 First edition | |
| Author | Bapsi Sidhwa |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Milkweed Editions |
Publication date | 1991 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 289 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | 0-915943-51-4 (first edition, hardback) |
| OCLC | 23462280 |
| 823 20 | |
| LC Class | PR9540.9.S53 I34 1991 |
Cracking India (1991, U.S., 1992, India; originally published as Ice Candy Man, 1988, England) is a novel by author Bapsi Sidhwa.
Setting: Lahore
Time: 1943 - 1948
This novel is generally referred to as a story about the Partition of India – hence the title – but its original title was "Ice-Candy-Man," which allows for a broader interpretation of the story. The plot involves Lenny, a 4-year-old Parsee girl who recounts her childhood memories after she is struck by polio in her infancy. She spends most of her time with her ayah Shanta, an 18-year-old Hindu girl from Amritsar. Their relationship is the main narrative because Lenny spends a lot of time with her ayah and she learns a lot about adult relationships from being with the voluptuous nanny and her very diverse group of admirers.
Sexual awakening is a major theme of the book but so is communal identity as the story takes place between 1943 and 1948 when India gained independence but was split into two countries. Ayah's admirers are a cross section of the Lahore residents before Partition. Lenny has a lot of female relatives and this novel has a plethora of characters, but ayah is the one she is most intimate with. Partition does not really affect Lenny until, during the chaos of 1947, she accidentally betrays ayah's presence in the house and ayah is carried off by an angry Muslim mob.
The tone of the novel, written almost completely in the present tense, is rather caustic and remote much like the relationship between the children and their parents. This distance is enforced by the fact that in a couple of passages the writer reveals that she conjured up this little girl and her memories 40 years after they happened. The consistent use of the present tense makes the memories extra vivid but the insights, the language and the humor are not always those of a little girl.
Only the stories the adults tell Lenny and a special section called "Ranna's story" are written in the past tense. Ranna’s story is the grueling report on how the great grandson of Imam Din, the family cook, - whom Lenny met on a visit to his village - witnessed the murder of his entire village and barely escaped alive. The telling of it is the more striking because of the change of voice as the extreme violence would be hard to convey through the eyes of an 8-year-old girl who was not there.
Once Partition and Pakistan become the new reality, the children worry about what may have become of Ayah. Lenny's mother and aunt are involved in taking care of fallen women, victims of the violence now rejected by their families. Then they see Ayah in a car, dressed up and made up like a Bollywood star. They find out that she is living in the Kotha, the disreputable part of the old city with Ice-Candy-man, one of her former admirers who has now transformed himself into an Urdu poet but pimps her out and represses Ayah ruthlessly. Lenny's godmother intervenes and they extricate Ayah from her captivity in order to let her return to her family village.
The book is made up of many lively and interesting anecdotes, some of them related to Partition, but just as many to Lenny's personal development and the unique position of the Parsis in Lahore and in India. Some of the chapters carry forward the plot but many of them do not but they leave an indelible impression of a community in a place that was permanently transformed in a matter of months.
There are some parallels between the novel and Sidhwa's own life. Similar to the main character Lenny, Sidhwa is Parsi, contracted polio as a child, grew up in Lahore, and was nine years old during the Partition of India. [1] [2] [3] Although she did not witness mob violence first hand, she heard mob chanting in the distance and saw a few corpses during the conflict. [2] [4] Additionally, the scene in which ayah's lover is found in the road reflects one of Sidhwa's real memories from the time:
I was actually walking to my private tutor, and there was this gunnysack lying by the roadside. The gardener, who was with me, just kicked the gunnysack, and a body spilled out, a dead body of a very good looking man. [2]
When the movie adaptation of the novel, Earth, was being filmed, the crew consulted Sidhwa's memory of the incident to recreate this scene. [4]
The Family:
The Servants:
The Neighbors and other locals:
Deepa Mehta's 1998 film, Earth (titled Earth 1947), is based on Cracking India. [4]
A complaint was filed in Volusia County, Florida, arguing that Cracking India, which was on a high school reading list, contained "pornographic material" and should be banned from the county's public schools. [5] The district decided not to ban the book. [6]
In November 2019, the BBC News listed Ice Candy Man on its list of the 100 most influential novels. [7]
Pakistani literature is a distinct literature that gradually came to be defined after Pakistan gained nationhood status in 1947, emerging out of literary traditions of the South Asia. The shared tradition of Urdu literature and English literature of British India was inherited by the new state. Over a big time of period a body of literature unique to Pakistan has emerged in nearly all major Pakistani languages, including Balochi, English, Pushto, Punjabi, Seraiki, Sindhi, and Urdu,.
Bapsi Sidhwa is a Pakistani novelist of Gujarati Parsi Zoroastrian descent who writes in English and is a resident in the United States.
Deepa Mehta, is an Indian-born Canadian film director and screenwriter, best known for her Elements Trilogy, Fire (1996), Earth (1998), and Water (2005).
Earth is a 1999 Indo-Canadian period romance drama film directed by Deepa Mehta. It is based upon Bapsi Sidhwa's novel, Cracking India, set during the 1947 partition of India. Earth is the second instalment of Mehta's Elements trilogy, preceded by Fire (1996) and followed by Water (2005). It was India's entry for the 1999 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Water is a 2005 comedy drama and thriller film written and directed by Deepa Mehta, with screenplay by Anurag Kashyap. It is set in 1938 and explores the lives of widows at an ashram in India. The film is also the third and final installment of Mehta's Elements trilogy. It was preceded by Fire (1996) and Earth (1998). Author Bapsi Sidhwa wrote the 2006 novel based upon the film, Water: A Novel, published by Milkweed Press. Sidhwa's earlier novel, Cracking India was the basis for Earth, the second film in the trilogy.
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Larki Punjaban (Urdu: لڑکی پنجابن, is a 2003 Pakistani Urdu film directed by Syed Noor and starring Babar Ali, Saima, and Shamyl Khan.
The publishing industry in Pakistan is hampered both by a low literacy rate (65%).
Water is a novel by author Bapsi Sidhwa that was published in 2006.
The Elements trilogy of films by Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta deals with controversial issues of social reform on the Indian subcontinent. Fire, the first release in 1996, dealt with issues of arranged marriage and homosexuality in the patriarchal culture of India. Earth, released in 1998, dealt with the religious strife associated with the partition of India and the formation of Pakistan in the mid-20th century. Water, released in 2005, was the most critically successful of the three, and dealt with suicide, misogyny, and the mistreatment of widows in rural India.
Buniyaad is an Indian television soap opera directed by Ramesh Sippy and Jyoti Sarup. The series was written by Manohar Shyam Joshi and dealt with the Partition of India in 1947 and its aftermath. It first aired in 1986 on the Indian state television channel DD National. It was re-aired on DD Metro, DD Retro and Sahara One.The story spans the life in India between 1916 and 1978.
During the Partition of India, violence against women occurred extensively. It is estimated that during the partition between 75,000 and 100,000 women were kidnapped and raped. The rape of women by men during this period is well documented, with women sometimes also being complicit in these attacks. In March 1947, systematic violence against women started in Rawalpindi where Sikh women were targeted by Muslim mobs. Violence was also perpetrated on an organized basis, with Pathans taking Hindu and Sikh women from refugee trains while one alleged that he witnessed armed Sikhs periodically dragging Muslim women.
Ritu Menon is an Indian feminist, writer and publisher.
Syed Imtiaz Ali Taj was a Pakistani dramatist who wrote in the Urdu language. He is best known for his 1922 play Anarkali, based on the life of Anarkali, that was staged hundreds of times and was adapted for feature films in India and Pakistan, including the Indian film Mughal-e-Azam (1960).
The Night Diary is a young adult novel written by American writer Veera Hiranandani and published by Penguin Random House in 2018. It is set in 1947, during the months before and after the independence of India and subsequent division with Pakistan, and is written as diary entries from the perspective of Nisha, a girl who has just celebrated her twelfth birthday along with her twin brother, Amil.
Jamila Hashmi was a Pakistani novelist and short story writer. She produced her work in Urdu. She wrote her first novel titled Attish-e-Rufta which was introduced to a TV serial. She later wrote Talash-e-Baharan, a novel that later became the recipient of Adamjee Literary Award. She also wrote short stories such as her Rang Bhoom, and Aap Bieti-Jug Bieti besides writing novels such as Apna Apna Jahanum and a narrative prose fiction titled Rohi.
The Crow Eaters is a 1978 comic novel by Bapsi Sidhwa. The novel is about a Parsi family. The book was Sidhwa's debut novel.
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The Kolkata Partition Museum is an initiative dedicated to documenting the Partition of India from the Bengal perspective. Dissimilar to the Punjabi context, the Bengal province had been divided twice: once in 1905, and then in 1947. The aftermath of the second partition, as recorded by many historians, unfolded distinctly in postcolonial Bengal vis-à-vis Punjab. Not only was the impact long-drawn and can be witnessed even 75 years after the Partition, its affect can also be seen in the neighbouring states of Bengal and the rest of the country owing to refugee resettlements spread out to as far away states such as Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh. The idea behind the Kolkata Partition Museum is to preserve and present the vanishing memories of partition, to emphasise both the "rupture and continuities between West Bengal and Bangladesh – in terms of language and literature, food, fabric, and the performing arts – and to encourage collaboration between them." The museum aims "to do so by involving public participation in its programs and gearing all its activities in a way that makes it more accessible and interesting to the public at large."
The reveal kickstarts the BBC's year-long celebration of literature.