The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

http://jcl.sagepub.com Making up with Painful History. The Partition of India in Bapsi Sidhwa's Work: Bapsi Sidhwa interviewed by Isabella Bruschi: Isabella Bruschi interviewed Bapsi Sidhwa in Turin on 14 May 2007
The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 2008; 43; 141 DOI: 10.1177/0021989408095243 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jcl.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/3/141

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for The Journal of Commonwealth Literature can be found at: Email Alerts: http://jcl.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://jcl.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

Downloaded from http://jcl.sagepub.com by manasi pareek on October 27, 2008

Interview with Bapsi Sidhwa

141

Making up with Painful History. The Partition of India in Bapsi Sidhwas Work: Bapsi Sidhwa interviewed by Isabella Bruschi
Isabella Bruschi interviewed Bapsi Sidhwa in Turin on 14 May 2007.

Abstract The interview engages Bapsi Sidhwa in a discussion on Partition, a central issue in her novel Ice-Candy-Man, which also recurs in her other works. The authors interest in the historical event, beside having autobiographical origins, demonstrates the tremendous impact it had on ordinary peoples lives, the way it shaped their identities and the trauma it caused, which is not yet healed in contemporary India and Pakistan. According to Sidhwa, literature can dig into painful memory and try to make sense of it more successfully than history can. Her adoption (unprecedented in the context of Partition literature) of a marginal point of view that of a Parsi girl who looks at reality with the immediacy and absence of prejudice typical of childhood has enabled Sidhwa to tell her story with greater impartiality and to treat the problematic question of womens rape and abduction from a gendered perspective. The interview also explores the relationship between Sidhwa and lm director Deepa Mehta, and between novel writing and lmmaking in connection with both Ice-Candy-Man/Earth and Water. Keywords Bapsi Sidhwa, Ice-Candy-Man, Partition, womens identities, Lenny, Deepa Mehta

Copyright 2008 SAGE Publications http://jcl.sagepub.com (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) Vol 43(3): 141149. DOI: 10.1177/0021989408095243
Downloaded from http://jcl.sagepub.com by manasi pareek on October 27, 2008

142

Journal of Commonwealth Literature

IB: It is commonly known that Partition had a tremendous impact on the lives of ordinary people. How did it affect them? What, in your opinion, are the greatest changes Partition produced in peoples lives and relationships, and are these changes still visible now? BS: Partition affected each one of our lives, because it was the largest migration known to man. Twelve million people crossed borders over three months; they were physically uprooted and, because of the riots, many people lost their relatives. Many Muslims stayed behind in India, while half of their families went to Pakistan; in Sind, for example, a lot of Hindus stayed in Pakistan and are still there, but others moved, so the families got divided. This didnt affect only the Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs, who were directly involved, even Parsi and Christian families were divided. It was a time of transition and many Christians and AngloIndians moved to England too. It affected every life, for example my life. My mothers relatives were all in India and every year she would take us to visit them. But it became more and more difcult to get visas. Once you got your visa, you were only allowed to go to three cities. So we would always choose Amritsar, Delhi and Bombay []. We had to report our arrival and our departure at the police station in each city. All these formalities contributed to disrupt families on both sides of the Indian and Pakistani border. Another thing happened to me, as a consequence of the bad feeling which was created at the time of Partition: I was married in India rst and at twenty-three I was divorced; although I had an Indian citizenship, I was not able to take my son to Pakistan with me. So he grew up without me. [] However, ordinary people are more willing than their governments to re-establish peaceful relationships. The worst rioting and killing took place in the Punjab, yet strangely enough people in the Punjab have been readier to forget the atrocities and forgive each other. The Sikhs were, for some reason, more violent than anybody. And yet, now when the Sikhs come to Lahore to visit their temples during religious festivals they are warmly welcomed. There are many Sikh shrines in Pakistan and some 40,000 to 50,000 Sikhs get special pilgrimage visas to come to Pakistan every year. People in shops give them free food because there is nostalgia; they used to belong here and the people miss them. [] The anger and feelings of vengeance caused by the killing and rioting have substantially lessened. Both sides are aware they were the victims and the persecutors. But the legacy of Partition is still there and can be seen in what is going on now in India; feelings have become much worse in places like Bombay and Gujarat, where there was little or no rioting at the time of Partition. Muslims did not even move away from there, or very few moved. But now there is this tremendous surge of anti-Muslim feeling
Downloaded from http://jcl.sagepub.com by manasi pareek on October 27, 2008

Interview with Bapsi Sidhwa

143

and until recently there were pogroms to kill Muslims, especially in Gujarat. Hindutva, the Hindu nationalism that rose in India with the election of the BJP, the Hindu nationalist party, stirred the worst feelings: they would go around in huge chariots, in saffron clothes, with caste marks on their foreheads shouting that every Muslim had to be killed. Yet there are more Muslims in India than there are in Pakistan. Also the Kashmiri dispute is not settled; India and Pakistan have gone to war three times over Kashmir. Every time there is an election the politicians beat that Kashmir drum. Because of what happened at Partition, Muslims seem to have become disposable people and this seems to be true worldwide: you can kill them in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, anywhere it doesnt matter. Partition is not over, it is going on and on; its problems stay and they affect each of our lives. IB: Literature, visual art and music are said to succeed where history fails, that is they can express what is silenced, because it is ofcially unsavoury or because it is too painful to voice. How far do you agree with this statement? BS: Hundred per cent. I mean, if you want to know about the Russian war, you read Tolstoy, rather than Russian historians; he tells much more. Historians are often guided by their own and their nations prejudices. Fiction-writers can paint a fuller canvas and often intuitively arrive at the larger truth. Now, I am Parsi, not Hindu, Muslim or Sikh and I wrote from a Parsi childs perspective, because I felt it could bring some sort of fairness on the issue of Partition which still raises strong emotions involving religious communities. Historians often arrange facts according to their own assumptions and aims. That said, I have read accounts of the Partition by Indian Historians [e.g. Seervai] that are meticulously researched and accurate. IB: In your work the issue of Partition is recurrent: it is mentioned at the beginning of The Bride, it is the central theme in the short story Defend Yourself Against Me and in Ice-Candy-Man. Where does your apparent need to write about Partition come from? BS: Partition is still so immediate for us, especially since I live in Lahore, and I lived in Lahore at that time. Partition has changed the map of our world and it has been the most dening moment in India and Pakistans history. It has changed our way of life, our politics, and affected the education system. Partition is still very much on peoples mind in the Punjab, which has been divided between India and Pakistan. In South India people are not so aware of it, because they were not affected. In a way it is nice; the younger generation there say: these were your quarrels, these are not our quarrels. And that is wonderful
Downloaded from http://jcl.sagepub.com by manasi pareek on October 27, 2008

144

Journal of Commonwealth Literature

to hear, because it means they have lost the prejudice. But it is still real in the Punjab, it is still very alive. IB: The character of Ranna in Ice-Candy-Man seems to be the same person as the man with the scar, who tells his experiences as a child during Partition to the protagonist of Defend Yourself Against Me. In what relationship do they stand to each other? Have they got to do with your personal memories? BS: They are both the same person. I met this gentleman in Houston. I had gone to a party at a Hindu gentlemans; he was a writer too and he had invited Muslims, Sikhs, everybody. His American wife pointed out to me a man, a Muslim, who was wearing a wig because he had been wounded during Partition, when he was very small; the Sikhs had attacked his village, they had killed all his relatives and badly cut his scalp. I asked him if he would share his story with me and he did. He told me everything very frankly. The man with the scar and Rannas story in Ice-Candy-Man are based on this gentlemans story, but what I describe in my writings is much less horrifying than what he went through. It is amazing how many times he escaped and every time he felt there was somebody to help him and he was safe, he fainted. Each time people left him for dead. After Ice-Candy-Man was published, he told my friend that I should not have written that way. He left Houston. I think he was angry because I had written about the women in his family being kidnapped. That is something nobody talks about, nobody: it is such a dishonour to admit that a woman in ones family was raped. Its only after Ice-Candy-Man was written that people conded in me about it. One did not realize that hundreds of thousands of women had been kidnapped and brutalized. I knew because there was a recovered womens camp next to my house, but it was so hush-hush, it was a subject no one wanted to mention or admit to. IB: Do you perceive your writings about Partition as belonging to a group of novels and short stories focused on the same issue? And in what relation does your work stand to the others? BS: Rushdie and Khushwant Singh both said Ice-Candy-Man is the best book about Partition, and I think it is. This is partly because I was in the Punjab at that time and I grew up with stories of what happened, hush-hush stories, which afterwards made sense to me when I was writing my book. Writers who write about the Partition but did not live through it, respond differently: their response is not so immediate, it has more of an agenda. Khushwant Singhs Train to Pakistan was an almost immediate reaction to the events of Partition; he is a Sikh, but he wrote out of compassion for all communities. Shauna Singh Baldwin has written her What the Body Remembers from the Sikh perspective too. I found Manju Kapurs Difcult Daughters very moving. An Indian
Downloaded from http://jcl.sagepub.com by manasi pareek on October 27, 2008

Interview with Bapsi Sidhwa

145

television series based on Bhisham Sahnis novel, Tamas, is quite fair, but it has a Hindu slant. In that respect I feel that my book has more objectivity. IB: Many women novelists have written about Partition. I am thinking, for example, of Attia Hosains Sunlight on a Broken Column, Anita Desais Clear Light of Day, Manju Kapurs Difcult Daughters, and of those works written in different Indian languages. All of them have a young woman as a protagonist, some a rst-person narrator too, like your Ice-Candy-Man. Do you think a female or feminist view about Partition exists and, if so, what would it consist of? BS: Sunlight on a Broken Column is semi-autobiographical; I would not say it is only feminist, because Attia Hosain was an upper-middleclass lady writing about the upper-middle class, so the book did not deal so much with ordinary people and in spite of the protagonists love affair, which breaks with her familys tradition and status, it had a limited point of view. Also Mumtaz Shah Nawaz, the author of The Heart Divided, was from a prominent family; her father and uncle were very involved in the Partition problems, in the politics of the time. She was a young woman in that period, very conscious of what was happening and she wrote again from a privileged perspective but she gave an interesting insight into the politics of the time from the point of view of Partition in Pakistan. IB: Does the difculty of giving voice to the pain thousands of men and particularly women experienced in the period of Partition have anything to do with your choice of a child narrator in Ice-Candy-Man? In other words, was this literary strategy enabling in writing this story? Do you think your child-narrator allowed you to speak, in a sense, more frankly? BS: Yes, children can see through things very directly, and their impressions are often closer to the truth. Lenny has a shifting perspective she is a child of seven or eight, yet her voice is sometimes that of an adolescent or even of an adult, so all these complex aspects of her character come into play. Of course choosing a girl-child narrator was crucial. When I started this novel I thought of an omniscient voice, an adults voice and suddenly, when I wrote the rst paragraph, I discovered Lennys was the voice I wanted to use, and in the present tense. When I was writing the novel, I was able to inhabit the persona of this little girl, and I found my vision cleared; it became very direct. A child is allowed to be bewildered and not always accurate. Children have not learnt to look at reality through the lenses of prejudice yet; they have not learnt to hate people and hate communities; they are taught that as they grow up. Children are still innocent, so this is where their special vision comes from. This child, Lenny, doesnt even know the names of the
Downloaded from http://jcl.sagepub.com by manasi pareek on October 27, 2008

146

Journal of Commonwealth Literature

people who are Ayahs friends. She knows Ice-candy-man as Ice-candyman, she doesnt know his name; she doesnt know Ayahs name. In a way children are selsh, they just know people by the means by which they serve them: Masseur is Masseur because he massages her leg. Later on when she realizes that differences exist, then she realizes that they have not only names, they also have religions. IB: Identity, in terms of gender, community/religion, citizenship/ nationality, seems to me a central theme in Ice-Candy-Man. To what extent does Partition affect the characters identity and contribute to Lennys building up of her own identity? BS: Identities were very uid, then they became xed. Of course anything as dramatic as the Partition experience affects our consciousness, our reaction to people. I dont think anyone can be truly dispassionate your experiences colour your vision and give you certain biases, you grow up with prejudices. As for my sense of identity, Partition didnt make me feel more of a Parsi, but it made me feel more sympathetic to people of other religions, because I had seen them suffer so much. I saw how devastated peoples lives were on account of Partition and the compassion I felt dened my character, and of course, I suppose, all these incidents impressed themselves on me helped to create the identity of the characters in Ice-Candy-Man. IB: In gender-oriented studies of Partition, such as Ritu Menons and Kamla Bashins Borders and Boundaries or Urvashi Butalias The Other Side of Silence, mass rape and abduction during Partition and the post-Partition disputes between India and Pakistan about the retrieval of their missing women have been interpreted as a consequence of the patriarchal discourse implied in the nationalist project, which had elected the inviolate female body as the symbol of national purity. Do Lennys ayahs, Shanta and Hamida, represent such a connection between womens sexuality and nation-building? BS: To a large extent they do. I think Urvashi and Ritu have created, through their research and gifts as writers, invaluable works. As I said before, people had just got so hush-hush about the topic of women being kidnapped. It was not till Ice-Candy-Man came out that people realized how many women had been kidnapped and people wanted to nd out what had happened. Both writers researched the lives of the Hindu women who were kidnapped; unfortunately nobody did research on the Pakistani side; its a very shameful thing. Anyway, I dont think there is a deliberate connection on this point in my book, but it imbeds itself naturally in the narrative. I knew that so many women had been kidnapped and yet very little was written about it, so I wanted to do it. And I wanted to write about sexuality too: the little girls Lennys sexuality, Ayahs sexuality. This has been a theme
Downloaded from http://jcl.sagepub.com by manasi pareek on October 27, 2008

Interview with Bapsi Sidhwa

147

in all my works; it started with The Bride. I was not self-conscious about my writing. I grew up as a lonely child, so I dwelt in my own thoughts. I wrote truthfully, without inhibitions, so when I started to write about children I included their sexuality. I know how strong teenagers sexual feelings can be. So even in Lennys case and in Ayahs case, I described female sexuality because I feel men tend to describe it very differently, more exploitatively; there is more of a sexual fantasy when they describe womens sexuality. So this is something I have depicted in all my books, without being conscious of it really. But at the back of my mind, I think, Ive always had the feeling that womens sexuality has been glossed over and not portrayed accurately. Even our fathers, brothers, mothers hate to admit their childrens especially their daughters, sisters sexuality. So I wanted to bring this out into the open: little girls not only little boys also have sexual feelings. So there is where Lenny and Ayah and all come in. Ayah is surely a very sensual, sexual person. Her attraction was also a way of showing how closely the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs lived together before Partition; her sexuality was the glue no matter what religion they belonged to that held her group of friends together. [] IB: When Lenny witnesses the brutal killings in the streets of Lahore, she reacts with crimson fury and she tears her doll apart; how would you explain such a violent reaction? BS: When you see violence on that scale, you are going to be affected, especially if you are a child. Lenny saw dead bodies, Lenny saw res, Lenny saw mourning, Lenny heard the story of Ice-candy-mans sisters breasts coming back in a gunny-sack on a train from India. As a child I saw many of these things. A mob did come into our house, because they thought we were a Hindu household; my mother came out with her hands on both of our heads, which I made into the scene where Ayah is kidnapped. Part of that scene was based on reality, even though now I tend to forget what was real and what is fantasy! Anyway all those images of violence, the sense of helplessness and fear you have when somebody comes to attack you and you dont know what to do, create unexpected reactions. Lenny tears the dolls legs apart, because she saw a man being torn apart by two jeeps and she wants to discover what it really means. She is curious and horried and she wants to understand how it happened. IB: Now, as for your relationship with lm-maker Deepa Mehta and cinema. Your Ice-Candy-Man was made into her lm Earth and her lm Water was made into a novel by you. What has working with Ms Mehta meant to you and, more specically, what has the two-way passage from your words to her images and from her images to your words involved?
Downloaded from http://jcl.sagepub.com by manasi pareek on October 27, 2008

148

Journal of Commonwealth Literature

BS: Deepa Mehta came across my book, Cracking India [US title of Ice-Candy-Man], and decided: this is the lm I want to make, this is Earth! She didnt know where I lived, but she discovered we had a common friend in London, who gave her my phone number. She called me, told me she wanted to make my book into a lm and asked for my permission to do so. She had just made Fire, so she promised she would send it to me to see; she was very keen that I should say yes. She talked non-stop, selling the idea to me. As she talked, I realized that she is also Punjabi, from the Indian side, and that she had understood the nuances of my book perfectly; she had understood the signicance of Lenny as a Parsi child and she felt this child brought a fair point of view to the story. At the end of our chat I said she could make the book into a lm. I remember she was worried that somebody else might make another offer to me, but I reassured her. So she started to work on the screenplay and, whenever she nished a section, she would send it to me we would fax each other in those days; I would suggest alterations, but very soon I backed off. I realized her cinematic vision was more important for the lm than my writers vision. I am glad about it, because in this way she was free to make the lm as she did. I knew that Ice-Candy-Man was the most difcult of my books to make into a lm; I expected that people would want to make The Bride into a lm, because it is more cinematic. I was surprised that she wanted to make this lm. [] I had different ideas about how to render Lennys thoughts in the lm; I imagined them as a voice-over heard on a close-up of Ice-candy-mans toes for example, darting up Ayahs saris, whatever. But Deepa said she was uncomfortable with voice-overs. She would hold the camera at an angle that would represent Lennys vision. [] Deepa phoned me early one morning to let me know she had nished her last lm Water. I knew she was shooting the lm in Sri Lanka because of troubles with the Indian authorities: Bapsi, I want you to novelize it, she said, adding that she would send me the rough edit of the lm. She also said she wanted the novel in time for the release of the lm in three months. Impossible! I didnt think I could do that: it takes me three years to write a novel! She persuaded me to give it a try. I am very fond of her and I respect her as a person and as an activist, so I decided to try. I found the child Chuyia was really so similar to Lenny that I could get hold of her character and through her I was able to make Water into a novel. I worked both with Deepas lm and her script. The script of course was like a skeleton. It was amazingly the opposite of what happened with Earth. As Deepa made Ice-Candy-Man into a script for Earth, it dwindled and became less, less, less; it became like a skeleton. I thought my book had been reduced to nothing! Then I realized that this is what happens; to make a book into a lm you must reduce it to its very bones
Downloaded from http://jcl.sagepub.com by manasi pareek on October 27, 2008

Interview with Bapsi Sidhwa

149

and the camera will ll out all that you have written. In the case of Water I did not simply describe the scenery and action and extend the script. Both Deepa and I wanted a novel, not an extended script. The lm cannot explain the religious laws that govern the widows lives or why widows are treated so harshly. It cannot give each widows background or describe her past. I created a village-life for Chuyia with her parents and siblings in a prologue before the lms action starts. I described her marriage and the quarrels between her parents that preceded her marriage. And later I not only added to the scenes and extended dialogues but I also created new scenes for Chuyia and Madhumati and the eunuch Gulabi. I explain the culture of the eunuchs and their place in Indian society. As for Shakuntala, the woman who in the end saves Chuyia, I felt there was something lacking in her character, so I added a lot more there. I ddled a bit with the ending; I thought it was a little strange that Shakuntala should hand the child over to a man, especially in the context of those days. So I created a new character, a woman character, who very subtly befriends the child and Shakuntala; when the train leaves this woman is on it and she nods at Shakuntala so you feel there is a woman who is also going to take care of the child. It is a heart-achingly beautiful lm, but a novel requires a different approach to realize its own potential. IB: Do you feel the lm Earth is an accurate reection of your book Ice-Candy-Man? BS: Yes, it caught the essence of the book. Of course its different. It has to be different, otherwise it might have been an endless sequence of episodes in a TV serial; the book is so much longer! It is different only in the sense that she concentrated more on the romantic part of the novel and also she threw out most of the Parsi characters, a lot of the humour. But how much can you put into a lm? IB: Last question: most of your books are set in India and Pakistan. Especially in Lahore; however An American Brat is partly set in the USA and the short story Defend Yourself Against Me takes place entirely there; you have also explored the contact between the two worlds the East and the West in The Bride, through the relationship between Zaitoon and the American woman. Do you feel both these worlds are yours? BS: Yes, of course a writer has to possess her world to write about it. When my physical location changed and I moved to America, the landscape of my writing also changed and I could incorporate America into my writing. Of course Lahore is always there, but when it came to The Crow Eaters I incorporated a lot of Bombay and India into it. So I am ready to be wherever it is necessary, in whichever city.
Downloaded from http://jcl.sagepub.com by manasi pareek on October 27, 2008