I finished reading
The Ice-Candy Man - released in the US under the name "Cracking India" - by Bapsi Sidhwa and though I want to talk about it, I am speechless. The book has left me bursting at the seams - with respect, emotion, questions, horror, amazement. I am really astonished at how severely underrated the book is in the world of South Asian literature.
The book, simply put, is beautifully written. By using a child narrator, Sidhwa does a brillant job of relaying the senseless, incomprehensible yet tragically inevitable nature of ethnic violence. Even the beginning of the book that deals more with character development than the Partition is wonderfully crafted - my favourite part was the chapter dealing with Lenny's fear that her polio might be cured after all.
She says, "
What will happen once the cast comes off? What if my foot emerges immaculate, fault-free? Will I have to behave like other children, slogging for my share of love and other handouts? (...) While other children have to clamour and jump around to earn their candy, I merely sit or stand, wearing my patient, butter-wouldn't-melt..and displaying my callipers - and I am showered with candy. (...) The sudden emergence from its cocoon of a beautifully balanced and shapely foot could put my sanguine personality and situation on the line."
To recap the story of the novel would be to diminish its brilliance - there is a lot more going on than a simple, linear narrative. No, her writing style is neither experimental nor complicated in the least, but it is richly layered; every anecdote contains a multitude of emotions and issues, all seen through the precocious yet ultimately bewildered protagonist, Lenny. The book is set in Lahore - still a part of India at the time - in a Parsi household. The narrator is a polio-afflicted child Lenny who is largely left in the care of her ayah.
As the book goes unravels, so does the Partition of India - the cast of characters in Lenny's comfortable life are suddenly reduced to their religions, with other aspects of their lives becoming frighteningly irrelevant. She watches with the impartial naivete of a child as Lahore welcomes hordes of Muslim refugees - dead and alive - while evicting, slaughtering, raping the Hindus and Sikhs to whom Lahore was home. Sidhwa also allows us a glimpse into the situation in rural Punjab through the cook Imam Din whose Muslim family resides in a village that has been assigned to India, and is ultimately destroyed by fundamentalist Sikhs.
Being Parsi, the Sethi family is never dragged into the thick of the violence. They watch, unsettled, as their neighbours disappear into the blood-tinged frenzy. While Lenny is disturbed by the scenes and sounds of violence, for her, the situation only really hits home when her beloved ayah is dragged away from their house on account of being Hindu. What transpires afterwards is hugely compelling - the power of Sidhwa's writing stems from the painful humanity exuded by her characters. Lenny trusts the Ice-Candy Man as she is aware of his love for her ayah, and her "truth-infected" tongue betrays the ayah's hiding place. Despite the heinous actions of the Ice-Candy man, Sidhwa manages to portray him not as a villain, but as someone coping with the enormity of his bloody circumstances by falling prey to the desperately unscrupulous nature of love. Similarly, the cook Imam Din, who even falsely swears on Allah to protect Ayah, exploits her new profession by seeking refuge in her previously unattainable flesh. But even though ayah has been ruthlessly betrayed in several ways, Sidhwa imbues her with astonishing resilience, which is refreshing from the "woman-as-helpless-victim" paradigm to which a considerable number of authors resort. In fact, all of Sidhwa's female characters are strong and independent, including little Lenny whose naive determination, brilliant curiosity and unwavering compassion brought a lump to my throat several times.
I read a few reviews of the book that criticized the writing for being unrealistically sophisticated as it is meant to be written by a child. I disagree with that for two reasons: Lenny's precociousness is not random, but very meticulously developed by Sidhwa. She is constantly in the company of adults like Godmother who respect the child enough to supply her with the truth at all times. She also spends an inordinate amount of time with Ayah and her motley crew of suitors through whom she gains an understanding - however hazy - of pleasure, sexuality, religion and politics. Sidhwa, however, never allows us to forget that she's merely a child through Lenny's inability to understand how a country can be physically partitioned and her stubborn belief that her mother and aunt are the key arsonists behind the burning of Lahore. Secondly, and perhaps more relevantly, I think Sidhwa makes it clear that Lenny is writing the book as an adult as she makes subtle references to future situations that do not otherwise come under the scope of the novel. Besides, for me at least, the beauty of fiction lies in throwing caution to the wind when it comes to fussy, largely irrelevant details.
Another complaint against the book was the usage of too many words in Punjabi/Urdu - The Penguin edition that I read, parenthetically translated each of these and in fact, my complaint was that it detracted from the narrative by being over-explanatory. I know it's easy for me to say that since I do understand the languages, but I agree with Rushdie's contention that it is not the exact meaning of the word that is important but rather the visuals and feelings they elicit. I think he compared it to his being able to appreciate and enjoy a Philip Roth novel without knowing Yiddish or anything about Jewish-American culture. Maybe my non-South Asian Rushdie-and-other-South-Asian-writer-reading friends can give me their opinions?
I want to talk a little bit about the film adapation, but I think I'll save that for later. I sure talk a lot for someone who declared herself "speechless" about 46229 sentences ago. I won't say more, but instead will leave you with the passage of the book that first talks about the Partition:
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 Warris 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 for Pakistan. If they want two countries, that's what they'll have to do - crack India with a long long canal.
Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, Iqbal, Tara Singh, Mountbatten are names I hear. And I become aware of religious differences.
It is sudden. One day is everybody is themsevles - 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 (...) Imam din and Yousuf, turning into religious zealots, warn Mother they will take Friday afternoons off for the Jumha prayers (...) Crammed into a narrow religious slot, they are diminished as are Jinnah and Iqbal, Ice Candy Man and Masseur. Hari and Moti-the-sweeper and his wife Muccho and their untouchable daughter Pappoo become ever more untouchable as they are entrenced deeper in their low Hindu caste (...)
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 Phailbuses who are Indian Christians who look down upon all Non-Christians.
Godmother, Slavesister, Electric Aunt and my nuclear family are reduced to irrelevant nomenclatures - we are Parsee.
What is God?(Pg 93-94)
