BAPSI SIDHWA’S ICE-CANDY-MAN: AN AUTHENTIC PRESENTATION OF A TRUE HUMAN BEING

Many writers of South- Asian descent have written about the traumatic experience of partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 and from their writings we come to know the violent event of partition that constitute history. Khushwant Singh’s A Train to Pakistan, Attia Housain’s Sunlight On a Broken Column, Chaman Nahal’s Azadi, Manto’s Toba Tek Singh, and Sidhwa’s Ice Candy Man are some such examples that give us insight into the religious or racial atrocities, public frenzy, communal hatred and exploitation of women. Bapsi Sidwa, a new and important voice in the world of Commonwealth fiction, is best known in India for her book Ice-Candy-Man, which was later made into a film, 1947:Earth by Deepa Mehta. Though she belongs to India, Pakistan and the United States simultaneously Sidhwa, a recipient of ‘Sitara-i-imtiaz’, Pakistan’s highest national honour in Arts in 1991, likes herself to be called as a Punjabi- Pakistani-Parsi woman. All her four novels ? The Crow Eaters, The Pakistani Bride, Ice ?Candy-Man and An American Brat?are about her perceptions of life as a Parsi, Punjabi, Pakistani and American woman respectively. All of her works have some degree of autobiographical elements as she picks up some significant incidents from her own life or from the lives of other people and flashes them out to create a larger reality of fiction. There is a sense of truthfulness in the characters of her novel and to make it possible she draws the characters of the stories from her own perception of the common folk of her surroundings. The great Urdu poet of the subcontinent, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, has praised Sidhwa for her comedy and Shrewd observations of human behaviour, Faiz Ahmed Faiz says that “Ruthlessly, deeply perceptive, she tells her story with rare courage, frankness, and good humour”(Paranjape 89). He compares her to V.S. Naipaul and R.K. Narayan.