Bapsi Sidhwa

Bapsi Sidhwa is a Pakistani novelist who wrote primarily in English and resided in the United States. She achieved international recognition for her literary works that often explored themes of Partition.

Early life and education

Sidhwa was born on 11 August 1938 to Parsi Zoroastrian parents, Peshotan and Tehmina Bhandara, in Karachi. Her family moved to Lahore in the Punjab Province roughly three months after her birth. When she was two years old, she contracted polio. This illness required severe surgeries during her childhood and left a lasting impact on her life.

Growing up in Lahore, Sidhwa witnessed distressing events during the Partition. She once encountered a young man's corpse inside a gunny sack while walking with her gardener. These traumatic experiences shaped her future writing—specifically her novel Cracking India. She used these memories to develop the character Lenny.

Sidhwa attended Kinnaird College for Women University in Lahore. She earned her BA from the institution in 1957. Her linguistic background included Gujarati as her first language, Urdu as her second, and English as her third. While she wrote most effectively in English, she often translated literally from Gujarati or Urdu.

Career

Sidhwa began her career as an author after remarrying in Lahore. She published several notable books, including The Crow Eaters in 1978 and The Bride in 1982. Her novel Cracking India was originally published in England in 1988 as Ice Candy Man. This work served as the basis for filmmaker Deepa Mehta's 1998 film Earth.

She collaborated with Mehta again through her 2006 novel Water: A Novel. This book provided the foundation for the 2005 film Water. Her other published works include An American Brat, which was released in 1993, and City of Sin and Splendour in 2006. She also published the Bapsi Sidhwa Omnibus in 2001.

Sidhwa transitioned into academia after attending a fellowship at Harvard University. She accepted her first teaching position at Columbia University to instruct graduate students in writing. Although she experienced panic attacks before lectures, she completed one academic term there. She later moved to Houston to teach at the University of St. Thomas. Her teaching career also included roles at Rice University, the University of Houston, Mount Holyoke College, and Brandeis University.

Personal life

At age 19, Sidhwa married and moved to Bombay. She had a son and a daughter during this marriage, which lasted five years. Following her divorce, she returned to Lahore. Because of border restrictions, she was unable to see her son in Mumbai for many years.

She eventually remarried a Zoroastrian man named Noshir in Lahore. This second marriage resulted in three more children. One daughter, Mohur Sidhwa, ran as a candidate for state representative in Arizona in 2012. Sidhwa died in Houston, Texas on 25 December 2024, at the age of 86.

Awards and recognition

Sidhwa received the Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe/Harvard in 1986. In 1991, she served as a Visiting Scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation Center in Bellagio, Italy. That same year, she earned the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, which is Pakistan's highest national honor in the arts. She also won the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award in 1994.

In 2000, she was inducted into the Zoroastrian Hall of Fame. Her novel Water earned her the Mondello Prize in 2007. A documentary titled "Bapsi: Silences of My Life" was released on 28 October 2022.