An intimate chat with Pakistani, Parsi writer Bapsi Sidhwa on life, words and all the cracks in-between.

Interviewed by Julie Rajan

Bapsi Sidhwa has been on the South Asian literary scene for many years. Her first published book, The Crow Eaters (1978), was published in Britain in 1980, by Jonathan Cape, a year before they published Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. Most of us, however, came to this prolific Pakistani-Parsi writer in the early 90's. Sidhwa was on her third novel by then, a poignant story of partition told through the innocent eyes of polio riddled Parsi girl, Lenny. Cracking India captured the hearts of many, later becoming 'A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year,' carving its niche as the first 'Partition' story from a Parsi perspective. Eight years, and two more books later, Sidhwa's Cracking India is making news again, this time on the silver screen, as Earth-1947, a movie directed by Deepa Mehta. Released in September, with a Bollywood star-studded cast, Earth-1947 has received very good reviews. And Sidhwa, she's happy too. Her story is being shared with many others, and if you've seen the movie, you may have noticed her in it too! 

Life and Background 

Julie Rajan: Tell us about your childhood in Pakistan, and your life as a woman there? 

Bapsi Sidhwa: As a child in Pakistan---it was very like Lenny's life in Cracking India. Like Lenny, I had polio as a child and spent a lot of time with the servants. I had a number of operations, and wasn't sent to school. I didn't have an extended family and this resulted in my being a little isolated. I was given my first novel, Little Women, as a kid by my private tutor. It introduced me to a world of fantasy and reading---I mean extraordinary amounts of reading because that was the only life I had. 

I graduated from Kinnaird College for Women in Lahore-and at nineteen I got married in Bombay. That brought a wonderful change to my life. I was brought up in a very strict home. We Parsis adopt the flavor of whichever country we are in, we have to, and the atmosphere in my house was segregated. When my brother's friends came, I was told, "You better disappear,"---that sort of thing. So, I had no idea who I was or what I was. Then, when I got married and went to Bombay, it was traumatic-I was plucked out of childhood and thrust into big-city life and straight into adulthood. At the same time, the move opened up the world to me, and I was, for the first time, surrounded by my own community of Parsis, which was an enchanting thing. 

JR: So, your marriage helped to form and outline your identity in a fundamental way as a member of the wider Parsi community? 

BS: More than marriage---marriage, in a way, was liberating---and at the same time I moved from the somewhat stern atmosphere in our home in Pakistan to the very open and fun-loving Parsi community in Bombay. My friends in Lahore are wonderful and they're all Muslim, but this change brought about a different feeling of community for me. I was in Bombay for 5 years, before I got divorced, and then came back to Pakistan. Then, I remarried a Parsi businessman in Lahore, Noshir Sidhwa, my present husband, and, thereafter, my life was more of the idle type, which is, again, a very constricted sort of life. You play a lot of bridge, go to coffee breakfasts and do volunteer work. It was a mindless kind of life. Now, women are branching out into many more fields of activity, but I did not have the educational background. I guess it just evolved automatically-writing took up the slack in my life. 

JR: Why do you feel that Parsis adapt to the customs that dominate the land in which they reside? 

BS: Lahore was a city of five million when I was growing up and there were only 200 Parsis. Naturally, one adopts the mores of the dominant society. This is particularly true of Parsis; we are a people who have no land, so we have to adapt to whichever culture we find ourselves in. I would describe myself as a Punjabi-Pakistani-Parsi woman, because all three societies influenced me. I guess I actually have a whole medley of identities. And that's wonderful because this combination made me the writer I am. 

JR: How did your religion impact your career aspirations, or do you think it had any impact? 

BS: Yes, it did. In different ways. I felt marginalized as a Parsi in a predominantly Muslim society: Some people, very few really, would say things like: "Can you be Pakistani if you're Parsi?" Whereas, to Indians, I am a Pakistani. If I was a Parsi in India I don't think I would have felt as marginalized-simply because there are so many Parsis there. 

JR: Is it that you feel people are identified first by their religion as opposed to their nationality? 

BS: People are identified sometimes by their religion and sometimes by their nationality. It just depends---where and how and in what context. 

JR: You moved from Pakistan to America a number of years ago. What made you decide to resettle here? 

BS: It was my husband's decision. He was an adventurous person and he wanted to do business in America, so we moved in 1983. I got my citizenship around 1992. In 1991, when Cracking India was published in America, I got a call from an editor in Minneapolis saying he wanted to shortlist the book for the "Editor's Choice Award". But when he discovered that I wasn't American, he said I couldn't qualify. We were both disappointed. That's when I decided to become a U.S. citizen. I have dual nationality. 

JR: What was the most difficult thing for you to adjust to in the United States? 

BS: Driving, I think. I just couldn't find my way around and that's still distressing. Going from place to place. 

JR: What appeals to you most about the United States? 

BS: As a woman, it has given me a tremendous amount of freedom. The sense of being able to just take off, on your own, without having to have company. In Pakistan and India, we tend to move in bunches and do things together, and you're always part of a family, or a group. Here, you don't carry so much "baggage" with you when you take off. 

JR: As a Pakistani woman, did you find it difficult to become established in the field of academia in the US? 

BS: No, it wasn't that hard really. Phillip Lopate at the University of Houston suggested that I teach, to which I replied, "How can I teach with just a bachelors degree from Punjab University?" And he said, "You've published two very good novels -- that is like getting several PhDs! You're qualified to teach Creative Writing." I went into it with a lot of hesitation because I didn't have role models. But, I did it and I have enjoyed it. 

On Writing 

JR: Thinking about how your life has been since you started writing, what would you say the life of a writer is like? 

BS: Every writer has a different life. I mean, some writers have instant success and they acquire a much more blasé attitude towards writing and being published. Writing has been my savior, my hobby and my love. It has been my passion. It is the music in the background of my life. Otherwise, my life was just the restricted life of a woman with children, being a public relations officer for your husband, that sort of thing. 

JR: How is it that you came to writing? Was it about filling gaps in your life or needing a greater kind of fulfillment? 

BS: It came about accidentally really, after my second marriage. By this time, I was 26 years old and had two children. While on my second honeymoon, my husband and I were invited to vacation in Northern Pakistan. The army was building a road through the Karakoram mountains into China---they are the world's most tumultuous nest of mountains. We stayed in a very remote camp. There, I heard the story of a young Punjabi girl who suddenly appeared in the camp. She was taken across the river Indus into totally ungoverned territory to be married among the Kohistani tribes. These tribes still live in something like 'the cave era.' They hadn't seen transistors or safety pins or even cloth. When they discovered that she had run away, her husband and his clan hunted her down. In those parts, a runaway wife is like a Cadillac running off by itself. I now realize she must have been bought. Wives, in that part of the world--because of the poverty--are bought like sacks of wheat or goats. The punishment for running away is death. 

They found her decapitated body in the river. This is an extraordinarily beautiful part of the world and being among the mountains was an almost mystic experience. When I arrived back in Lahore, I felt this absolute compulsion to tell this girl's story. I thought I'd write a short story, but it became my first novel, The Bride (called The Pakistani Bride in India). 

JR: A moving story that inspired a great novel. What else inspires you to write? 

BS: It's just the need to tell a story. You know, writers have different reasons. But with me, it has always been an obsession to express myself, I imagine because my childhood was lonely, it was full of a lot of silences. So, writing has been a way of breaking through that silence. 

JR: How do you like to write? On the computer, the typewriter or long hand? 

BS: I wrote my early novels entirely by long hand. Then, I would type them out after they were finished. Now, I do the same thing, except that I transfer my writing to the computer sooner; I write, let's say, seven pages long hand. That initial writing is where the inspiration is, but when I transfer it to the computer, it expands. Usually, seven pages become about thirty-five. 

JR: On the initial seven pages, what are you focused on, what's happening there? 

BS: It is the inspirational, the creative stage. The fashioning, the structure of the story, the way things are going to be formed around the words---more words are woven around these words, which give it different layers and embed different incidents and detail into the narrative. It's a very important part, the initial writing. And then, the fillers happen on the computer. 

JR: I read once that in the beginning, you wrote secretly. 

BS: Yes, I did. I wrote The Bride and The Crow Eaters secretly. Because, you know, our friends were in business or lawyers---in Pakistan. And to say that I was writing would have sounded odd---they would have made fun of me. "Oh, Bapsi is writing? What is she writing…romances?" But it was fine writing privately. My husband didn't mind. 

JR: When you wrote in the beginning, had you intended that your writing would enter the public sphere eventually, that you would get published? 

BS: Unconsciously, you write to be read. If you want to write for yourself then you keep a journal. But writing for me was a labor of love. After I had written The Bride, I immediately started writing The Crow Eaters---which by the way is my favorite book. I was clueless about publishing. An American acquaintance sent The Bride to a creative writing professor in DC who encouraged me by saying, "You're a natural born writer," etc. 

There was no publishing in English in Pakistan, so after I gathered a lot of rejection slips I self-published The Crow Eaters in Lahore, at the insistence of friends. It was a tedious and humbling experience. I had to distribute the book myself. But finally, Jonathan Cape published The Crow Eaters in Britain in 1980--a year before they published Rushdie's Midnight's Children [1981]. 

JR: How do you feel about preceding Salman Rushdie? Do you feel that The Crow Eaters influenced South Asian literature that came after your first book, including Rushdie's work? 

BS: The Crow Eaters was self-published in Lahore in 1978, in India by Orient Longman in 1979, and in Britain by Cape in 1980. It was widely reviewed and liked for its irreverence and its uninhibited sexual and scatological humor. It was the first major novel about Parsis. Faiz called it a "tour-de-force." After The Crow Eaters, other authors like Rushdie, Chandra, etc., were able to introduce Parsi characters more naturally; and it influenced not only a new crop of Parsi writers, but many Indian and Pakistani writers. I think the parents in The Crow Eaters influenced Rushdie's presentation of the parents in Midnight's Children, its bawdy humor perhaps providing a sort of subliminal permission to express his own brand of humor. We shared the same editor at Cape, and I know Rushdie had read the manuscript. 

JR: So, in some sense, your novel The Crow Eaters ushered in a new era in South Asian writing? 

BS: Well, Anita Desai, Khushwant Singh, R.K. Narayan were already published, but The Crow Eaters was perhaps the first in the next wave of writing to come out of the Indian subcontinent. 

JR: How was the book received at first? 

BS: The Parsis, without reading the book, were offended by the title. There was a bomb-threat at the hotel where the book was being launched in Lahore. We were all ushered out and a crowd waited outside for the place to blow up. Everyone wondered, "Why, why?" Later I realized how angry some Parsees were. 

JR: An experience like that must have been really jarring. What made you continue to write after that? 

BS: By that time I had written two novels, and had received the support and praise of writers in Pakistan, and Indian authors like Khushwant Singh. In fact he recommended the book to Orient Longman for publication in India. At that time, they wanted to keep the cost of the book down so they asked me to cut 30 pages. Such a thing would never happen to a writer in the West. So they put out a thinner edition of the book. 

JR: You have an incredible list of credentials, having received the Sitara-I-Imtiaz and various other awards. What has been the pinnacle in your career as a writer so far, your greatest moment? 

BS: The accolades and reviews Cracking India received, and then seeing it translated into the film Earth. Otherwise the greatest moment was when the editor at Jonathan Cape accepted the Crow Eaters, and wrote that she had been on a high for two weeks after reading it. Here was somebody producing the book for me and paying me to do it. 

JR: Do you think South Asian writing is gaining wider acceptance now or becoming better understood? 

BS: I think it has a very bright future because organizations seem to be happy to promote South Asian writers, particularly Indian writers. We have more visibility, and form quite an important segment of the society, particularly with the introduction of computer technology; young South Asians are flourishing in this line of work. So, there is a large population that is liked and respected. Not to mention that there's this multi-cultural focus in America now. 

JR: What writing projects are you working on now? 

BS: I am finishing a collection of short stories, and a group of essays. I'm not teaching this semester because I want to enjoy all of the activities connected to Earth. 

Cracking India and Earth

JR: Moving on to Cracking India and the movie based on that novel, Earth. I wanted to begin with a simple question -- why was the title changed from Ice-Candy-Man, the original title, to Cracking India? 

BS: There are so many books published in America each year, that unless the title says something about the book, it can fall through the cracks. My American publishers felt that at least people interested in India would buy the book. The title Ice Candy Man would mean nothing to an American. I think they're right. 

JR: The title calls to mind the image of India as a riddle with so many cultures---if you will, as a riddle to crack. 

BS: Yes, like a nut, like cracking open a nut. Riddle also fits the title because the complex mix of religions and the interwoven fabric of family and community life in India are confounding to the uninitiated-the novel attempts to explain that. 

JR: I think the only way that you could be an objective observer of the partition, while participating in it as you did, was through the eyes of a child. How were you able to recreate this in the novel? 

BS: It came naturally because I was a small child during the Partition. When I was writing, I literally inhabited the persona of a child; it is more like a trick of the mind. As a child, you lack prejudices---the hatred and biases you learn as you grow up. I didn't think of it in so many words, but when I was imagining and beginning to write the story, suddenly the narrator's words came out as this child's voice. As I continued, I found it was working perfectly. Lenny is an innocent, bewildered child; when you see things through her eyes, the atrocities are in a way more chilling. I guess a writer works out these things unconsciously. 

JR: Can you tell me about some of your personal recollections of the partition? 

BS: The roar of distant mobs was a constant of my childhood: it was a sound that terrified me, because I knew they were doing evil-I suppose I picked up the sense of alarm from the adults. I saw buildings on fire, and a sudden change in our neighborhood: Hindu and Sikh neighbors were replaced by bedraggled Muslim refugees. I saw dead bodies. 

JR: Why is it that you chose to write about events that happened so many years ago? Why did you feel the need to bring them back to life? 

BS: I wanted to write about the partition precisely because so little has been written about. I spent time visualizing a scene from the time of partition---the scene in which a bunch of goondas rode on carts into our house. When you see something like that, it becomes a very powerful and important memory. 

JR: Why do you think so few works have been written about the partition? 

BS: It appears that people who were alive then did not write about the partition: perhaps the hurt was too fresh - or they were ashamed of what happened to them, or the evil they did to others. There is very little in English, Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan, Aazadi, and recently, Mukul Kesavan's Looking Through Glass, and Shauna Singh Baldwin's What the Body Remembers. The last two authors are young and offer historical perspectives. Urvashi Butalia interviews many women kidnapped during partition and narrates their stories with sensitivity and honesty in The Other Side of Silence. Ritu Menon also presents a well researched book on the same subject-but the fact remains that their has been very little fiction. 

JR: Why do you think it is so? I mean, by comparison, we do not think of the Partition as so evil and terrible as a tragedy like the holocaust? 

BS: It was a devastating moment in our lives and a defining moment in South Asian history. It changed the map of the world. Its repercussions are still being felt; it's not over. I think it will perhaps be worse than the holocaust by the time it is over. Then again --- you cannot force a generation to produce writers; whoever was capable of writing, wrote. Saddat Manto and Ismat Chugtai wrote powerfully in Urdu. 

JR: What do you mean when you say that it will perhaps be worse than the holocaust? 

BS: I mean that we are undergoing the partition and the independence movement still. It is not in the past, it is happening in the present too. I mean -- we're on the brink of nuclear war. 

JR: There are so many layers and interdependent issues in Cracking India. But I think that the main theme is identity. 

BS: Yes, it is about identity, in a way. People read different things into the book. When readers tell me about what they see in the book, I find it very interesting and I learn from their insights. 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. 

JR: I find it ironic and interesting that although religion should elevate one spiritually and away from material things, it seems to tie us even more closely to our plot of land. 

BS: You're right. It is one of the thorniest ironies of our existence. We're defining our identity more and more through religion. As nations we have become poorer and poorer, with little to cling to besides an identity as a Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, etc. 

JR: In the novel, did you intend to depict the ideas of nationality and religion as fluid and interchangeable, thus pointing to a kind of superficiality? 

BS: Yes, but we have to survive. And when the question of survival arises, we're very adaptive. Man is territorial, like an animal, marking out his territory with his 'scent.' Man wants to mark out a larger and larger territory continually. All wars are fought over the desire for more land, more wealth, the possession of others women 

JR: Yes, as it is happening in the Balkans now. 

BS: In Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda. The men rape women, "Oh, we'll put our seed into these damn women." Don't they know that the women are the carriers of the culture, not their seed? Women influence their culture and their children. These things are always going to be there; what happens in Cracking India will unfortunately always be 'pertinent and timely.' 

JR: I also see love as a major theme in Cracking India? 

BS: Love exists in its many forms and faces throughout the book. There's the cruel, pitiless face of love, and the warmth of the love between Godmother and the child, Lenny. The caring and nurturing love between Ayah and Lenny, between the mother and Lenny. Even Slavesister and Godmother, in spite of their constant bickering, have a strong bond. Love takes an awful shape when the Ice-candy-man allows Ayah to be kidnapped by the mob. There are different forms of love in the novel --- love of religion, love of land, love of power. With regard to Ice-candy-man, his love constantly changes its shape. He, himself, changes frequently. He's a slippery character. And, he's an amalgam of India. India is so multifarious. Ice-candy-man shows that side of love which is obsessive. A lot of cruelty is perpetuated in the name of love and crimes of passion are exonerated because, "It was done for love." The love between Godmother and the child---an unconditional love, is I think the purest love presented in the novel. 

JR: Another major theme in the novel is the concept of power: sexual power, political power. How does the concept of power fit into the novel and which of these do you find to be the most potent? 

BS: Definitely the person who wields the sword is the most powerful, the one who has the capacity to wreak havoc, mistreat power. Then again, there are people like Godmother who are also empowered and use their power for good. 

JR: What about the sexual content in the novel? 

BS: Lenny herself is a very complex character. She is the teenage Lenny, the adolescent Lenny, the old Lenny, the adult Lenny. So, sexuality is very much a part of her life. The novel is set in a part of the world where there is a great deal of sexual repression. In such a situation, sexuality becomes obsessive; when there's a lid on sex it can permeate your whole being, your whole life. Sexual awareness among girls and boys is very keen at a young age and it does color all their lives. Very often whatever they see is seen through the lens of their sexuality as young people, as adolescents. 

Sexuality represents a very strong underlying force in everything -- for men, women, children. Like little Lenny who is in love "with roughly 10% of the male population of Lahore." It is not only men who are promiscuous; women have these urges too. This is one of the few things that I was conscious of doing deliberately. In Pakistan, there is this enormous sexual repression on women, it is a strong undercurrent---you're not supposed to feel this or that way. You're supposed to be either very good --- or a prostitute. I wanted to show that even this child, who is so innocent and pure, liked people of the opposite sex -- that it is natural. I had not crafted this in a "hitting you over the head" fashion. I wanted a gentle, funny, subtle way of getting at that idea. 

JR: Do you think Cracking India gained significance because a woman wrote it? 

BS: Some books can only be written by women-I don't think Cracking India gained significance because a woman wrote it. Though I suspect, had a man written an equal book it would have had much more prominence. A Pakistani-Parsi woman is marginalized straight away as a writer. 

JR: In terms of the historical accuracy of the book, facts are moved around. Gandhi's march, for example, is actually 15 years off. 

BS: This is the wonderful thing about poetic license and fiction. That's why it's called fiction, when you manipulate events to arrive at the larger truth. The eyes of a child allow you also to get away with certain things. I mention Gandhi's salt march---I knew it had taken place long before. But as a novelist you can take liberties. I feel I can represent history more truthfully this way; what is significant is harvested and revealed in an imaginative way.

JR: What would you say was the overall purpose of the novel? 

BS: To function as a recording of a particular history, hoping that one might learn lessons from that history; though I don't think one does. If we are not going to learn lessons, we are doomed to repeat our evils. Historically, people have gone on fighting each other for religion, for land, for women, for position, for greed -- and those elements prevail still. Man's nature has not changed - but one can try, and hope it will. 

JR: Moving on to the movie Earth, how did Deepa Mehta decide to make your novel into a film? 

BS: I got a call from Deepa Mehta one morning. She was very excited having just read Cracking India and said she had been searching for me. Deepa loved the book and talked about it for a long time. She asked if she could make the film. She is also from Punjab; when we talked, I felt she understood every nuance of the novel. She understood what was very important--the importance of the Parsi child and her passionate perspective. I told her to go ahead and make the film, and she said, "But what if somebody else calls you tomorrow and offers you more?" I said, "Look, nobody's offered me anything in four years. I don't think anybody's going to call me tomorrow." I think she was carried away by the book, and, in the heat of that, wrote the script even before the contract was signed - this is exactly how I wanted it to be: that she should love the book enough. 

JR: Did you feel that the most important themes from the novel were captured by the movie? 

BS: The movie stands on its own. But it has the voice of the child and it has the spirit of the book---it has objectivity and it has the story. A movie is only a two-hour affair. A book is spread over a wider expanse of time. Deepa had to get rid of many incidents and characters. I hated the fact that every time I saw the script it was shorter. Then when the film was made, scenes were thrown out until something that seemed very bare to me was left. I realize now that the film works so excellently because of the cuts. 

JR: The title of the movie, Earth, doesn't exactly match the book. 

BS: I am not very happy with the title. Deepa had set her heart on making a film trilogy of the elements---it was important to her. But she did try to bring in the word earth with Cracking India. We tried "Cracking the Earth," but it sounded like a documentary by a farmer. Eventually she chose Earth, and in India, Earth, 1947. You know what was really enchanting? In Hollywood, as soon as a book is optioned, they don't allow the author near the sets. But here, Deepa wanted my participation throughout the making of the film. In part, this was because there was so much Parsi culture in it. But I didn't interfere too much because it was Deepa's vision. I appreciated her generosity in having me around the sets. I did have a part in the film though. 

JR: Which part? 

BS: Oh, I don't even want to say! Luckily, it is from a distance. It's at the very end. 

JR: Do you think that this movie will do justice to your overall purpose for the novel, to, as you said, "function as a recording of a particular history in hopes that we might learn lessons from that history"? 

BS: I think so. The movie has a totally different audience, a different way of seeing things. But, the film widens the audience for the original story. The purpose for writing the story is to reach an audience, so through the film, that goal was further achieved. This wider Earth audience may, in turn, learn from the historical tale told in Cracking India.