Ice Candy Man - Bapsi Sidhwa

Bapsi Sidhwa's novel is an incredibly moving account of the partition of India . I love the narration through the point of view of the young Lenny whose innocence is cracked along with her country. I think sidhwa does a terrific job of illustrating the horror that colonialism leaves even in its aftermath. I especially love the contrast that Sidhwa shows between how relations among Indians were before and after partition and clearly points the finger at the British Empire's efforts to divide the country . The unfolding of this narrative, however, through Lenny's coming to understand the way her country breaks apart is what makes it such a tremendous story.

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Indeed, in the wake of perusing this book, new certainties about the segment unfolded upon me. Biting realities were studded with inventive flight of Lenny. The modest side of the character of Ice sweet man of making Ayah the finesse of whorehouse does not discover wherever in my brain, as the then culture of Muslims would not permit such an occurrence. It appears that Bapsi's aim was to extend the topic of half breed, contrastingly, for her own particular religion, Parsi, does not permit her group to get blended with different groups or do intermarriages. she demonstrated her group undecided while saying, "to chase with the dogs and keep running with the rabbit." to put it plainly, the book is her brilliant memoires that portrays a grave story.

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This is a great setack for her and her family. They all love Ayah and want her t be safe. She gets a ew Ayah but she is uable to forget older one. The life remains the static after indepenence except that her mother and aunt join ranks of other women to rescue the kidnapped ladies and send them to their native homes. Lenny is now getting older and she is developing feelings or her cousin as well. She is curious to know what goes around her.finally, in the latter part of book, Lenny finally comes to know that er Ayah is still in Lahre and livs in place called Heera Mandi. She pays hr a visit to her with Godmother and become aware of the fact that her huband is none other than Ice-Candy Man. Ayah doesn’t like being put as a show piece and therefore Lenny’s Godmother rescues her and finally in the end she leaves for her family in Amritsar, with Ice-Candy Man following her.

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Such an incredible story. Personally, I have read and previously studied India's history but this book gave me an insider’s point of view.

I learnt a lot of things that I didn't know before. I loved seeing how Lenny's innocence and her obliviousness to the world and its problems fade away almost like her country's peace.

The story is taken from that time when India was broke into two nations. Be that as it may, the connection and the violent subtle elements are to a great degree pertinent as the world is seeing new national limits being made in the center east.

With no other legitimate clarification to fall back upon, religion turns into their characterizing personality. Companions get to be adversaries overnight and their creature spirits assume control before they know it.

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Well, after reading this book, new facts about the partition dawned upon me. Bitter facts were studded with imaginative flight of Lenny. The lowly side of the character of Ice candy man of making Ayah the grace of brothel does not find any place in my mind, as the then culture of Muslims would not allow such a happening. It seems that Bapsi's intention was to project the theme of hybrid very, contrastingly, for her own religion, Parsi, does not allow her community to get mixed with other communities or do intermarriages. she showed her community ambivalent while saying, "to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare." In short, the book is her golden memoires that depicts a grave story.

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In Ice-Candy Man, Lenny, the daughter of a well-to-do jobholder is the narrative persona. Her narration starts in her fifth year and ends after her eighth birthday. . Rahel and Estha and Lenny, who are precocious, the ''sensitiveness of a snail.'' Lenny of Ice-Candy Man recalls her first conscious memory of her Ayah thus: ''She passes pushing my pram with the unconcern of the Hindu goddess she worships'' (p.3). She also remembers her house on Warris Road in Lahore and how she used to find refuge in her godmother's ''one- and-a-half room abode'' and succeeded in getting away from the ''gloom'' and the ''perplexing unrealities'' of home. These perplexities include her own polio affliction, which she uses as an armor against a ''pretentious world,'' her mother's extravagance, her father's dislike of it, her strain to fill up the ''infernal silence'' during her father's ''mute meals'' by ''offering laughter and lengthier chatter'' (''Is that when I learnt to tell tales?''). These perplexities also invlve the household staff. It includes her very dear Ayah, an eighteen year old dusky beauty, Shantha, Imam Din, the genial-faced cook of the Sethi household, Hari, the high-caste Hindu, Moti, the outcaste gardener, Mucho, his shrew of a wife, Papoo, his much abused child, -- and the Ice-Candy-Man, a raconteur and a ''born gossip'' who never stops touching Ayah with his ''tentative toes'' -- and masseur, a sensitive man who loves Ayah and is loved by her much to the chagrin of ice candy man and last but certainly impressive Ranna, the boy whom Lenny befriends when she visits his village with Imamdin and numerous others.

The book looks at Partition through the experiences of Lenny (around the same age Sidhwa was at the time, and similarly polio-afflicted), whose own family isn’t directly affected by the riots but who has an emotional compact with some of the people who are -- like her beloved Ayah, and the local ice-candy man. I read the book around 1999 (when Deepa Mehta’s film version Earth was released) and was impressed by the way it glided, almost imperceptibly, from the commonplace to the horrific: from the quotidian details of Lenny’s family life to the spectre of Partition violence and the emotional betrayal at the book’s core

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After having talked at great lengths about the confluence of history and fiction in my earlier essays I am not going to talk too much about the theme here, but all I want to say at the offset is that the book today I am going to talk about attempts exactly the same albeit with a different treatment. Sometimes I wonder why so less has been written on a monumental event like the partition, if there is one single historical event, which has the greatest impact on the geo-political apparatus, the socio-emotional psyche of millions of people on both sides of the Radcliff line, it has to be this one beyond an iota of doubt. I guess people who were alive then did not write about it, either because the hurt is still fresh, or they were ashamed of what happened to them or the evils they did to the others. The young writers tend to skip through it because of the emotional and political connotations a novel based on partition might have. Whatever be the reason but that doesn’t take away the fact that partition was indeed one of the most important historical event and more often then not the tales woven around it are sad, cathartic and at once makes the reader feel ashamed and abhorrent of what all had happened then in the name of religion, community and nationality.

Here I am again to talk about one of the finest piece of fiction woven around the partition saga, Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India originally Ice Candy Man. In light of current political, religious, and social tensions in India and Pakistan, a more appropriate title could easily have been, “The more things change, and the more they stay the same.” Ironically, its adaptation in, Earth, by Deepa Mehta, attests to its timeliness. Set in 1940’s India, during the time of independence and the partition, Cracking India brings to life the deeply religious, national, social, and economic tensions marking both historical and current Indo-Pak political dynamics.

The story revolves around a young polio ridden Parsi girl, Lenny, the Muslim Ice Candy Man and the beautiful Hindu Ayah. The naïve observations of the young girl about startling images of violence, fear and hatred intensify considerably for the readers and one cant stop drawing a far reached parallel to the epic Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Franke. The co-mingling of innocence and experience allow the reader to view this extremely confusing and unstable chapter of Indian history through a simpler lens, a more objective voice. The people in Lenny’s life are reduced to physical or spiritual characteristics. People from different religions be it a Hindu, Muslim or a Sikh are painted in the colors of hatred that they espouse for each other. Religion to the young narrator is nothing but a superficial label, as characters switch from one to the other with such nonchalant ease. Though coming from a young narrator might have made things a lot easier to read but what makes it very complex is the socio-emotional and political turmoil that Sidhwa talks about so beautifully through this book. She talks about the colossal pain and sufferings of people cutting across the boundaries of religion and nationality, the latter being a concept, which was just being forced upon them from high up.

The novel though centered on Lenny boasts a series of sub-plots, each competing through the novel for the center stage. The alluring love story between the Muslim Ice Candy Man and the Hindu Ayah has been carved out quite delicately, what has to be noted is the deliberate religious divide between the two and the impact that a trivial thing like religion has on the lives of two lovers and all the other people around. In addition to that lot of subplots have been left unresolved leaving them open to the imagination of the readers and at the same time it also mirrors the experience many people had during those times of turmoil.

For all its qualities the novel does has some problematic areas as well. The depiction of power, sexual and political has gone a little over the board one feels. Sidhwa on her part defends it by saying that the plot is set in times when sexuality was repressed to a large extent and under such conditions it becomes obsessive and permeates one’s whole life. Also it is not factually correct if one talks about history per se, but yes if one allows the writer that bit of a leeway as compared to a historian then it comes out fine, also since the narrator of the story happens to be a young girl who might understand the emotional impact of an event rather then the historical nomenclature.

The real good about the book is the universal appeal it has, it can fit in per se to the happenings in Northern Ireland, Bosnia or for that matter till now strife-ridden Afghanistan. Sidhwa says in his nature man has not changed much as he always keep fighting for one or the other thing, sometimes he fights for religion, for land, for women, for position, for greed or sometimes just for the sake of it. Superficial things have come to take a center stage in our lives, something that robs from us the basic premise of our existence.

Through Cracking India, Bapsi Sidhwa has indeed brought to life the spiritual, emotional, and very real implications of the partition of India. In so doing, she has “cracked” the riddle of India and revealed to us the cultural difficulties that plagued South Asia before, during, and after its split from the British and the creation of Pakistan. I recommend this novel and encourage anyone to read it, if for no other reason than simply that it is one of the few works on this topic. I also favor it because it may call readers to view religion and social status in their own lives in new and different ways.

Questions

Religion is supposed to alleviate us from the materialistic and sometimes me’ism per se, but due to think the more religion preaches spiritualism, the more it binds us to the material comforts?

In the fast changing global world that we all live in, where nomenclatures and their implications are losing their identity what importance does nationality, religion and creed have on our day-to-day lives?

Why is there so few literary works done on a monumental event like the partition?

What for you is the learning from the novel Ice Candy Man?

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The Iceman speaketh?. I roam in the city as the Ice-Candy wallah, with an icebox of sweet ice candies. Hounded by little children and their mothers, I bring a little cool relief in the hot summer. The business is good when the day is hot, but I try to save a few for a sweet little child, who is unfortunate to be afflicted by polio, but fortunate to have the lovely ayah. I long for a sight of the ayah all day, I long for a few moments of flirtatious fun, the sight of her draws my attention, like a fly drawn towards a lamp. She is the apple of my eye, but she accepts the apple of another, I have a good mind to massage his body to pulp, but alas he is my friend too. Everytime I see her with him, the fire of jealousy burns higher within me. The anguish of seeing her in his arms, wounds me more than any weapon the world can offer. A lamp can set a palace ablaze, what is one man?s soul before the evil flames? In my foolish rage I destroy the lives of those near and dear friends. I pluck the most beautiful rose from God?s garden, tear its beautiful petals apart in my rage, and I adorn it with fake appendages, believing it to be mine forever.

The ice candy man (icm) is shown in the novel as an extremely passionate character who tries to get the girl he wants by hook or by crook. The novel does not show the love of the icm till the end of the text, when we see the passion that he is capable of. We see the icm as a betrayer when he uses Lenny to betray Ayah to the mob. At this point, the reader would be shocked as the icm till then is shown as a nice person who has some feelings for Ayah. The murder of the Masseur and way his body was put in a gunny bag near Lenny?s house would now seem to be the icm?s deed. Later, in the novel, when Godmother discovers Ayah, and when the icm explains his deeds, one is able to empathise with him but not sympathise with him.

If the novel is a love story, then why is the narrator Lenny? If the narrator was the icm himself, then it would be a propaganda novel of the icm explaining his deeds and the reader would sympathise with him. One would see all the emotional turmoil the icm experiences, but the deeds of the icm are evil, and sympathizing with his deeds is not what the author wants the reader to do. So why not Ayah as the narrator? Ayah would be the other end of the spectrum, one who is unaware of the intensity of the love of the icm, who is raped and ravaged by the mob led by the icm. A narrative from Ayah?s perspective would inevitably make the novel totally anti-icm, which would then mask the icm?s perspective. So, why a child? An adult narrator would be influenced by the ethics and morals of the society, and also by his/her own biases. Also, an adult would probably have not observed the intimacy between Ayah and the Masseur, as the two would not have openly displayed it. Adults are more expressive and feel more secure about their privacy in the presence of a child than in the presence of other adults. A child?s narrative would be more objective than an adult?s without the biases of social and ethical order.

For example, if the narrator had been Lenny?s Godmother, it would have been heavily biased by the ethical disruption caused by the kidnapping of Ayah and the last chapter would not have revealed the intensity of emotions of the icm. The reader would be made to despise the icm for his deeds and his motivations would not have been revealed. There is a danger of choosing a child narrator. A child would not be able to fathom love and sexuality, as he/she would be naïve regarding these matters. In that light, a child narrator would not understand the emotions of the icm for Ayah, or the emotions of Ayah and the Masseur for eachother. The author solves this problem using Lenny?s cousin. Lenny learns about sexuality and the feelings of love from her cousin. Cousin, who is shown to be infatuated with Lenny from the start, helps Lenny understand the meaning of love and emotional turmoil that entails when love is not returned. He also shows Lenny how love can be very possessive. These lessons learnt by Lenny through her personal experiences with Cousin later helps her to empathise with the icm. I particularly liked this idea of the author very much. How is it a partition novel? The novel has the Partition of India in the background of the story. The partition also serves to give the icm a leeway for his heinous deeds.

The novel describes the horrors of the Partition very well and the reader is drawn into the tale. The fears, the insecurity, and the hatred that was bred in the people by the politicians of that time for their own vested interests is very caricatured in the novel. The changing loyalties of the circle of friends who in the end become fiends brings forth the true horror of Partition when friends became traitors. The description of the massacre of Ranna?s village shows how humans behaved like savages, killing their own countrymen. The icm?s sees a perfect opportunity to claim what he thinks is his. The Partition also psychologically affects the icm as his family is murdered brutally on the train. It turns him into a cruel person, he then joins in the fray and kills Hindus, some of them his friends. All in all the icm is very much affected by the Partition and he uses the violence as a machanism to claim Ayah but it backfires.

A sad tale of Partition is shown, where the crimes of the people killed the national spirit and no matter what was tried, it still remains as a deep scar on the psyche of the people. As Jinnah himself put it, ?Pakistan has been the biggest mistake of my life.? Partition of India is truly the sorest point in the sub-continent?s history, when a new nation was born amidst humungous turmoil and violence that later both countries have regretted and will do so for the rest of their existence. So will the icm regret his deeds for the rest of his miserable life.

The Ice Candy man shows us the naked human emotions that are revealed whenever passions run high and it also shows how they can be good and evil in the same person. The novel has a simple narrative, enhanced by the use of humour, which effectively tells us the story of the Ice candy man.

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