THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN ICE

CANDY MAN
By Bapsi Sidhwa
THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN ICE CANDY
MAN
• Bapsi Sidhwa's third and till date the most celebrated and widely
quoted novel
• Most powerful narratives of recent times.
• India and Pakistan-Partition through the eyes of an eight-year-old
disabled girl, Lenny.
THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN ICE CANDY
MAN
• Lenny's development from childhood to adolescence coincides with
India's struggle for independence
• Lenny is unbiased in her views as she is a Parsi and a small kid.
• She has access to a wide variety of viewpoints, both pre­ and post-
Partition, through her Ayah, a beautiful woman
• Lenny's passionate love for Ayah is an energetic centre to the plot.
THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN ICE CANDY
MAN
• Sidhwa’s focus in this symbolic novel is not so much on the story as it is on the
narrative techniques
• 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.
• Perverse nature of amorous human passions
• How religious fanaticism can breed hatred and violence
THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN ICE CANDY
MAN
• Bapsi Sidhwa chooses Lenny, a polio-ridden, precocious child as the
narrator of the novel
• Utmost objectivity, without an air of propaganda
• Lenny is free from any religious or ethnic bias.
• Truth-infected tongue
THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN ICE CANDY
MAN
• Bapsi was of the same age when the nation was divided into two
• The events of Partition had left an indelible mark on the psyche of
child Bapsi
• The intersections of the Author and Lenny.at various points of the
narrative seem to be deliberate
• 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."
THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN ICE CANDY
MAN
• In Ice-Candy Man, Lenny is the narrative persona.
• The household staff.
• 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,
• Mucha, his shrew of a wife,
• Papoo, his much abused child and
• the Ice-Candy-Man, a raconteur and a "born gossip"

• The main events revolve around Ayah.

THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN ICE CANDY
MAN
• Besides idioms which evoke a terrible national tragedy, Bapsi Sidhwa also
makes use of devices such as
• nightmares (21, 22),
• jokes involving bathroom humour, (30, 35)
• poetry by the popular Urdu poet Iqbal, Parsi entrance into India (37, 38),
• their customs, prayers, tire temples, and funerals in Towers of Silence (37, 38),
• elaborate discussions and debates on national politics by the haves and the have-nots (91, 93, 131 ),
• detailed accounts of villages such as Pir Pindo inhabited by people of different religions ( I 05-11),
• and the bitter change of later times, forced conversions (180), forced child marriages (188) and
many other minute yet grave details
THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN ICE CANDY
MAN
• This is a novel and not a work of social documentation
• It limits itself to one child's perspective In fact, the point of
view Bapsi adopts is one of the novel's most successful
ploys.
• We are given a double perspective that layers innocence on
experience, introspection on hindsight.