Bapsi Sidhwa obituary
The author Bapsi Sidhwa, who has died aged 86, was one of the first English-language authors from Pakistan to receive international acclaim. With her five novels, she gave readers across the English-speaking world an insight into the Parsi community from which she came, as well as a child’s-eye view of the horrors of partition in 1947.
Her breakthrough novel, Ice Candy Man (1988), published as Cracking India in the US (1991), was her most autobiographical. The young narrator, Lenny, who has polio as Sidhwa was herself did, navigates the partition of the Indian subcontinent with a mix of innocence and keen observation. Critics appreciated her ability to blend personal narrative with larger historical forces, creating a rich, multilayered narrative.
The book was turned into a film, Earth (1998), by Deepa Mehta, starring the Bollywood star Aamir Khan. In turn, Sidhwa turned one of Mehta’s later films, Water (2005), into a novel of the same name.
But Sidhwa’s journey to international recognition was far from smooth. Unable to find an interested publisher in Pakistan for her first novel, The Crow Eaters, she self-published it in 1978. It was not until it was eventually published in the UK in 1981, and favourably reviewed in the west, that the Pakistani media followed suit.
A humorous and candid portrayal of a Parsi family in pre-partition India, The Crow Eaters offers a glimpse into their traditions and everyday life. However, it was not initially well received by her fellow Parsis. “They were furious,” Sidhwa said in an interview. “The book launch at the [Lahore] Intercontinental hotel and the ceremony had to be aborted halfway through because there was a bomb threat [from a member of the Parsi community] … the irony is that I wrote The Crow Eaters with genuine affection for a community that can be termed an endangered species, and I wanted to record something about them.”
Despite the initial backlash, Parsis gradually came to appreciate Sidhwa’s portrayal of their lives, recognising that her work, though critical at times, was a celebration of their unique culture and history.
Bapsi’s maternal family was from Karachi, and so her mother, Tehmina Bhandar, travelled there to give birth to Bapsi, as was customary. After three months she returned to her husband, Peshotan Bhandara, in Lahore, and it was there that Bapsi grew up, witnessing her home city becoming part of the new Pakistan when she was nine.
On a trip to her ayah’s village while a baby Bapsi contracted polio. The illness left her physically frail and unable to attend school, so she was educated instead by private tutors. Without childhood friends, she buried herself in books, finding in fiction a refuge and a universe where anything was possible. When she was 11 one of her tutors, Mrs Penherow, gave her a copy of Little Women to read, and Bapsi was hooked. Anna Karenina and The Pickwick Papers followed, and from there, nothing could hold her back.
From her voracious reading, she developed a sharp, observant eye and an insatiable curiosity about the world that unfolded beyond her reach. Decades later, her intimate understanding of vulnerability and resilience would shape the characters she brought to life.
Despite her lack of schooling, Bapsi graduated from Kinnaird College for Women, a university in Lahore, in 1957. She got married in the same year to Gustad Kermani, but the marriage did not last long, and, after having a daughter, Mohur, and son, Khudadad, they divorced in 1962. Bapsi married Noshir Sidhwa, a businessman, the following year, and had another daughter, Parizad.
She published her second novel, The Pakistani Bride, in 1982. It tells the story of a young woman named Zaitoon, from a rural area in Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. At a very young age, she is married off to a man much older than her from a distant town, as part of an arranged marriage. Despite her initial naivety and vulnerability in an unfamiliar world, Zaitoon defies patriarchal expectations, risking her life to escape oppression. Her journey reflects not only physical endurance but also an unyielding determination to reclaim agency over her life.
In the early 80s, Sidhwa and her family moved to the US for her husband’s work. There, as well as teaching creative writing at various universities including Columbia, Brandeis, and Houston, she wrote An American Brat (1993), the story of Feroza, a sheltered Parsi girl who has been sent to the US for her higher education. On the one hand, Sidhwa used Feroza’s story to highlight the immigrant experience, generational divides and the challenges of reconciling two very different cultures. On the other, the book offers insights into the personal experiences of a single woman. As with Sidhwa’s other characters, Feroza’s journey is marked by a deep sense of resilience, curiosity and self-discovery that transforms her into a confident and independent woman, with a deeper understanding of both the world around her and her place within it.
This is one of the defining features of Sidhwa’s works –that her characters, though flawed and constrained by their worlds, consistently defy being defined by their struggles, much like the author herself. As she recounted, doctors told her parents that, due to her illness, she might only have a future as a wife and mother.
Sidhwa said: “I would hope when anybody wants to know about Parsis, they would say: ‘Oh, read The Crow Eaters, it’s entertaining and it tells you a lot about the community.’ If somebody wants to know about Pakistan, I hope The Bride would be pointed out as a novel that displays its culture. Again, Ice-Candy Man is a story of India and Pakistan and it deals exhaustively with the partition. And I would like to be known for these books.”
In 1991 she received the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s highest national honour in the arts.
She is survived by her children, and a brother, Feroze.
• Bapsi Sidhwa, author, born 11 August 1938; died 25 December 2024
