India Githa Hariharan
also comments in Economic Times that Sidhwa has captured "the turmoil of the times, with a
brilliant combination of individual growing up pains and the collective anguish of a newly
independent but divided country. Seen through the prism of a marginalised minority girl-child, it
focuses on the deteriorating communal climate in pre-Partition days. "Lenny's naivete, her
privileged position, and her religious background lend her version of Partition a quality that other
novels about this tempestuous period in Indo-Pakistani history lack. Protected by her religious
background and her parents' status, Lenny is not directly affected by the contumelious situation
of Partition days, but she keenly observes and comments on the events happening around her.
The tone of a reporter which she adopts for recording the events or commenting on them enhances
the poignancy of the emotions which are linguistically underplayed. The hilarious tone of the
Parsi's Jaslian prayer, organized to celebrate the British victory in the Second World War is soon
replaced first by the acrimonious bickering between Mr. Rogers and Mr. Singh, then by the vague
fears and apprehensions unsettling Lenny's group, and later on by the details of murderous mob
fury unleashing death and destruction over whoever comes across them. Lenny learns
that India is going to be broken, and has many unanswered queries, "Can one break a country?
And what happens if they break it where our house is? Or crack it further up on Warris Road?
How will I ever get to Godmother's then?"
Ayah ventures that perhaps a canal will be dug to crack India. Though Lenny is baffled by
such questions, she simultaneously becomes aware of religious differences. She worriedly re-
marks, "It is sudden. One day everybody is themselves—and the next day they are Hindu, Muslim,
Sikh, Christian. People shrink, dwindling into symbols." In a changed world which responds not
to individuals but religious identities Lenny feels that the Parsis have been reduced to "irrelevant
nomenclatures." Her perception of people also changes and she becomes aware of religious
symbols acting in, and moulding the individual lives—the tuft of bodhi hair rising like a tail from

109
Han's shaven head, Cousin's fresh crop of Sikh jokes, the subtle changes in the Queen's Garden,
are presented with increasing regularity. Lenny's parents also acquire a strange black box
containing, as we are told later, a gun. Their neighbours leave for safer places. Hari, the gardener,
is circumcised and converted to Islam for protection, Moti, the sweeper, opts for Christianity, the
masseur is killed grotesquely, the markets burn and living beings are torn asunder.
The insensitivity of the social climate is highlighted and individual deeds of kindness and
support eclipse out. The massacre of Pir Pindo narrated in the words of a young boy Ranria pre-
sents perhaps the vilest side of adult nature which continuously haunts the reader. Lenny senses
the changing situation and is perturbed. Listening to the verbal parrying of Ayah's admirers she
closes her eyes in frustration, "I close my eyes. I can't bear to open them they will open on a
suddenly changed world. I try to shut out the voices."
The brutal realities of the Partition depicted in Ice-Candy-Man with a candour, do not
overshadow the resilience of spirit exhibited by several characters in the novel. Rodabai, the God-
mother arranges free education for Ranna, Lenny's mother and Electric-Aunt store petrol in order
to facilitate the escape of their friends, Hamida is rehabilitated. Dormant possibilities of the re-
surgence of human spirit can also be sensed in Ayah as, taking a bold decision, she determines to
go back to her family. She rejects the constricting present and decisively wants to face future in
all its tentative probabilities. The resilience of women characters saves the novel from being a
heart-rending depressing rendition of journalistic reporting.
Ice-Candy-Man also includes several comments on contemporary political figures. Sidhwa
has presented the Pakistani perspective regarding these figures and almost all the major con-
temporary Indian political figures are either caricatured or presented in an unfavourable manner.
During her interview with David Montenegro, Sidhwa comments:
The main motivation grew out of my reading of a good deal of literature on the
Partition of India and Pakistan. . . . What has been written has been written by the
British and the Indians. Naturally they reflect their bias. And they have, I felt after
I'd researched the book, been unfair to the Pakistanis. As a writer, as a human being,
one just does not tolerate injustice. I felt whatever little I could do to correct an
injustice I would like to do, I have just let facts speak for themselves, and through
my research I found out what the facts were.
Gandhi's visit to Lahore is presented in such light as makes him "an improbable mixture of a
demon and a clown." Lenny recalls how he interminably talks about enema, personal hygiene and
sluggish stomachs. Sidhwa portrays him as a politician, changing his stances to suit his needs.
During the heated discus-sions among Ayah's admirers the butcher snortingly terms him as "That
non-violent violence-monger—your precious Gandhi-jee." In an attempt to soothe him the
masseur says, "He's a politician yaar. It's his business to suit his tongue to the moment." Lenny
remembers him as a small, dark and shrivelled old man very much like their gardener Hari.
Sidhwa also criticizes the British designs, commenting that after obtaining their objective to
divide India, they favoured Hindus over Muslims: "they [the British] favour Nehru over Jinnah,
Nehru is Kashmiri, they grant him Kashmir. Spurning logic, defying rationale, ignoring the
consequences of bequeathing a Muslim state to the Hindus." She further says in derogatory terms.
"Nehru wears red carnations in the button holes of his ivory jackets. He bandies words with Lady
Mountbatten and is presumed to be her lover. ... He is in the prime of his Brahmin manhood."
Similarly the Akalis, led by Master Tara Singh, are termed as "a bloody bunch of murdering
fanatics."
Sidhwa has also tried to redefine Jinnah's role in history. She feels that most of the Indian
and British writers have dehumanized him, holding him responsible for the Partition. While Ne-
hru has been portrayed as a "sly one," Jinnah is lauded for his intellectual capabilities. The off

110
duty sepoy remarks during one of the discussions held regularly at Queens Gardens, "Don't un-
derestimate Jinnah. He will stick within his rights, no matter whom Nehru feeds! He's a first-rate
lawyer and he knows how to attack the British with their own laws!" Jinnah is portrayed with a
sympathy not showed for any other political leader. He is depicted as "austere, driven, pukka-
sahib accented, deathly ill, incapable of check kissing", past the prime of his manhood, he is
"sallow, whip-thin, sharp-tongued and uncompromising." Sidhwa also quotes Sarojini Naidu to
substantiate her portrayal of Jinnah. As the story unfolds, we are introduced not only to Jinnah,
the political leader, but also to Jinnah, the lover of an eighteen year old, breathtakingly beautiful
Parsi girl, who had braved the censure of her wealthy knighted father to marry a Muslim. Lenny
feels sad on learning her premature death, but her sympathies clearly lie with Jinnah:
But didn't Jinnah too, die of a broken heart? And today, forty years later, in films of
Gandhi's and Mountbatten's lives, in books by British and Indian scholars, Jinnah,
who for a decade was known as 'Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity', is caricatured,
and portrayed as a monster.
The analysis of the political leadership during the Partition days by Sidhwa is subjective and
at times seems even prejudiced. Despite it, the final message of the novel is clear and
unambiguous. It rejects the two nation theory and suggests that religious, social and cultural
differences are artificially created and exploited by unscrupulous people. She also suggests that
power should be used for the good of the people and to suppress the evil. In her interview with
Julie Rajan, she comments on the main theme of Ice-Candy-Man:
I was just attempting to write the story of what religious hatred and violence can do to people
and how close evil is to the nature of man. Under normal circumstances people can be quite
ordinary and harmless; but once the mob mentality takes over, evil surfaces. Evil is very close to
the surface of man.
Ice-Candy-Man is criticized by some critics for misrepresenting historical facts. Sidhwa's
description of Gandhiji's visit to Lahore can be quoted as an example. There is no historical record
of Gandhi's visit to Lahore during the pre-Partition days. Similarly, the reference to the famous
Dandi March by Col. Bharucha dates it in 1944, whereas it had actually taken place in the early
months of 1930. The vivid description of the Sikh attack on the Muslim village ofPir Pindo is also
historically inaccurate. Such inaccuracies are however fictionally justified as these events are
imaginatively used to impart an easy continuity and flow to the narrative and communicate the
author's point of view successfully.
The theme of horror accompanying the transfer of population in 1947 has been delineated by
several authors in Indo-English fiction. In his essay "The Partition in Indo-English Fiction" Saros
Cowasjee has commented on the characteristics of the Partition novels. He says that most of the
Partition novels written by Sikh authors portray a romance between a Sikh boy and a Muslim girl,
strive for historical accuracy loading their fiction with documentary evidence gleaned from
newspapers, government reports and G.D. Khosla's Stern Reckoning: A Survey of the Events
Leading upto and Following the Partition of India(1949) and suggest that Sikh atrocities against
the Muslims had taken place only in retaliation. Cowasjee has based his argument on a study of
Raj Gill's The Rape(1974), H.S. Gill's Ashes and Petals (1978), Kartar Singh Duggal's Twice Born
Twice Dead1979) and Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan (1956). Manohar Malgonkar's A
Bend in the Ganges, selected by E.M. Forster as the best novel of 1964, probes the Gandhian ide-
ology of non-violence in relation to man's hidden capacity for violence. Chaman
Nahal's Azadi (1975) propagates the theme of human kindness.
Attia Hosain's Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961) has the distinction of being the only novel
on Partition by a Muslim woman. It tells us of the effects of Partition not on those who were forced
out of their homes, but on the members of a Muslim family who, far from the scene of action,

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struggle to keep their family from splitting up and argue over the priorities of different loyalties.
Balchandra Rajan's The Dark Dancer is saturated with idealism and hope and concentrates on
the basic nobility of human nature. In Hindi, Urdu and Bengali too, there are some brilliant novels
on this theme—Jhutha Sach of Yashpal, Tamas of Bhisham Sahani, Adha Gaon of Rahi Ma-soom
Raza, and-Epar Ganga, Opar Ganga by Jyotirmoyee Devi, The Skeleton (1987) by Amrita Pritam
can be mentioned as examples. The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh and What the Body
Remembers (1999) by Shauna Singh Baldwin are more recent attempts to grapple with the
memories of Partition which, as Krishna Sobti has remarked, is difficult to forget but dangerous
to remember." Ghosh's novel traces the sources of communal violence. Ghosh effectively uses
political allegory to stress the need for a syncretic civilization to avoid a communal holocaust. His
novel is against artificial divisions and violence and is an affirmation of unity and enrichment of
life.Baldwin traces the oppression of men which the female body remembers with contrasting and
constantly shifting viewpoints in her novel.
Ice-Candy-Man stands apart in its rendering of the theme of Partition. Lenny reveals the
trauma of Partition through her memories with a sprinkling of humour, parody and allegory, de-
scribing how friends and neighbours become helpless and ineffective while faced with the mob
frenzy. Sidhwa also describes how political leaders manipulate the ideals and generate feelings of
suspicion and distrust in the psyche of the common man. Once communal and obscurantist
passions are aroused, the social fabric is torn asunder, leading to wanton and reckless destruction.
Sidhwa has also commented on the historical inevitability of social process, suggesting that people
who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. The tragic events combine with the
witty freshness characterizing the narrator's attitude of a distanced watcher. The novel poignantly
describes the mindless Partition violence and focuses on its socio-historical consequences to
women. Moreover, "the craft of describing violent and humorous scenes alternatively and of freely
mixing historical tragedy with witty comedy is not the result of a compromise but it rather displays
a lively authenticity which very few novels can be credited with." Ice-Candy-Man enables the
readers to understand the extent of the trauma of Partition and review it in its historical context,
and thus suggestively delineates the fruit-lessness of violence in individual and collective lives.
Through Lenny's narrative Sidhwa has raised some gender

related issues and the child's voice also generates a tone of
authentic documentation of the Partition horrors. Discuss.
Ice-Candy-Man is Sidhwa's most famous and serious novel till now, possessing several layers
of connotative and enigmatic interpretations. Critics have vociferously commented on die
political, allegorical, social and feminist interpretations of the narrative. The novel was published
as Cracking India by Sidhwa's American publishers Milkweed Editions in 1991. though there were
no textual changes. The changed title suggests a different perspective to the reader about the
dominant theme of the novel.
It focuses on the collective political reality of the Partition of Indian sub-continent, while the
earlier title Ice-Candy-Man, which has been retained for Indian editions, suggests a metonymic
or even character-oriented interpretation. Ice-Candy-Man, the third novel of Bapsi Sidhwa, is
the only novel in which she has used a child narrator. Whatever perspective is suggested initially
to the reader by the title, the poignancy of emotional trauma and the sense of entrapment in the
current situation is enhanced by the fact that the narrative is presented by a child. Negation of
fruition to individual lives gains a suggestive urgency when it is reported by a child.

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The figure of a child again simultaneously represents several marginalised identities

generating a suggestive ambivalence. Lenny, the eight-year-old narrator of the novel is a polio-
stricken girl belonging to a miniscule Parsi community. Lenny narrates the incidents and the
characters of the novel to the readers, commenting and ruminating on various issues, also deftly
camouflaging the writer's omnipresence. Anita Desai has compared Lenny with Oscar of Gunter
Grass's Tin Drum The physical disability of both these characters isolates them and gives an
obliquity to their perspective which gradually develops into a criticism of the supposedly rational
maturity of the adult world, exposing the abnormality of its behavioural norms. Lenny's keen
observation presents the traumatic upheavals of a world in which the older values are suddenly
crumbling and the new ethos is yet to take a final shape. The simplicity and straightforwardness
of Lenny's perception at moments reminds us of Nellie, the child-heroine of Dostoevsky’s The
Insulted and the Humiliated, on account of her sensitive understanding of human emotions and
motives. As in Dostoevsky, the monstrosities of the adult world become transparent to the reader
in their horrifying details in Sidhwa's novel also when contrasted with Lenny's naive logic.
Several books have been written about the growing up process of boys. Twain's twin
novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are perhaps the best examples of
this genre in which the young protagonists gradually come to an understanding of themselves and
their country. R.K. Narayan's Swami and Friends is another example in which a boy gradually
develops an understanding of the self within a wider sociopolitical context. The use of a girl-child
as a narrator of a story to understand and capture the horrifying details of a turbulent history is
unique in itself. Told in the present tense and first person through an eight year old girl, the novel
beautifully captures the human struggle of the Partition days, though simultaneously the device
seems to put some constraints on the novelist. Lenny tells us in the very beginning of the novel:
"My world is compressed." This self-imposed and culturally constructed limitation is successfully
overcome by Lenny as she naively presents her comments on human relationships and their
inscrutability against the backdrop of an unfolding history. With a child's wonder she observes
social and demagogic changes, and interesting sidelights, occasionally indulging in judgement
making. Her childish innocence enhances the sharpness of the irony and lays bare the devastating
cruelty of a patriarchal order. Keeping a balance between despair and laughter, Sidhwa is also able
to present the tragic holocaust of Partition without criticism, morbidity or pedantic preaching,
with the help of the device of the child narrator. Ice-Candy-Man has a beautifully combined
gripping Dickensian story with a postmodernist narrative experimentation. "Like Rudyard
Kipling's Kim or the fourteen-year old narrator in Doris Lessing's story "The Old Chief Mshlanga,"
Lenny's growing up is marked as much by a loss of political and racial egalitarianism as by her
developing sexuality." Lenny is also compared to the persona that Chaucer adopts in his Prologue
to The Canterbury Tales, rendering credibility by being almost a part of the reader's
consciousness.
Ice-Candy-Man is often termed as a bildungsroman. The term means a novel which follows
the development of the protagonist from childhood or adolescence into adulthood through a
troubled quest for identity. Lenny's quest is also autobiographical as there are many palpable
commonalities she shares with the author. In her interview with Julie Rajan, Sidhwa admits that
her life as a child in Pakistan was very much like Lenny's life in Ice-Candy-Man Like Lenny she
also had polio and spent a lot of time with servants. She also had a number of operations, and
wasn't sent to school. She read voraciously to engage herself. When she was growing up in Lahore
it was a city of five million with only 200 Parsis. The Parsis easily adopted the mores of the
dominant society which made Sidhwa comfortable—like Lenny—with a whole medley of
identities. The persona of a child enables Sidhwa to narrate her impressions freely, ask questions
which grown up people avoid, and also to exercise a close watch over the narration itself. Since
many details of the novel match the details of Sidhwa's life, it was easier for her to present her

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general convictions about individuals and their various relationships through the child narrator,
and still control the narrative somehow, retaining thick encrustations of interpretation.
Lenny does not simply "inform" the reader of happenings. She questions happenings, people,
motives and emotions in order to grasp their fullest interpretation. The naivete of the child per-
mits her to look at things from unconventional angles. She lacks prejudices—the hatred and biases
one learns as one grows up. Her innocence gives her the strength to raise doubts and ask questions
which cannot be comfortably answered by any grown-up, and also to reach at conclusions
intuitively. "What's a fallen woman," she asks her godmother. She also tells her godmother that
her Ayah has "nothing to be ashamed of." Rather it is her friends who have irrevocably shamed
her and she cannot be "bad" just because she's been kidnapped. Troubled by the surrounding
communal frenzy she sometimes lapses into rhetoric postures also, asking in a grown up voice,
"What is God?" Such postures convince us that the narrator's voice is controlled and guided by
the author.
Through Lenny's narrative Sidhwa has raised some gender related issues too. Her
impressionable young mind receives several images of man-woman relationships which lead her
to question status quo. She notices how in Col. Bharucha's clinic a woman has to discuss her child's
illness through her husband, as any direct conversation between genders was looked down upon
by the society. During visits to Pir Pindo she meets young girls of roughly her age who have already
unquestioningly accepted their socially designated gender roles. Ranna's sisters Khatija and
Parveen wear the responsible expressions of much older women and affect the mannerisms of
their mother and aunts. Being a young child she herself is not influenced by such stereotypes, but
her neutral reporting sensitizes the reader to the extent to which they have seeped into the
collective social thinking. Ayah's raw sexuality, her manipulation of it for small gains, and
ultimately its destruction by force, awaken profound responses in Lenny and she lays bare the
gender-based structure of contemporary India. Lenny also records how her mother, despite her
modern life-style, is very much a traditional wife, almost servile in her desires to please her
husband. Lenny also becomes a party to her games of coquettishly creating an atmosphere of
pleasant mirth whenever her father is at home. However, the victimization of girls/women is not
limited to man-woman relationship only. The novel also exposes the extent of gender conditioning
through the description of Papoos', the Sweeper's daughter's, marriage to a middle-aged dwarf.
Her mother Muccho, not only passes on several of her household chores to her, but also maltreats
her, sometimes even inflicting serious injuries to her. Her marriage to a leering middle-aged dwarf
and Muccho's smug satisfaction underscore "grotesque possibilities awaiting Papoo," which had
been perpetrated by her own mother. Lenny's shock at Papoo's marriage is an oblique though
profound criticism of the prevalent gender bias. It also suggests that women themselves
unconsciously perpetuate victimization of their own daughters, saddling them with a repetitive
fate and treating marriage as a panacea of all ills.
The child's voice also generates a tone of authentic documentation of the Partition horrors.
The innocence of her childhood days is suddenly snatched from her when she witnesses the
fissiparous tendencies on the rise, the growing communal hatred and open gestures of arson and
violence. Her familiar compressed surroundings suddenly distort into a topsy-turvy world in
which values and allegiances shift suddenly. Lenny listens to the warnings of Sharbat Khan,
watches an emaciated person being torn into two pieces by jeeps looks on as the Shalmi market
burns, notes Hari's conversion to Islam, his adopting a new name and a new dress code, and
listens in snatches to the harrowing experiences of Ranna. She is also a witness to the betrayal of
Ice-Candy-Man. These experiences compel her to define her own position in the society, forcing
her to recognize and adapt to her own marginality. She becomes aware of her religious and gender
related identities—her consciousness of these multiple layers of existence becomes her initiation
into maturity.

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The narrative technique in Ice-Candy-Man also helps us to understand the political irony of
the situation. Like a wide-eyed child Lenny comes to know about the statements of various po-
litical leaders. The Government House Gardener and Ice-Candy-Man jibe about Nehru, Gandhi,
Jinnah and Tara Singh. Their opinions and repartee enable Lenny to grasp the remoteness of
political issues from the lives of common people. She concurs with Ayah's statement that the
political leaders do not fight for masses, "What's it to us if Jinnah, "Nehru and Patel fight? They
are not fighting our fight." When the butcher contemptuously slanders Gandhi as "that non-
violent violence monger—your precious Gandhijee," the Masseur tries to placate himur precious
Gandhijee," the Masseur tries to placate him, commenting that "he's a politician, yaar." Lenny
also notices the changing nature of jokes and is startled to find that suddenly there are "Hindu,.
Muslim, Parsee, and Christian jokes." The stirrings of vague fears and apprehensions which Lenny
feels at such moments convey the political reality of contemporary India.
Protected by her religious background and her family status, Lenny is not directly affected by
the growing cruelty of these times. She remains on the periphery, watching the events unfold and
commenting on them in a reporter's tone. Coupled with the innocence of a child's viewpoint, her
detached tone enhances the poignancy of the emotions which are linguistically underplayed. Like
any other child she is also flabbergasted at many details, "Can one break a country? And what
happens if they break it where our house is? Or crack it further upon on Warris Road? How will I
ever get to Godmother's then?" The device of the child narrator enables Sidhwa to reveal the
trauma of Partition, with a sprinkling of humour and allegory, and without any histrionics.
Thus the device of the child narrator has been very successfully used by Sidhwa in Ice-Candy-
Man. The use of a girl-child as a narrator in the novel enables her to simultaneously present a
critique of several issues from multiple angles. Lenny's narrative voice is not unidirectional, the
very ambivalence of her narration enriches the readers' understanding of the presence of multi-
layered meanings in the text.
Do you agree with the view that Ice-Candy-Man is a

story of partition narrated in a Parsi perception?
Partition is an upheaval which transformed millions of hapless people on either side of the
border in the subcontinent into refugees. If Partition is the cataclysm which Freddie predicts
towards the end of the narrative in The Crow-Eaters, in Ice-Candy-Man, Partition becomes the
moulding principle, a shaping force in the evolution of consciousness ol Lenny, the Parsi child-
protagonist.
If Partition is a traumatic experience to Bhisham Sahni and Amrita Pritain, it is an integral part
of Bapsi Sidhwa's consciousness. This narrative, complex as it is, marks a point of departure in
Sidhvva's writing. For here, for the first time, she employs a child-narrator like Firdaus Kanga
in Trying to Grow and Adam Zameenzad in Gorgeous White Female. The narrative depicts the
growth of Lenny, her slow awakening to sexuality, and pains and pleasures of the adult world
and to the cataclysmic event that tears her world apart. The process of Lenny's growth of
consciousness against the backdrop of Partition becomes central to the narrative. Thus her
progression is from one level of consciousness (Angra Mainyu) to the other (Spenta Mainyu).
According to Bapsi Sidhwa, she wrote Ice-Candy-Man from an "objective point of view," but
like a Pakistani objective."1Sidhwa's treatment of history is typical of a postcolonial novel. Here
history is richly humanized where Lenny's evolving consciousness integrates within itself the
diachronic moment of her own growth, holistically, and conversely, the disintegration of the

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subcontinent. The Parsi attitude", rendered through Lenny, Godmother and other characters like
Colonel Bharucha is that of a neutral disinterest. As they are not so much affected by the social,
political or even economic consequences, they are near perfect, detached observers. Thus Sidhwa
displays a fuller grasp of the 'human' consequences, of history. In the narrative, action
is internalized in the young, though fertile, mind of Lenny. Lenny thus becomes ah eye-witness
to, and a victim of, a topsy-turvy world.
Zoroastrianism enjoins that a Parsi should be loyal to the ruler. The Parsis are celebrated for
their unflinching loyalty to the British. Referring to the loyalty of the Parsis to the British, Novy
Kapadia observes that all the Parsis wanted from the ruling British authorities was religious
autonomy and protection and they were granted both. However, the sense of insecurity in the
Parsi community was due to alienation brought about by the rejection of the coloniser and distrust
of the nationalists. When objections are raised by some members of the Parsi community at a
jashan meeting on the eve of Partition, Colonel Bharucha, the spokesman of the Zoroastrian
community in Lahore, observes:
I hope no Lahore Parsee will be stupid enough to court trouble. I strongly advise all of you
to stay at the back—and out of trouble.
He argues that it would be very difficult to predict the outcome of Partition. He cautions them:
There may not be one but two—or even three—new nations. And the Parsis might find
themselves championing the wrong side if they don't look before they leap.
His word is almost a law for the Parsi community. He resolves that the Parsis of Lahore should
cast their lot with whoever rules Lahore. He too, like Freddie in The Crow-Eaters, believes that
there is no need for the Parsi community to leave Lahore. He tells them:
Let whoever wishes to rule! Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian! We will abide by the rules of
their land.
The proclamations of Colonel Bharucha at the community dinner reflect the stance of the
majority in the Zoroastrian community in the pre-Partition context. He aptly predicts that
Hindus, Muslims and even the Sikhs would jockey for power. He cautions the Parsis of Lahore
not to jump into the middle. To Lenny, a child who is caught up in the whirlpool of religious
disparities, Colonel Bharucha's proclamation is a revelation. Exiled several centuries ago, the
Parsis adopted India as their homeland. Therefore, another migration would be truly
unthinkable. They are attached to, and identified themselves with, the Indian soil.
Ayah, an eighteen-year-old Hindu, is at the centre of Lenny's scheme of things. The nexus
between Lenny's world of childish pleasures and innocence and the fast-changing ambience is
realised in Ice-Candy-Man whose presence is exhilarating for the young child. Ayah's amorous
adventures become central to Lenny's perceptions. If the covetous glances of Ayah's admirers
including the Masseur and Ice-Candy-Man awaken her to sexuality and passion, the passes of holy
men and dusty old beggars give her a glimpse of the adult life. Initially her world is made secure
by strong, courageous and loving women like Rodabai and the young Ayah. Sidhwa very clearly
establishes in the narrative that Parsi women are quite strong and their strength is revealed in
moments of crisis. For Lenny, the process of growing up, of seeking to understand the adult world
is largely an attempt to make sense of the senseless events of the Partition.
Colonel Bharucha who blames the British for bringing polio to India, seals the fate of Lenny.
He declares:
She'll marry—have children—lead a carefree, happy life. No need to strain her with studies
and exams.

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Adi, her fair brother, is sent to school whereas she is denied several privileges which other
Parsi children enjoy. She is reluctant to become a mere reproductive organism, a destiny designed
for her by Colonel Bharucha, a man. Thus Sidhwa seems to disapprove of sexism which is part
even of Parsi ethos. Speaking of the women's passive acceptance of the role allotted by the patri-
archy, Susie Tharu observes: "As women we often believe our exploited, sexually passive,
dependent role is best for us. We are contented, often exalted by its meagre rewards, its promised
glitter. Further we have so identified with patriarchy's hostility to anything that challenges the
established order we fear and even actively resist critical speech and radical action. Worst of all,
we are ourselves so insecure in the system (the time between good and bad, and hence acceptable
and totally unhoused, is slippery) that often we are the most vicious in our castigation of those
who do not conform." Tharu argues that there is a need for a 'real' consciousness. Women have
not only internalized a bourgeois consciousness but also refuse to see themselves as victims. They
are locked into a 'culture of silence' which they themselves contribute to the perpetuation of
patriarchy that objectifies and destroys her.
Sidhwa's treatment of history is typical of a postcolonial novelist. Her fictional (and
imaginative) rendering of historical figures and incidents is singular. Despite her admiration for
Gandhi, she holds him, though partially, responsible for Partition. Gandhi was deified whereas
Jinnah was caricatured in Indian films and biased accounts of the British and Indian historians.
Sidhwa wrote Ice-Candy-Man since she felt that enough had not been written about Partition,
although several novels including Train to Pakistan, A Bend in the Ganges andTamas deal with
Partition horrors. Her thesis is that most of these accounts, however moving, show a strong pro-
Hindu bias. Thus Sidhwa sets out to 'dismantle' the 'Imperial purpose' in Ice-Candy-Man.
Lenny's response to Gandhi is naive. He, a mythical figure, for her at least, emerges as a multi-
dimensional reality. His presence is overwhelming:
My brain, heart and stomach melt. The pure shaft of humour, compassion, tolerance
and understanding he directs at me fuses me to everything that is feminine, funny,
gentle, loving. He is a man who loves women,. And lame children. And the
untouchable sweeper— so he will love the untouchable sweeper's constipated girl-
child best. I know'just where to look for such a child. He touches my face, and in a
burst of shyness, I lower my eyes. This is the first time I have lowered my eyes before
a man.
Lenny truly comprehends the concealed nature of "ice" lurking deep beneath the hypnotic
and 'dynamic' femininity of Gandhi's 'non-violent exterior' only after the communal frenzy starts.
Sidhwa's description of Gandhi is a mixture of awe and irreverence. Her eulogy on Jinnah, on the
other hand, is typical of a Pakistani, making it a moral obligation for her to defend him. When her
mother tells her that Jinnah's wife, a Parsi, died heartbroken, Lenny reminisces:
But didn't Jinnah too die of a broken heart? And today, forty five years later, in the
films of Gandhi's and Mountbatten's lives, in books by British and Indian scholars,
Jinnah who for a decade was known as 'Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity', is
caricatured, and portrayed as a monster.
This passage gives a clear indication of Sidhwa's anguish at the biased work of the British and
Indian scholars. Taking a passage from Sarojini Naidu's tribute to Jinnah, Bapsi Sidhwa
reinforces her argument:
the calm hauteur of his accustomed reserve masks, for those who know him, a naive
and eager humanity, an intuition quick and tender as a woman's, a humour gay and
wishing as a child's preeminently rational and practical, discreet and dispassionate
in his estimate and acceptance of life, the obvious sanity and serenity of his worldly

117
wisdom effectually disguise a shy and splendid idealism which is of the very essence
of the man.
This is Sidhwa's glowing tribute to, and an assessment of, Jin-nah, who, in her view, was
discriminated against by the wily statesmen during Partition. She, however, rises above petty na-
tionalism and presents the Partition horrors, not in the "red light of emotion" but in the "white
light of truth." Her humanism permeates the narrative at all levels as she demonstrates, in ef-
fective fictional terms, how the religious disparities were deliberately exploited on the eve of
Partition. Thus Ice-Candy-Man, like Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan, is the story of what
happened to the poor when the politicians so heartlessly played around with their lives. They
suffered the most. Bapsi Sidhwa, being a Parsi, did not suffer much during Partition. The fight
was chiefly between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, people who were to gain by it and who were
going to be empowered by it. It was their 'battle' and as a Parsi, her emotions were not aligned
one way or the other. Lenny, at least to some extent, takes after Bapsi Sidhwa and most of the
incidents did take place in her own life though she only fictionalised them.
Lenny who is incapable of lying, realises that to become corrupt or mimick others is no easy
job. What she aims at is something which is natural to others but her efforts are an exercise in
futility. She remains in an Edenic state whereas Adi and Cousin plunge into life with great gusto.
One day Godmother catches her easily when.she steals three jars. Her face and voice give her
away. The resultant awareness brings only fresh pain:
Adi can swear himself red in the face and look lovable—Rosy can curse steadily for
five minutes, going all the way from 'Ullu Kay Pathay' to asshole; from Punjabi swear
words to American, and still look cute. It's okay if Cousin swears—but if I curse or
lie, I am told it does not suit the shape of my mouth or my personality or something.
Her inability to accomplish what others do with effortless ease plunges her into fresh agony.
Godmother comforts her:
Some people, can get away with it and some can't. . . . I'm afraid a life of crime is not for you.
Not because you aren't sharp but because you are not suited to it.
Godmother's remark is like 'life-sentence' to Lenny. Even her mother encourages her to speak
the truth. When Lenny breaks a plate, she showers her daughter with the radiance of her approval:
I love you. You spoke the truth. What's a broken plate? Break a hundred plates.
Lenny's realization at this juncture of life is significant:
The path to virtue is strewn with broken people and shattered China.
This truth, which is born of Lenny's tender experience acquires the magnitude of a cosmic
truth in the narrative. Ironically enough, it is Lenny's probity which brings about the ultimate
catastrophe—the abduction of Ayah by an irate Muslim mob led by Ice-Candy-Man, an occurrence
from Sidhwa's childhood, though it was effectively dramatized in the novel.
The Hindu Ayah who sustains Lenny's life has a multi-religious throng of admirers but she
does not discriminate. The Queen's Park becomes the locale where discussions throw light on the
topic of the times—communal frenzy. As Partition becomes imminent, the admirers of Ayah
become conscious of their communal identities. Communal loyalties too, which remain hitherto
dormant, become sharper. Ayah too is slowly transformed into a 'token', an orthodox Hindu,
whereas Imam Din, a fair and imaginative arbitrator, and Yousuf turn into religious zealots and
take Friday afternoons off for the Jumha prayers. The initial optimism of Imam Din is superseded
by anxiety and apprehension as his faith in the 'Sikh brothers' erodes slowly. However, he remains

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calm in the face of all calamities. Lenny's realization that he is 'not at ease with cruelty' indicates
the effect of turbulent times on her tender psyche.
The widening disparities are filtered through Lenny's consciousness. She observes:
One day everybody is themselves—and the next day they are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh,
Christian. People shrink, dwindling into symbols. Ayah is no longer just my all
encompassing Ayah—she is also a token—a Hindu.
Sidhwa resorts to subversion in Ice-Candy-Man to offer the perspective of the marginalized.
She comes close to Mistry who employs popular gossip and newspaper account to question the
'official' version of the infamous Nagarwala case. She introduces conversations among ordinary
people in the novel. Her minor characters such as Masseur, the Government House gardener and
Sher Singh perform, like Hardy's rustic characters, the role of a commentator and interpreter.
They analyse and draw their own inferences which sometimes reflect the stand taken by the
respective communal groups to which they belong. For instance, the discussions on politics in
Queen's Park give ample scope for them to voice their feelings. At the same time, they curse the
politicians in whose hands their destiny lies. The butcher's comment on Gandhi is typical of a
Muslim in the pre-Partition context:
That non-violent violence monger—your precious Gandhijee— first declares the
Sikhs fanatics! Now suddenly he says: "Oh dear, the poor Sikhs cannot live with the
Muslims if there is a Pakistan!" What does he think we are—some kind of beast?
Aren't they living with us now?
The Masseur's reply is equally sarcastic:
He's a politician, yaar. It's his business to suit his tongue to the moment.
Thus their comments on, and their interpretations of, the latest political developments in the
subcontinent give Lenny a vivid idea of the crumbling familiar social order. Her realization that
one man's religion is another man's poison is charged with profound significance. She closes her
eyes and tries to shut out the voices. She remarks:
I try not to inhale, but I must; the charged air about our table distils poisonous
insights. Blue envy: green avidity: the grey and black stirrings of predators and the
incipient distillation of fear in their prey.
Lenny begins to play violent games, a gesture which she borrows from the adult world. One
day Adi and she pull the legs of a doll and when the doll splits, she breaks down. In fury, Adi asks:
"Why were you so cruel if you couldn't stand it?" he asks at last, infuriated by the
pointless brutality.
In Kapadia's view, Lenny's innocent act has symbolic significance. He observes: "It shows
how even a young girl is powerless to stem the tide of surging violence within, thereby implying
that grown-up fanatics enmeshed in communal frenzy are similarly trapped into brutal violence."
Though Parsis were not victims of Partition, their agony was no less intense. Sidhwa
highlights the quandary of the Pars! community on the eve of Partition. Forced to make a choice,
(to opt for Hindu India or Muslim Pakistan), they were reduced to 'irrelevant nomenclatures'.
They were mere detached observers of a bloody event which broke India into two. Her innocent
query is typical of a child:
India is going to be broken. Can one break a country?

119
This strikes the keynote in the narrative. Sidhwa seeks to re-examine the role of the British
in 'cracking' the country. She attempts to expose the 'illegitimate' part played by the British in the
political process.
The birth of Pakistan leads to an identity-crisis in Lenny. She observes bitterly:
I am a Pakistani. In a snap. Just like that.
She takes another birth, though a symbolic one, as a Pakistani. Ice-Candy-Man is Pakistani
in setting and sensibility. The perspective of Sidhwa is quite evidently Pakistani. According to her,
Partition was a 'mistake', a tragedy which could have been averted. However, in the novel, she
argues how Partition favoured India over Pakistan:
The Hindus are being favoured over the Muslims by the remnants of the Raj. Now
that its objective to divide India is achieved, the British favour Nehru over Jinnah.
Nehru is Kashmiri, they grant him Kashmir. Spurning logic, defying rationale,
ignoring the consequence of bequeathing a Muslim state to the Hindus. . . . They
grant Nehru Gurdaspur and Pathankot without which Kashmir cannot be secured.
Thus Sidhwa rejects the British and pro-Hindu Indian versions of history. She subverts the
popular myth about Partition which was nursed and cherished by people on either side of the
border in the subcontinent. Ice-Candy-Man is a typical postcolonial text which achieves the
objective of dismantling notions of essence and authenticity. The experience which Sidhwa
depicts in the narrative is 'real' which, hitherto has been regarded as 'inauthentic' and 'marginal'.
It is Lenny who unwittingly surrenders Ayah to the rioters led by Ice-Candy-Man. Even Imam
Din's desperate lie fails to save her. Lenny's sense of guilt is acute:
I am the monkey-man's performing monkey, the trained circus elephant, the snake-
man's charmed cobra, an animal with conditioned reflexes that cannot lie.
In disgust, she scours her 'truth-infected tongue' and even tries to wench it out. Sidhwa's
narrative mode, like Narayan's, is ironic. Lenny's mother and Godmother set her firmly on the
path of truth and it is her truthfulness that spells doom for Ayah.
The subsequent confrontation between Godmother and Ice-Candy-Man opens Lenny's eyes
to the wisdom of righteous indignation over compassion, to the demands of gratification to the
unscrupulous nature of desire and to 'the pitiless face of love'. Ice-Candy-Man who ravished the
voluptuous Ayah however, repents and marries her. Even her name is changed to Mumtaz. Thus
Sidhwa shows how patriarchy deliberately deprived women of liberty ultimately resulting in a
crisis of identity. But Ayah rejects the new identity which her marriage offers. Lenny feels the pain
of Ayah since it is she who perpetrates it, though in innocence:
They have shamed her. Not those men in the carts—they were strangers—but
Sharbat Khan and Ice-Candy-Man and Imam Din and Cousin's cook and the butcher
and other men she counted among her friends and admirers. I'm not very clear
how—despite Cousin's illuminating tutorials—but I'm certain of her humiliation.
Thus Sidhwa effectively establishes how Partition affected the two nations in general, and
women in particular. Urvashi Butalia raises a pertinent question about the predicament of women
during Partition:
Why was it that we heard so little about them? How had they experienced the
anguish of the division, the euphoria of the newly-forming nations? My assumptions
were simple: firstly, that these questions had remained unasked because of the
patriarchal underpinnings of history as a discipline. I also believed (and this view

120
has been considerably qualified since) that in times of communal strife and violence,
women remain essentially non-violent, and are at the receiving end of violence as
victims, and that they are left with the task of rebuilding the community.
The task of building the community as pointed out by Urvashi Butalia is precisely what the
strong women in the narrative— Rodabai and Lenny's mother—accomplish. When Rodabai con-
fronts Ayah, now the wife of Ice-Candy-Man, she tries to comfort the hapless victim:
It can't be undone. But it can be forgiven . . . worse things are forgiven. Life goes on
and the business of living buries the debris of our pasts. Hurt, happiness ... all fade
impartially to make way for fresh joy and new sorrow. That is the way of life.
But the traumatic experience leaves Ayah spiritually dead. She replies:
I am past that. I am not alive.
Her fractured self seeks relief in Indiawhere her roots exist. Lenny's realisation that Ice-
Candy-Man is a 'deflated poet' and a 'collapsed pedlar' is symptomatic of her 'arrival.' She
perceives the change which comes over Ice-Candy-Man: and while Ayah is haunted by her past,
Ice-Candy-Man is haunted by his future: and his macabre future already appears to be stamped
on Iris face.
The eventual rehabilitation of Ayah which is chiefly the work of Godmother, the Good
Samaritan as she is, and the repentance of Ice-Candy-Man give Lenny a glimpse of the power of
love and the pain of separation.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak contends that the word 'subaltern' is packed with meaning.
According to her, everything that has limited or no access to cultural imperialism is subaltern. She
vehemently protests against the lack of cultural space for the subaltern. To work for the subaltern,
she argues, is to bring it into speech. Ayah in Ice-Candy-Man truly represents the 'subaltern' since
she is denied some cultural space by Ice-Candy-Man, who in turn, is a victim of imperialism. Her
humiliation is a concrete illustration of the subaltern's lack of access to the cultural imperialism.
Referring to allusion in the postcolonial literatures, Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffinwrite:
"Allusion can perform the same function of registering the cultural distance in the postcolonial
text, according to the extent to which the text itself provides the necessary context for the
allusion."
Thus in Bapsi Sidhwa's fiction in general, and in Ice-Candy-Man in particular, there are
several intertextual references which not only enable her to register 'cultural distance' but also
introduce the exotic to the western reader. This is one of the salient features of postcolonial
fiction. Ice-Candy-Man, like Anita De-sai's In Custody, provides the necessary context too for the
allusion,
The Urdu couplets of Iqbal and Ghalib cited in the text are an evidence of Bapsi Sidhwa's
passion for Urdu poetry. Ice-Candy-Man's anguish of separation is described in IqbaFs words:
My passion has brought me to your street—
Where can I now find the strength to take me back?
While 'appropriating' the language of the coloniser, Sidhwa. at the same time, maintains
'Otherness' which gives a distinct identity to the text. Thus she challenges some of the assumptions
which hitherto ordered 'reality'. Ice-Candy-Man's newborn wisdom is a mystery to the young
mind of Lenny. She realises the power of love only when he too disappears across the newly-
created border into India.

121
Raima's nightmarish experience at Pir Pindo is closely modelled on a personal experience of

Raima Khan, a friend of Bapsi Sidhwa. His survival in the carnage is a miracle, yet he takes a
comic-ironic view of his own predicament:
It's funny. ... As long as I had to look out for myself, I was all right. As soon as I felt
safe, I fainted.
His endurance teaches Lenny the importance of being whole. His 'instinct for survival' and
his ready ability to forgive a past which could not be controlled are in sharp contrast to her frivo-
lous ways of life.
Discussing the treatment of Partition and its effects in fiction, Susie Tharu observes: "By
representing the Partition in 'Universalisf terms as outrageous, and its effects as a metaphysical
disorder that can.be restored to an equilibrium only by the artist who is imaged as a magician-
healer, these texts inaugurate a narrative and a subjectivity that translates history and politics
into a failure of humanity.
She argues that the trauma and suffering of people during Partition is largely due to
degeneration of politics leading to subhuman acts. The tragedy of Ayah and the trauma of Ranna
are the result of what Tharu calls 'failure of humanity'. Lenny at one juncture cries out:
I feel so sorry for myself—and for Cousin—and for all the senile, lame and hurt
people and fallen women—and the condition of the world—in which countries can
be broken, people slaughtered and cities burned—that I burst into tears.
Lenny's 'education' is a growth of consciousness, a phenomenon which is hastened by events
and situations at once tragic and brutal.
When a novelist attempts to develop a philosophical conception of history, the point of view
as a literary strategy assumes great significance. Bapsi Sidhwa avoids the pitfall of employing
omniscient narration inIce-Candy-Man. This work marks a new phase in her writing in the use
of narrative voice. She is true to history, by and large, though there are a few aberrations in
providing historical signposts. Ralph Crane argues that Lenny's unreliable narration proves to be
reliable in its own way, since it causes us to question the British and Indian versions of the truth
that have hitherto been accepted. Sidhwa, in fact, employs two narrative voices for rendering the
account of Partition. The first is that of Lenny, a child and the other is that of authorial omniscient
narrative voice. Lenny's rendering is through her dreams and nightmares. It is more subjective,
though not involved or enlightened about its consequences. The other is an implied adult
narration trying to objectify what is child's narration, however precocious she may be. Sidhwa's
success lies in an excellently maintained restraint and impartial, disinterested, near-factual
description. She maintains balance so that the voice remains childlike but sophisticated enough
to involve the adult reader. There is no authorial comment, yet Sidhwa's narrative brings out the
full fury of Partition horrors, through electrifying scenes and dramatic use of language.
Sidhwa's Ice-Candy-Man invites comparison with Firdaus Kanga's Trying to Grow and
Adam Zameenzad's Gorgeous White Female. All the three protagonists are children endowed
with fertile imagination. They are precocious whose sharp perceptions are out of proportion to
their age. If Sidhwa's Lenny tries to interpret the actions and events connected with Partition,
though she is too young to accomplish it, Lahyayani, Zameenzad's eleven-year-old protagonist,
the offspring of a Bengali babu and an English woman, attempts to live an intense life. His
aspiration to be reborn stands in glaring contrast to the struggle of Kanga's Brit whose passage to
adulthood is necessitated by his Osteogenesis imperfecta. Interestingly enough, however co-
incidental it may seem, Lenny is a victim of polio whereas Brit is an invalid by birth. Lahyayani,
on the other hand, transcends the barriers of race, gender and age in order to achieve his objective

122
of rebirth. Zameenzad, like Sidhwa, is an expatriate writer exploring the themes of rootlessness
(which is the result of his mixed origin), colour and sexuality through the volatile mind of his
child-protagonist. Childhood is the 'country' which all the three protagonists—Lenny, Brit and
Lahyayani—try to leave behind in their journey to adulthood. If Brit succeeds in establishing
nexus with the adult word, Lenny and Lahyayani, despite their intense struggle, fail to acquire an
identity of their own. Lenny's predicament is qualitatively different from that of Brit in that she is
a girl. Brit's identity which he achieves after a heroic struggle within himself is Kanga's triumph
as well. The singular achievement of Sidhwa and Kanga is that they provide a true look into the
depths of childhood memory which Zameenzad fails to achieve in his Gorgeous White Female.
Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice-Candy-Man was retitled Cracking India. Born in Pakistan, and teaching
in U.S.A., Sidhwa has a 'dual literary heritage'. If Ghalib and Iqbal fascinated her, writers like
Eugene O'Neill, influenced her writing to a considerable extent. An early reference in the text links
Sidhwa's title to O'Neill's play, The Ice-Man Cometh:
Ice-Candy-Man is selling his popsicles to the other groups lounging on the grass. My
mouth waters. I have confidence in Ayah's chocolate chemistry . . . lank and loping
the Ice-Candy-Man cometh.
Thus by referring to the influence of American writers like O'Neill, Sidhwa reflects on the
influence of America on Pakistani history. Commenting on the change of title, Sidhwa remarks:
This novel was published as Ice-Candy-Man in Germany and in Britain. But here
the publishers wanted to change the title. My publisher said that the, American
readership will not relate to Ice-Candy-Man, because apparently Ice and Candy are
euphemisms for drugs here. So they felt it would be better to give a title based on
what the narrator says in the novel about the Partition. I feel that not enough has
been written about the Partition. “The new title is suggestive, no doubt, but as Robert
Ross aptly points out, it diminishes the centrality of Ice-Candy-Man aid blurs his
symbolic role. Ice-Candy-Man, in Sidhva's view, stands for wily politicians whose
work it was to 'crack' the once unified country. He symbolizes evil for which stand
the statesmen of the times, leaders who were responsible for the unmitigated
suffering of ordinary people on either side of the border. Through Lenny, Sidhwa
demonstrates how absurd it is to break a country! The new title thus suggests the
notion of quest, of discovery.
In Ice-Candy-Man, allegory is the structural principle controlling the narrative. Some Indian
scholars regard this work as a moral allegory. According to Nilufer Bharucha, the Hindu Ayah is
symbolic of the Indian earth whereas Shirin Kudchedkar observes that Ayah represents the
innocent, natural sexuality of women who becomes the prey of debauched male desire. Sidhwa
herself admitted in an interview:
Ayah, for instance, is not symbolic of anything, but on reflection, I felt that she could
be representing India in a way. These are people who desire her so much, and each
one of them, when he has a chance, ravishes her.
Sidhwa's Ice-Candy-Man, foregrounds the Partition, its horror and consequences. Though
Sidhwa was not aware of the allegorical reference, at least when she was writing, perceptive read-
ers pick up the resonances. Thus in the ultimate analysis, Ayah and Ice-Candy-Man emerge as
personifications of ideas—the former standing,for Mother Earth and the latter for Evil.
Thus Ice-Candy-Man is a novel of education in which Lenny's growth of consciousness takes
place against the backdrop of Partition. Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan is racy and down-
to-earth whereas Balachandra Rajan's The Dark Dancer employs myth as a structural parallel.

123
The Hindu-Muslim riots are viewed as a re-enactment of the fratricidal battle of Kurukshetra. It
is an allegory since the allegorical reference is sustained and unbroken. Manohar
Malgonkar's, A Bend in the Ganges projects the value of love which transcends violence and non-
violence and brings about freedom and fulfilment to individuals. Bhish am Salmi's Tamas is a
grim reminder of the human tragedy suggesting that those who forget history are condemned to
repeat it. For all these Indian novelists and Sidhwa, Partition is not a mere historical event but an
all-pervasive emotional experience.
The worldview which serves as the controlling point of the narrative here is characteristically
Zoroastrian. In Lenny's consciousness, there is a gradual and purposeful shift from scepticism to
faith. It is a tale of 'arrival,' a true bildungsroman in which Lenny learns to view the world from a
heuristic perspective. Her enlarged consciousness results from her experiment with truth of which
Ayah is the victim. Lenny's passage from a state of bliss to the adult world of pains and pleasures
constitutes the core of the narrative. The progression of her mind is thus a positive movement in
which she reaches the plenitude of her being.
In Ice-Candy-Man, Sidhwa presents a diachronic world where the life of Lenny and her growth
at all levels is in a parallel time order. In other words, there is the history of Lenny and there exists
the chronology of subcontinental Partition tale. As historical time is linear and colonial which is
nothing but a record of depravity, cultural, economic, political and emotional, each postcolonial
novelist creates his own 'space' of authenticity and belongingness by his 'English'. By doing so, he
is 'replacing' the text in the postcolonial context. New 'spaces' are sought to be created for
redefining the native sense of history. Thus in Sidhwa's fiction too, there is this tug between
history and the hapless protagonist in such a history. He/She is an 'insider' in history, yet without
his/her own autonomy of self. Hence he/she seeks to break out of this 'history' and creates his/her
own world with temporal autonomy through his own 'English'.
Bapsi Sidhwa and the National Spirit of Pakistan

to an audience unfamiliar with that culture. Thus The Crow Eaters" as well as The Bride' andIce-

124
Man was published in the United States in 1991 the title was changed toCracking India, focussing
Indian atrocities committed in thePunjab, and secondly, by reappraising the character of Jinnah
both Pakistanand Jinnah. Sidhwa's political stance is clearly depicted through her treatment of
account of a train massacre during Partition. In The Bride, Sidhwa combines her feminist
insights.
Eaters with the theme of Partition and a feminist perspective, Sidhwa reveals herself as a writer
of the first rank.
They grant Nehru Gurdaspur and Pathankot without which Muslim Kashmir cannot
be secured.

125
Sidhwa, however, rises above petty nationalism. Ice-Candy-Man does not stress the Two-
exploited on the eve of Partition. Sidhwa describes the destruction of the Muslim village of Pir
Pindo Lenny visited earlier during happier times. The villagers had been warned to leave, but they
do not, and Ranna describes the mass murder that takes place. Sidhwa does not narrate this
incident through Lenny but through Raana:
Ranna saw his uncle beheaded. His older brothers, his cousins. The Sikhs were
among them like hairy vengeful demons, wielding bloodied swords, dragging them
out as a handful of Hindus, darting about the fringes, their faces vaguely familiar,
pointed out and identified the Mussulmans by name. He felt a blow cleave the back
of his head and the warm flow of blood. Ranna fell just inside the door on a tangled
pole of unrecognizable bodies. Someone fell on him drenching him in blood.
Sidhwa took up the story of Ranna and retold it in a short story "'Defend Yourself against
Me." In this story Sidhwa also suggests that though the past cannot be forgotten, it can be forgiven.
Let not the crimes of the fathers be visited on their sons—but then the sons must be conscious of
their fathers' sins and ask for forgiveness.
Sense of the City – Lahore in Bapsi Sidhwa

Introduction
Bapsi Sidhwa is the author of four novels, including Ice Candy Man (Cracking India inUS edition),
which was named a New York Times Notable Book in 1991. In the same year, she received the
Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s highest national honour in the arts. Born in Karachi and raised
in Lahore, she now lives in Houston, Texas.
I've spent most of my time in the city of Lahore, a city of about eight million people. It forms the
geographical location of most of my work, most of my writing. For her, Lahore is an intensely
romantic city. Its ambience lends itself to romance and it arouses an intensity of feeling which
craves expression. Lahore also forms the location of many of the writers' works - they are
known as the "pavement pounders" who wandered the streets of Lahore, including Kipling. And
these writers would frequent the tea houses and coffee houses and huddle in each different place
with a different set of admirers.
They would write of their relationships which were formed in the tea houses and of their
adventures within the city of Lahore.

126
Landscape of Lahore
Perhaps the most famous in the West is Rudyard Kipling who was an insomniac, and he walked
through the old city, which forms the heart of Lahore, and which really took place during the
Moghul times. And he narrates his adventures there - most famously in Kim. And the Zam-
Zammah, which he talks about - the little British urchin boy sort of climbs onto the gun, the Zam-
Zammah. And the gorgeous Badshahi Mosque, the fort, the Shalimar Gardens, all made by the
Moghul emperors, are themes that inspire writers and they are locations that writers use. Of
course one of the themes which comes out most frequently and which was started off by the
famous short story writer, Manto, involved the tragedies that happened during the partition
of India into India and Pakistan when huge migrations took place. Naturally the writer is
automatically drawn to the dramatic, and these provided very dramatic moments.
Diversity of Lahore
Lahore, as a very gracious, ancient city, has an ambience which just lends itself to writers. More
than just describe the city with great affection and love, they also talk about the people that a city
like that and an atmosphere like that creates. Lahore as a city inspires the arts in all their
forms. Some of the most famous singers have come fromLahore and just the general population
seems to be bursting with artistic energy, so that the little motor-scooter rickshaws, the lorries,
the trucks, all of them are splashed with decorations and colour. It is a city that inspires painting,
song, writing, and of course the literature incorporates all these aspects of the city. There are so
many musharas which go on in Lahore, which are sort of poetic evenings dedicated to various
poets, reciting their poetry. These are a very popular form of evening entertainment. Poetry is not
distanced from the writer as it is perhaps in the West where poetry is confined to colleges, almost,
and schools. InLahore it is woven within the fabric of each person's life. In the course of an
ordinary conversation people will suddenly recite a couplet from a ghazal or a couplet from a
Punjabi poem about legendary romantic characters. But they all lend themselves to a mysticism,
an undercurrent of mysticism, and conversations with God. Allama Iqbal, the most famous poet
of the Indian subcontinent, in fact, was inspired to write "shikwa", which is the complaint to God,
because of the ambience of Lahore. Just to exist in Lahore is a sort of inspiration. I think each city
has its own spirit, andLahore's spirit is, I think, a creative energy. So it will continue to inspire
writers, and people born in Lahore will be writers, just naturally.

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Bapsi Sidhwa: A Biographical Sketch

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A Study of Bapsi Sidhwa’s Works

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The Crow Eaters

Postmodernism, Postcolonialism and Bapsi Sidhwa

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Jacques Derrida (1930-)

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Postcolonial literature, sometimes called "New English Literature" is literature concerned

Events leading to post colonialism: a little about colonialism

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Defining postcolonial literature from a critics point of view

Bapsi Sidhwa and Postcolonial Literature

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Postcolonialism and Bapsi Sidhwa’s Fiction

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Pakistani Literature in English

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Background to Bapsi Sidhwa’s Novels Or Bapsi Sidhwa and

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Bapsi Sidhwa's Passion for History and for Truth

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To understand Pakistan, Bapsi Sidhwa appears to suggest, it is necessary to understand the

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Sidhwa’s Quest for the Continuation of Parsi

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Bapsi Sidhwa: A Pakistani Writer

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A Brief Study of Novels Based on Partition

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Gender and Imagination in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Fiction

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subcontinent, gender consciousness is not palpable in the phraseology of Western criticism.

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