It's been a while since I've last posted something up on here, but I have been reading in the meantime. I have quite a few pending books I need to write about. I'll start with Cracking India a novel by Bapsi Sidhwa, which was published in 1991 by Milkweed Editions. The title was initially The Ice-Candy Man and Deepa Mehta directed the film Earth based on this novel in 1998. The book comprises of 32 chapters and I read the kindle edition. I'll discuss some of the key themes in the novel, the perspective of the narrator(s) and its link to the author and issues relating to the India-Pakistan partition/ Independence. This novel is set in Lahore a few years before Independence, during the Partition and continues to some months after the change. I have been reading and comparing various partition narratives and this will influence my analysis.
The first-person narrator for the majority of the novel is Lenny, a young girl who belongs to the Parsee community. The Parsee community is a minority community in India and Pakistan that originated from Persia; they follow the Zoroastrian faith. This is significant because it provides a perspective of the Partition from within and yet from outside the Muslim-Hindu-Sikh conflict that dominated this period of history. Their position during this time is simultaneously precarious and protected. Bapsi Sidhwa is a Parsee Pakistani-American herself and lived through the Partition of India. Not only did this novel give my an insight into a new religious culture in the Indian subcontinent, it provides "Partition literature" with a voice independent of the religious bias and hurt of the fighting groups. In the chapter 25 there is a part dedicated to "Ranna's Story", which is written with an authorial narrator, and this is based on a real personal experience. These two narratives allow for Sidhwa to provide an insight into both urban and countryside effects of the riots and fight for territory.
Religion held a decisive role in the fight for Independence and Sidhwa chooses to include a wealth of characters to describe the dynamics between people of different faiths. This allows the reader to learn of the varied fates of these people, from immigration, death, conversion or safety. Instead of identifying all the characters by name, Sidhwa chooses to identify them with their profession or the role they hold in relation to Lenny. This creates religious ambiguity and readers have to decipher the faith later on. Sidhwa also refers to the issue of caste in Hinduism and how this affects social structures and relations.
Politically speaking, Sidhwa refers to the most varied set of political figures of the time namely, Gandhi, Nehru Jinnah, Tara Singh and Mountbatten. Many of the other texts I've read only make reference to one or two of these men and thus ignoring significant political narratives of the time. The British are called out for their seemingly "random" allocation of cities and states to India or Pakistan, regardless of the residing population.
Some other key themes in the novel include love, friendship and betrayal. The child narrator provides a naivety and innocence to worldly matters as well as frank observations of sexuality in her surroundings. The childish vision of the world does not mean that the novel ignores or removes the violence or brutality of the time, for children were not necessarily sheltered from the atrocities.
This novel is well-written and has been deservedly praised. It is enriched by the poetry, language and the varied characters. If anything, I wish I had an insight into the origin of the hierarchy between Lenny's Godmother and her sister but that is a minor curiosity that may just be my own. A valuable book about the Partition that combines some of the strongest elements of the handful of novels I've read on the same subject matter.
