Chapter IV

4. Gender Constructed World of Women in Parsi Community

Fictional and historical narratives that portray the rise of the modern nation – state

mobilize the figure of woman in the “construction, reproduction, and transformation of

ethnic / national categories” (Anthias 7). Woman has been used as the albi for colonial

and nationalist interventions. Feminist critics have demonstrated that concern about

woman’s status in the changing, actual, material conditions of their lives and also with

patriarchal “struggles over community autonomy and the right to self-determination”

(Mani, “Contentious” 115). Mani further relates “women become sites upon which

various versions of scripture / tradition / law are elaborated and contested” (115).

Women are not lagging behind in their input of literature. Women writers are at

their best when they deal with the known domain of their womanliness, immediate

surroundings and cognition of varied relationships that they create for themselves.

Women writers are not always preoccupied with social or intellectual questions. Their

gender has not debarred them from writing about a range of experiences that include the

squalid and the terrifying.

There is a vigorous development in thinking about women and their role in

society. For majority of women, their gender has had some effect on their experience and

their perceptions of the world. This is reflected in the nature of their works which they

produce. In the works by women writers, they challenge the patriarchal society / values.

It is the result of how women have been represented by men in their works. The

gynocritics theorise about women’s literary production. So, in the contemporary literary

scenario, gender consciousness has become an inevitable one.

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Sidhwa brings out the culturally sanctioned sexual callousness and the larger

forms of social violence in the scene in Eaters where Freddy and his Parsis and British

chums visit the Hira Mandi and in Bride where the Muslim Qasim and Nikka are

relieved of hunger in a similar manner. However, it is as observed by Cicely Havely in

“Patterns of Migration in the Works of Bapsi Sidhwa”, “The women in The Bride are as

much the victims of machismo as its beneficieries, and it is a generalized combination of

ignorance, repression and male privilege rather than a specific culture which Sidhwa

criticizes” (66). Women occupy a central position in all the novels of Sidhwa, except

Man where the titular hero dominates beside the main dominating character Ayah.

Commenting on the portrayal of women characters in Sidhwa’s novels, K. Nirupa Rani in

“Gender and Imagination in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Fiction” says :

Sidhwa’s men have distinct personality traits but her women are not

extravagant-they are ordinary, devoid of feelings. In their limited orbits

they are socially active and lead only a superficial existence. Even though

they are active, they are flat characters. In a novel like The Pakistani

Bride where there is ample scope for the writer to explore, Sidhwa could

not go deep in-to the psyche of her female protagonist, allowing

methodical narration of events in sequential order. Jerbanoo, Rodabai and

Carol are lively characters with natural instincts and imagination. They

are more familiar to Sidhwa and are within her range of experience. (123)

In Bride, the first part is set in the crowded alleys of Muslim Lahore and its second in the

bleak, empty mountains of the Karakoram. Male authority and privilege in Bride are

absolute. Even when a woman is cherished or desired, she is powerless. Zaitoon is a

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Punjabi child, orphaned by partition and adopted by a Kohistani tribesman because she

reminds him of his own beloved little daughter, dead from the small-pox which had

carried off all his family. Qasim had migrated to the plains to escape from his grief and

the vulnerability of love. He raises the orphan girl, Zaitoon, passionately. At the same

time, he is powerless not to marry her back into his mountain tribe. He knows she is little

suited to such a harsh life in the mountain. Sidhwa in Bride avers : “Women the world

over, through the ages, asked to be murdered, raped, exploited, enslaved, to get

importunately impregnated, beaten up, bullied and disinherited. It was an immutable law

of nature” (PB 226). At the same time, she raises a question : “What had the tribal done

to deserve such grotesque retribution? Had she fallen in love with the wrong man? or

was she simply the victim of a vendetta? Her brother might have killed his wife and his

wife’s kin slaughtered her... there could be any number of reasons” (PB 226). In fact, it

is the voice of Carol verbalised by Sidhwa. It is a world of men-an aggressive men like

Sakhi and Major Mushtaq. Commenting on the male-gendered dominant world portrayed

by Sidhwa in Bride Ralph J. Crane in “’A Passion for History and For Truth Telling’ :

The Early Novels of Bapsi Sidhwa” observes :

When she is fifteen, Zaitoon, the young girl Qasim adopts after the attack

on the Lahore-bound train, is taken to her stepfather’s ancestral home in

the mountains to be married to one of his kinsmen. This allows Sidhwa to

contrast the often brutal ways of Qasim’s people with the general life

Zaitoon has known in Lahore, and sets the scene for an exploration of the

cultural divisions Sidhwa sees within independent Pakistan. At the heart

of her examination of the conflict she perceives between two essentially

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male-dominated worlds, lies a very strong interest in the position of

women in Pakistani society. This interest in women is skillfully

highlighted by the introduction of the young American woman, Carol,

who is married to a ‘modern’, western-educated Pakistani husband. Her

presence in the novel does not emphasize the cross-cultural difference

between East and west so much as the cross-gender differences that exist

within Pakistani society. Women, unlike men, are expected to be silenced

voices, inhabiting the shadows cast by their fathers, husbands, the family

home-silences and shadows which deny an individual her identity, make

her anonymous. (51)

Women become anonymous. Their identity is denied. They are treated as sexual objects

or the ‘other’. They are muted and denied of all possible ways and means in their

existence. It is contrasted by Zaitoon and Carol. So that only Ralph J. Crane further

observes : “Carol’s experiences as the foreign wife of a Pakistani are juxtaposed with

Zaitoon’s ordeal as an ‘outsider’ married to a Kohistani tribesman, and together Carol’s

circumstances and Zaitoon’s awful plight are used by Sidhwa to highlight the position of

women in Pakistani society” (52). Zaitoon, though she belongs to the next generation, is

brought up in Lahore, and even educated a little and is forced to marry Sakhi against her

wishes. She is never consulted. Even before the marriage, when she begs her father not

to give her in marriage to a tribal man, she is threatened with death. Once married to

Sakhi, her life becomes miserable. She is abused and battered routinely. It seems to her

that the entire code of honour of the tribes rests on notions of sexual superiority and

possessiveness. Earlier, Sakhi is taunted by his brother Yonus Khan of not being man
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enough to control his wife. It leads to increased savagery on the part towards

possessions. It shows that women are owned as properties and treated as beasts of

burden. There is no filial or marital sanctity. The violence against women is more and

Sakhi beats Zaitoon not only with a stick but also with sharp stones and even he kicks

her. The violence is not only physical but also sexual and verbal. On the wedding night

itself Sakhi establishes his superiority and proprietorship over Zaitoon’s sexual organ.

Even when Zaitoon waves her hands to the army officers, his language is filled with

crude and vice invective. He bursts out : “’You whore,”, he hissed. His fury was so

intense. She thought he would kill her. He cleared his throat and spat full in her face.

‘you dirty, black little bitch, braving at those pigs... you wanted him stop and fuck you,

didn’t you?’” (PB 185). The violence of the language is nearly as degrading as physical

violence. When he begins to beat her, in an instinctive gesture, Zaitoon butts her head

into his groin undoing his salwar. Again his male honour is besmirched. Sidhwa writes:

He slapped her hard, and swinging her politely by the arm, as a child

swings a doll, he flung her from him. A sharp flint cut into her breast, and

in a wild lunge she blindly butted her head between the man’s legs. In the

brief scuffle, the cord of Sakhi’s trousers came undone and the baggy

gathers at the waist of his salwar flopped to his ankles. Sakhi froze.

Transfixed on the edge, he blanched. What if some one had witnessed his

ultimate humiliation? (PB 186)

Zaitoon knelt in misgiving and suspense. “There was no viler insult a woman could

inflict on a man” (PB 186). And as a result, Sakhi kicks her between her legs until she

faints with pain. Only after this incident, Zaitoon decides to run away-the first and the
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only choice for her survival. Commenting on Zaitoon’s decision to run away, Makarand

R. Paranjape in “The Early Novels of Bapsi Sidhwa” avers :

Zaitoon’s symbolic retalliation in the above scene and her decision to run

away are not at all signs of her militant feminism or deliberate defiance of

the male order. Throughout she has been portrayed as a docile,

affectionate, obedient child. Her heroic role has, thus, been thrust upon

her. This is the only way she can survive. It is a spiritual struggle, a last-

ditch stand of the weak and the oppressed. That is why her victory is

marvellous and inspiring. Willy-nilly, she has become a symbol of all

oppressed and exploited people. (100)

Zaitoon’s acceptance of Sakhi as her husband on their wedding night is explained by

Sidhwa as a concomitant of a purdah society. Zaitoon’s undefined sexual stirrings are

answered by Sakhi - as they would be by any other young man chosen for her.

The sap that had risen in her since puberty and tormented her with

indefinable cravings for so long surged to a feverish pitch. Brought up in

Muslim seclusion she had not understood the impulse that had caused her

often to bury her face in Qasim’s clothes hanging from a nail. Breathing

in their maleness she had glowed with happiness, taking her impulse to be

a sign of her deep affection. Knowing only Qasim and Nikka she had

loved them with a mixture of filial devotion and vague unacknowledged

sexual stirrings. She had romantic fantasies in which tribal lovers, bold

and tender, wafted her to remote mountain hideouts and adored her for
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ever. She felt at the furious centre of her tumult a deep calm, a certainty

that at last her needs would be fulfilled. (PB 161)

Zaitoon, however, after the initial excitement, realises that the reality of tribal life is far

from romantic. Sakhi’s attitude towards her is that of a master to a slave. The sense of

honour that seemed so attractive from afar is proprietary and repressive. It calls upon a

man to prove his manhood and mastery by keeping his women in check. It is all the same

whether it is an old mother to be cowed into docility or a young wife. From her mother-

in-law’s rambling talk Zaitoon comes to realise that the shrivelled old woman, anxious

and obsequious, had once been young and beautiful enough to command a high bride

price. Now, the old woman is beaten by her son who cannot tolerate interfering women

who would try to prevent him from beating an ox or a wife. Zaitoon realises that if she

wants to live she has to run away. But running away is dangerous.

Woman is a mere chattel and she is exploited sexually and also for household work

which includes collecting fuel and fetching water from the stream. She is not treated as

an individual in her own right, nor given any status even as a mother. She is simply a

slave to the men of the family and they whip her and beat her at their fancy any time even

without reason. Sidhwa portrays with Zolasque details the life of the mountain tribals

who remain cut off from the mainstream of life in Pakistan. She shows that the Pakistani

Muslim husband considers infidelity in his wife a sin which must be punished either by

maiming her or by killing her. The Major makes this clear to Carol who is a privileged

bride since she is an American white woman, but she too is doomed if she is unfaithful

and her husband comes to know about it.

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The molestation of Zaitoon, a starved and raped girl, becomes an eloquent appeal

against the oppression of women. Even Carol considers Zaitoon as an emblem against

male dominance:

Carol had a sudden sinking realization of the girl’s plight. She

remembered the curious communication between them; and her large

sensitive eyes. She now felt they had revealed more than just the hopeless

drift of her life; they had communicated faith and a dauntless courage.

Through an awesome act of will the girl had chosen to deflect the

direction of her life. Carol felt a compulsion to help her even risk to

herself. (PB 245)

She even resolves to assist Zaitoon in case the fugitive survives: “Christ! If she comes

through, I’ll do something for her, I really will” (PB 229).

Bride displays a rare awareness of women’s oppression and exploitation in the

society. Zaitoon is a child of Partition whose epic struggle for survival becomes central

to the narrative. Sidhwa questions the androcentric ideology that pervades the tribal

world to which Qasim, father of Zaitoon, belongs. In the novel, there is not mere

recognition of sexism; it is accompanied with a conscious effort by a challenge to

patriarchy. Patriarchy and Imperialism served as complementalities and rebellion.

Imperialism should also be concurrent with the contemporary subversion of the

patriarchal order. Zaitoon’s struggle highlights one of the pivotal issues in the feminist

discourse, viz., the position of, and the treatment meted out to, women.

Zaitoon is saved by Major Mushtaq. It is clearly evident in the last few lines of

the novel Bride where Sidhwa details the musings of Mushtaq over the possibility of her
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survival. Commenting on the cruel, brute treatment meted out by Zaitoon, Farrukh Khan

in “Women, Identity and Dis-Location in The Bride” equates women with the nation’s

history. He says :

Through Zaitoon’s fight and escape from the inhospitable environment and

Kohistani men, Sidhwa seems to make a statement with regard to women’s

plight in a country like Pakistan. The path to “freedom,” in this case of a

personal nature, can come about only after a “partition.” And as with the

Partition of India, those in power would use whatever means they have in

their disposal to prevent the person or a nation of attaining statehood/

selfhood. Sidhwa articulates that women, though jealously coveted by their

men from outsiders, are more at risk from the very people who are

supposed to “guard” and “value” them. Zaitoon’s story runs parallel in a

number of ways to the nation’s turbulent history. Just as the Muslims of

this country felt stifled and suppressed in India, Zaitoon knows that it is

almost impossible for her to survive in the Kohistani community. Just as

there was vehement opposition of the majority of population of India to

Pakistan’s freedom, the whole of Sakhi’s tribe hunting for Zaitoon is an apt

parallel between two stories. The desperate and trying struggle of both

displays the resolve, will-power and the courage involved in the initial

desire and the eventual achievement of freedom.

The Pakistani nation’s internal weaknesses, which can ultimately

pit the society against itself are laid bare by the way the patriarchy treats

its women. And so the imagined “homeland” where a woman can be safe
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still retains the elusiveness of an often dreamt fantasy, as the ‘dislocated’

and ‘partitioned’ relationships of Nikka and Mariam, Sakhi and Zaitoon

and Carol and Farukh dominate the domestic scene in the novel. (149)

Bride provides an incisive look in to the survival of women through a journey into

wilderness of past and innocence. This novel pictures the cruel tradition of the tribal

community into which Zaitoon, an innocent girl has been eventually married to a tribal

man. Zaitoon in her journey discovers that reality is harsh and her romantic dreams

become erroneous. She rebels against the cruel treatment of beatings and mistrust of the

tribal man. She goes against the ethics, codes and laws of the tribal community to assert

that woman is a human being. She has a code of honour and a desire to be valued and

respected and to be loved. But Zaitoon’s story is clearly a divide. It has divided herself

and her self. Makarand R.Paranjabe in “The Early Novels of Bapsi Sidhwa” says:

“Zaitoon’s story itself can be divided into three parts: her childhood (4; 5; 6); the fixing

of her marriage and the Journey to the hills (10-17); and her fight for survival (18-30)”

(95). Sidhwa shows Zaitoon’s heroic struggle for survival against all odds. With barely

enough food for a full meal and with a blanket, she ventures through the unfamiliar hills

towards the bridge across the river. All the tribes men set out to hunt and kill her for

there can be no mercy for any woman who tries to escape the tribe. Like an animal at

bay, she proceeds in the harsh and cold terrain. Barefoot; ill-clothed, she crouches up the

hills, terrified of being detected and killed. All along the tension is heightened by the

author’s shifting the focus from Zaitoon to her pursuers and from them to the army men,

those who might be able to save her.

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In her escape, Sidhwa makes Zaitoon hallucinate. She sees visions of Sakhi now

cruel. Vultures begin to trail her. Nearly a week passes since she has set out. She hasn’t

eaten anything for days. She is nearly killed by a leopard. The next morning, she reaches

the river. Recklessly, she is rapped by two strangers. Finally, delirious, bruised, half-

dead, ten days after her ordeal begins, she crawls to the base of the granite bridge that

will lead to her freedom. The tribesmen too have reached the bridge. But luckily she is

spotted by the army sentries first. Carrying her and bundle her, with her old blanket

Major makes his way across the bridge. Sakhi follows him. Major Mushtaq tells him

that the girl is dead. He lies to his fellow tribesmen that he has buried her with his own

hands. Thus, Zaitoon survives at the end of the novel in her journey in order to assert her

individuality.

Zaitoon’s odyssey from the plains to the Snow Mountains and back to the plains

is symbolic of the inner journey of the young woman from the fantasy world of love,

romance and heroes to the harsh and hostile realities of life, where man is the hunter and

exploiter, cruel and inhuman in treating woman and animal alike. It is a barbaric world

of uncivilized people that Sidhwa brings to life and light.

In fact, Sidhwa, through Zaitoon’s experiences within purdah society and Carol’s

experience from outside the purdah society, stresses the all-pervasiveness of purdah-a

mark of segregation to women. Both men and women are affected. Men never look at

women. It is stressed when Qasim is invited by Nikka to eat with them. Neither Qasim

nor Nikka’s wife looks at each other. Even their conversation is through the medium of

Nikka. Like this, an outsider is treated badly. Carol comes to realize this when she

notices three tribals gazing at her. She feels uncomfortable at the way they stare. Carol
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asks Mushtaq, “Haven’t they ever seen a woman before?” (PB 113). Mushtaq explains

that it is the segregation of the sexes that causes the men to stare at her in that insolent

manner. In fact, a meeting between Zaitoon and Carol suggests that though the Muslim

girl lacks free and easy ways of the American, underneath the shyness and modesty is an

awareness of the ways of men and women. Niaz Zaman in “Images of Purdah in Bapsi

Sidhwa’s Novels” stresses that

the segregation of the sexes, the separation into men’s spheres and

women’s, the world outside and the world within, creates a world highly

charged with sexuality. It may be noted that in ordinary circumstances

most children in third world countries sleep in the same room as their

parents and therefore aware of what goes on in the marriage bed. Zaitoon,

however, with no family, is not given a glimpse into these mysteries.

Nevertheless, despite this innocence, Zaitoon lives in the highly charged

atmosphere that emerges from enforced segregation. (163)

Zaitoon is not ready to be a martyr to the imaginary insults and infidelity that is attributed

to her by her husband. Her husband, Sakhi’s, a tribal man’s thoughtless, cruel and

inhuman behaviour drives her to despair and to the only alternative of running away.

Sidhwa presents in a 16 year-old Zaitoon a powerful character who prefers death in the

mountains to dying slowly and gradually, to being beaten into a spiritless woman like her

mother-in-law, Hamida. She knows that escaping is almost impossible. The mountains

are treacherously pathless. She even does not know where she would be going at the end

of her journey. She simply feels that if she could escape and cross the bridge, she may

get help. To avoid being caught up by the members of her family, she chooses an
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indirect, difficult and untrodden path and is lost in the mountains: “Zaitoon knew that

somewhere in the serpentine vaults of the ravine and in the glacier-riven valleys she had

lost her direction, and that the river gorge could be anywhere in the myriad furrows

between the mountains [...] and mountains closed in on her like a pack of wolves” (PB

197). The mountain she had loved, whose magic and splendour she had admired, were

now her enemy, a hostile and inscrutable menace.

For nine days and nights Zaitoon wanders the mountains like a wounded animal

hunted by the tribal men. At times, she has glimpse of her life’s end, her destiny of dying

at the hands of her husband : “She feels him move and her destiny is compressed into

seconds. She hurtles in a short-cut through all the wonders and wisdom of a life unlived.

Instantly old, her tenure spent, she is ripe to die” (PB 235). She is aware of Sakhi and his

relentless pride and sense of honour; “for him it is not an act of personal vengeance; he is

dispensing justice—the conscience and weight of his race are behind him” (PB 235).

Experiencing the terrific claws of death, Zaitoon has an unexpected insight into

the future that was to be her destiny. It is a common one to any woman of the mountain

tribal world. The tribal woman has to suffer physically, mentally and sexually as it seems

to be patriarchal in nature. Realising this Zaitoon tries to escape from her prison-like

conditions. It is not escaping to freedom. She instinctively hides herself courageously to

survive. She succeeds in her struggle to reach freedom by the timely help of Major

Mushtaq and his military camp. Zaitoon’s decision to run away is not due to militant

feminism or deliberate defiance of male order. She is portrayed as a device, affectionate,

obedient child. She has become a symbol of all oppressed and exploited women. Hers is
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a spiritual struggle to survive. Her escape to freedom is a great victory against the

oppressive system.

The atmosphere of dislocation and partition is sustained throughout Bride. Carol

is a character in dislocation with her environment in Pakistan and in a way ‘Partitioned’

from her home and culture in America. She is totally an alien to the culture and her

surroundings. She has left America but is unwilling to adapt to the way of life of the

strange customs and traditions of Pakistan. They are inferior to her civilized way of life.

What she had imagined to be exotic has failed to live up to the

harsh image of reality, as it is apparent in her personal relationship with

her husband, Farukh; yet, she chooses to stay in Pakistan because it is still

better than the life she had in San Jose [...]. Carol chooses to stay in

Pakistan because she is able to have an identity which would have been

non-existent if she had continued to work as a shop-assistant in a

departmental store in San Jose. Sidhwa conveys the tears and boredom of

a single woman worker by making Carol stay in Pakistan, with its alien

and sometimes claustrophobic culture, rather than return to the drudgery

of American life that she would lead if she chose to go back. And so

Carol chooses not to renew her contacts with the land and culture that is

Hers. (Farukh Khan 144-145)

Sidhwa provides a parallel to Zaitoon’s romantic fantasies and frustration by introducing

the American shop girl and college drop-out Carol. Both Zaitoon and Carol are shocked

by their husband’s moral code and sense of honour. As an ordinary young American

working woman in a store, Carol has not completed her studies. To her, Pakistan appears
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to be a land of romance and adventure, and Farukh seems an answer to all her drudgery in

life. Though she fails to understand the world of veils and Zenana, after a year or so, she

slowly realizes that “the repressed erotic climate was beginning to affect her. In the

States, what she had thought was a unique attraction for Farukh, had in fact been her

fascination with the exotic, and later the attraction had disconcertingly extended itself to

include his friends and relatives-and even acquaintances” (PB 176). At first, she hardly

understands that her causal American ways, in a country where few women were seen

unveiled, attracted the men. She is flattered by this attention and does not realize that for

the men it is merely a passing affair. She is impressed by the bronze liquid-eyed men of

Pakistan. Though she tries to conform to the norms of the country, Farukh’s jealousy

combined with the flattering attention she receives shatters her resistance when she

comes across Farukh’s friend Major Mushtaq.

The Major is an attractive handsome young man who seems to have stepped out

of the romantic poetry. In Farukh’s absence she flirts with him and thinks that she has

really fallen in love with him. She decides to divorce Farukh and marry Mushtaq since

“growing up in the 1950s, Carol was inexorably conditioned to marriage. She had only

one recourse with which to reconcile her feelings and her actions. She had found her

love. He must marry her” (PB 179). Little does she realize that in Pakistan men marry

their cousins and as Mushtaq explains: “In spite of what you hear about our being able to

have four wives, we take marriage and divorce very seriously. It involves more than just

emotions. It’s a social responsibility [...] For one thing, at the very least, my wife’s life

would become unbearably confined, drab and unhappy. And we’re cousins, you know,

our families would make my life-and yours-miserable. We’d be ostracized” (PB 181).
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For Mushtaq, it is one thing to have an affair with the American woman who is

liberal in her ways, since she could fulfill his need for a woman in the loneliness of his

remote posting, and another thing to have a permanent relationship of marriage with the

wife of his friend. Besides, he cannot even dream of forsaking his wife and children and

distinctly points out the differences between the two ways of life: “you’d find her

[Zaitoon’s] life in the Zenana with the other woman pitifully limited and claustrophobic-

she’d probably find yours [...] terrifyingly insecure and needlessly competitive” (PB

180).

After being rejected by Mushtaq, Carol turns back to Farukh, thinks of having

children, and making her marriage successful. She even dreams of going into the tribal

world and imagines herself a goddess ministering and enlightening the handsome savages

and cavemen. But this fantasy, too, is shattered when she comes across a young tribal

woman’s head bobbing up and down in the dark waters of the river. In a crude and

painful manner, all her romance and fantasy crush to disillusion.

Carol faces the realities of woman’s life in the east and comprehends fully the

fallacy of her fantasies: “That’s really what’s behind all the gallant and protective

behaviour I’ve loved so much here, isn’t it? I felt very special, and all the time I didn’t

matter to you any more than that girl does as an individual to those tribals, not any more

than a bitch in heat” (PB 224). The novelist poignantly describes her disillusion with life:

“Her fantasy, set off by his startling handsomeness, his intense animalism, and her

fascination with tribal lore and romantic savagery-took wing” (PB 221) only to be

shattered into thousand pieces. She could not even salvage her marriage to Farukh as she

has glimpses of the horror of generations of cloistered womanhood. The encounter with
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the floating face of a tribal girl triggers the avalanche of emotions bringing her firmly to

the ground. She realizes the difference between the two cultures. In spite of her living in

a “splendid modern structure surrounded by the antiquity of priceless possessions she has

glimpses in the inner recesses of England and-America educated rich Pakistani women’s

minds and their insecure, uncivilized, cruel and brutal World dominated by men. She

becomes fully conscious of her plight; her independent attitudes would get her killed”

(PB 227). Sidhwa brings into focus the issue of Pakistani women’s plight through the

eyes of an outsider, an American bride of the Pakistani man. This is apprehended

through the plight of Zaitoon: “That girl has unlocked a mystery, affording a telepathic

peep hole through which Carol had a glimpse of her condition and the fateful condition of

girls like her” (PB 228).

Carol’s life so far has been a hopeless drift but Zaitoon with her dauntless courage

and faith serves as a brake and deflects the direction of her life. Carol from the free

world of fair and just social order can think in terms of her individuality but Zaitoon has

no such notions; she simply does not wish to be a role-model of Hamida, always

cowering, frightened to death and at the mercy of the cruel code of honour of man. She

instinctively chooses to be herself. Sidhwa uses the image of the crippled but flying bird

to emphasize the condition of Zaitoon. Such a bird cannot be easily caged or tamed even

if it is maimed. Her fight is against both man and nature, which she can vanquish

through her sheer will-power, “the strength of nature, a force, perhaps of God, within

one”, (PB 229). The novelist quotes the poet Iqbal here:

Khudi ko kar buland itna,

Heighten your ‘Khudi’ to such majesty,

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Ke har takdeer say pahalay,

that before every turn of fate

Khuda banday say khud poochay,

God himself asks man –

‘Bata teri raza kya hai?’

‘Tell me, what do you wish?’ (PB 229)

Zaitoon. despite Miriam’s objections, is sent to school but taken off when she is eleven

as soon as she begins to menstruate. From then on, she spends her time in segregation of

the Zenanna. Life in the Zenanna does not offer much. In Zenanna, she can experience

“smells of urine, stale food and cooking hung in the unventilated air, churning slowly,

room to room; permeating wood, brick and mortar” (PB 56). Women are segregated and

curtailed. It is Carol through whom Sidhwa speaks when she cries out against the

oppression of women. The last resolve as well as her near-oath to herself later, “Christ!

If she comes through I’ll do something for her, I really will” (PB 229). gives credence to

one of Mushtaq’s earlier-mentioned options for Zaitoon at the end of the book: that she

will be helped by Carol and Farukh. Sidhwa uses Iqbal’s poetry to pay the ultimate

tribute to Zaitoon’s struggle.

Even though Carol has the veneer of sophistication and gentility, she is so

oppressed and suppressed by Farukh. Farukh is overbearingly possessive of her. He is

also naggingly jealous. Like Sakhi, who regularly beats Zaitoon, he never beats Carol,

unlike Zaitoon, Carol begins to have an affair with Mushtaq on her own. Yet, slowly she

begins to realize that Major Mushtaq values her primarily as a sexual object. Later, when

she hears the story of Zaitoon, and more particularly the words of Mushtaq “Oh, women
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get killed for one reason or another” (PB 223), she begins to imagine insults, and so on.

Women are actually killed for imagined insults, family honour and infidelity. Later,

when Mushtaq says that if he happened to be Farukh, he would kill her for her infidelity,

Carol realises her position. Sidhwa relates :

Suddenly a great deal becomes clear to her. ‘So that’s all I mean to you’

she said. ‘That’s really what’s behind all the gallant and protective

behaviour. I’ve loved so much here, isn’t it? I felt very special and all the

time. I didn’t matter to you anymore than that girl does an individual to

those tribals, not any more than a bitch in heat. You make me sick. All of

you’ (PB 224)

In Bride, though Zaitoon is the heroine of the novel, it is through Carol that Sidhwa

reveals the treatment of a Western, upper-class woman in the male-dominated society.

Carol is a typically middle-class American of the sixties of the twentieth century by birth

and upbringing. After studying at Berkeley, while working as a sales girl in a cosmetic

store, she falls in love with Farukh , a Pakistani Engineering student. Equally, Zaitoon’s

proposed entry into an alien culture is a reflection of the Carol- Farukh relationship. Both

the women have moved from relatively open cultures into closed cultures. In fact,

Zaitoon and Carol so on often surrender to sexual fantasies of male conquest and social

fantasies of conquering the new territory of their husband’s world. And it is the failure of

these fantasies which pushes them to decide to escape in various ways. The worst fate is

assigned to Zaitoon. First of all she is used as a sacrifice by Qasim to re-establish his link

with his homeland and then she is left in a totally alien and hostile environment without

knowing what identity to assume. She is almost raped by Sakhi on their first night of
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marriage. On top of that, Sakhi, in accordance with the expectations of a man’s role in

Kohistani traditions, starts the frequent and brutal beatings in order to tame Zaitoon

whenever she dares to go against his wishes. She is a virtual prisoner with Sakhi being

the omniscient being, who knows every move she makes. She is abused and battered

routinely. In this world of male chauvinism, being a woman almost implies being owned

and being like a beast of burden. The violence against the women in the tribal society is

more shocking. Sidhwa makes it quite clear and creates significant events to sharply

focus the situation of life into which Zaitoon finds herself. She is revulsed by the faces

around her, the rubbery bread offered to her and the cave like huts instead of the rosy

picture of her dreams. She is haunted by the unpleasantness around her and dreams about

her “standing by the river, admiring its vivid colours, when a hand had come out of the

ice-blue depths and dragged her in, pulling her down, down” (PB 156). Her fear

crystallizes. She senses the savagery of the people, their poverty and what the harshness

of their fight for survival had made them. “Her mind revolts at the certainty that to share

their lives she would have to become like them” (PB 156). In her desperation, she urges

her father to take her back with him for she feels that “I will die rather than live here”

(PB 157). The novelist places Zaitoon in the unfamiliar and savage surroundings and

describes fully the mountain people and their life with her Dickensian insight. The

conflict at this stage is presented deftly. To Qasim, the mountain man, his honour is

dearer to him than his own life or his daughter’s life even though he has a nagging fear

for the girl’s life. Qasim had an unreasoning impulse to take her back with him on some

pretext or other. He should have listened to the child’s violent plea the night they arrived.

“His departure imminent, he felt he had acted in undue haste. Too late, he tried to fight
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this wave of sentimentality and fear” (PB 166). But he seeks consolation in the fact that

his own old fervent longing to be with his blood would be realized through Zaitoon’s

marriage to Sakhi. The novelist has added a dimension to Qasim’s character by revealing

this detail. Man’s wish to realize his own dreams even by sacrificing his own child’s life

to insecurity and hardships of the cruel traditions of the tribal men is fully explored by

Sidhwa. Gita Viswanath in “Modes of Resistance in the South-Asian Novel: A Study of

the Fiction by Bapsi Sidhwa, Rohinton Mistry and Yasmine Gooneradne” says: “Zaitoon,

a young girl is victimized by the debilitating patriarchal prescriptions of an insular tribal

society. The woman is held as repository of moral values in a patriarchal society. Within

this ideological framework, Zaitoon signifies the ‘woman-as-victim paradigm in much

feminist writing” (39). Sakhi stands between her and freedom. The rigorous code of

honour of the tribal society in Kohistan rests on notions of sexual superiority and

possessiveness. Yunus khan, brother of Sakhi, taunts him for not being manly enough to

control his wife. He says: “How is your wife from the plains? You know, she requires a

man to control her” (PB 170). In the perverse value system of the tribal society, the

honour of a man is judged by how well he can oppress his women. Sakhi exercises his

right of proprietorship on the wedding night itself. He says to his bride: “‘It’s my cunt!”

(PB 102). In this context, the violence is not only physical, but also verbal and sexual.

In the novel Bride, Zaitoon’s and Carol’s stories remind one of the position and

treatment of women in a male dominated society. The picture of the oppression and

degradation of women is strengthened by the images of violence, oppression and

subjugation of woman. In fact, the tribal society treats women as valuable commodities.

“Any girl-and he had made sure this one was able--bodied-was worth more than the loan
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due” (PB 7) thinks Qasim’s father when a fellow clansman offers him his daughter in lieu

of a loan that he owes. Afshan, the woman to be Qasim’s wife is fifteen, five years older

than Qasim, yet has no choice but to accept him. Qasim’s father’s decision to give the

girl to his son is in fact generous because “To begin with he had thought of marrying the

girl himself. He had only one wife; but in a twinge of parental conscience, he decided to

bestow the girl on Qasim. It was his first duty” (PB 8).

A few years later, before the marriage is consummated, Afshan is really raped by

a stranger when he sees her bathing, protected by Qasim alone, who is only a boy. The

first chapter in Bride reveals the ill-treatment of women in the novel. Women are

bartered and traded like commodities. It is as Makarand R. Paranjape remarks in “The

Novels of Bapsi Sidhwa”: “Once married, they become part of the property of their

husbands which the latter must protect; otherwise someone else may molest them.

Finally, they have no choice but to accept whatever husband is chosen for them by their

fathers; first they belong to their fathers, then to their husbands” (94).

Bride is a damning indictment of the Kohistani community in particular and the

Pakistani society in general with regard to its brutal treatment of women. The women are

marginalized. Qasim is offered as a bride at the tender age of 10. Afshan is sold into

marriage to compensate for her father’s failure to come up with money. It makes woman

as a bargaining commodity. K. Nirupa Rani in “Gender and Imagination in Bapsi

Sidhwa’s Fiction” says: “The American and Pakistani brides become subjects of their

husband’s suspicion and both take pragmatic decisions to overcome their crises. Carol

decides to make it up to Farukh and contemplates to have a child to bring anchorage to

her loveless marriage. Zaitoon decides to take a visionary course of action and runs
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away, knowing fully well that the punishment for such an act is death” (121). There is a

world of difference between these two women.

Both Zaitoon and Carol are lured by their romantic imagination into an immense

journey which deposits them on either side of the Indus in the high Karakoram. For both

women, marriage is more than the literal sense a journey to a foreign land. For Carol, it

is an escape from disappointment and for Zaitoon, the crossing of an imperative divide

between daughter and wife. They uniformly share a romantic yearning for a larger life

than the conventions of their respective cultures. Comparing Zaitoon and Carol in Bride,

Huma Ibrahim in “Transnational Migrations and the Debate of English Writing in / of

Pakistan” says :

In Bride cultural explanation tends to be overdone. The

comparison between the women sticks out when perhaps it was not even

intended as stereotypical. The Pakistani woman endures suffering as a

good victim must, reinforcing Western stereotypes about women from the

“Third World”. She has no clue about her social or sexual status or

identity and belongs to a working class family, whereas the American

woman by virtue of her marriage is middle-class and can enjoy a degree of

sexual freedom to which her social and national status entitle her. The

grand scheme of the novel is betrayed because it ends up ridiculing—even

if it does not mean to—painful historical facts by reducing them to a soap-

opera-like scenario. This modus tends to undercut Sidhwa’s own purpose.

She seems to suspend rather than illuminate the strife during

independence. (397)
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In Bride, Zaitoon and Carol are also contrasted with one another side by side by Sidhwa.

Zaitoon is uprooted at a much earlier stage. She knows only the hubub of the bazar and

the frowsy comforts of Purdah. Carol is an American shop-girl and college drop-out.

Both are lived by their romantic imaginations. Both of them have taken marriage as a

journey to the foreign land. For Carol, it is an escape from disappointment. And for

Zaitoon, marriage is a transformation. But neither feels content in marriage. Carol’s

dreams are satisfied neither by her wealthy Pakistan’s husband nor by her dashing lover.

Carol fantasises about what her life would have been like had she married Sakhi, the

young tribal, instead of Zaitoon. She imagines :

He would think her so special... In the remote reaches of his magnificent

mountains, she would enlighten a clan of handsome savages and cavemen.

She would be their wise, beloved goddess ministering Aspro and diarrhoea

pills... she would champion their causes and focus the benign glare of

American as a demi god on these beautiful people. (PB 221-22)

Commenting on this attitude, Cicely Havely in “Patterns of Migration in the Works of

Bapsi Sidhwa” says : “Zaitoon’s most brutally destroyed day-dreams do not share Carol’s

imperialist tinge, but both-ironically-share a romantic yearning for a larger life than the

conventions of their respective cultures have previously permitted. Putting the American

in much the same boat as the Pakistani is a deft touch which not only reminds her western

readers that all migrations are in their direction, but modifies the target of the novel’s

critical energy” (66).

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Perhaps the reason behind Sidhwa’s inclusion of the Mushtaq-Carol Sub-plot,

apart from initiating Zaitoon’s rescue, is to provide another perspective on purdah. As an

American married to a Pakistani, Carol comes face to face with a society very different

from the one she has known. Zaitoon is part of purdah society. Carol is outside it, but, by

virtue of her marriage, forced to come to grips with it. Carol’s boredom and infidelity

become less important than her realisation that women, both Pakistani and American,

belonging to a purdah or non-purdah society, are equally vulnerable. What is, therefore,

important is that women stand by women. Had Carol not been aware of Zaitoon’s fierce

desire to live, she would not have expressed so strongly her own vulnerability and thus

goaded Mushtaq to action when the time came. But while Zaitoon is saved - and

hopefully finds some measure of happiness with the orderly - Carol leaves Pakistan

empty-handed. All Pakistan can do is to hurt her. It is a civilisation “too ancient, too

different” (PB 229).

Through her descriptions of Zaitoon’s experiences within purdah society and

Carol’s experience from outside, Sidhwa stresses the all-pervasiveness of purdah. Both

men and women are affected. Women do not raise their eyes to look at men, nor do men

in their turn raise their eyes to look at women. Thus, when Qasim first comes to Lahore

and stays at the refugee camp, he becomes friendly with Nikka. Nikka invites Qasirn to

eat with them. Neither Qasirn nor Nikka’s wife look at each other, and even conversation

is through the medium of Nikka.

They sat on the ground in a rough circle. Miriam shaded her candid heavy

features with her chaddar, and Qasirn did not glance her way even one:.

When she told her husband,” Ask your friend if he would like to have ,this
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chapatti,” Qasim, his eyes riveted to the ground, replied, ‘Thank you,

sister, I have had my fill’. (PB 38)

But an outsider is not given this same respect. Carol comes to realise this when she

notices three tribals gazing at her. She feels uncomfortable at the way they stare.

“Haven’t they ever seen a woman before?” (PB 113) Carol asks Mushtaq. Mushtaq

explains that it is the segregation of the sexes that causes men to stare at her in that

insolent manner.

Of course, you only know the sophisticated, those Pakistanis who have

learned to mix socially - but in these settlements a man may talk only with

unmarriageable women–his mother, his sisters, aunts, and grandmothers—

a tribesman’s covetous look at the wrong c1answoman provokes a

murderous feud. They instinctively lower their eyes as a mark of respect.

But let them spy an outsider and they go berserk in an agony of

sightseeing! Don’t take it personally. Any woman, whether from the

Punjab or from America, evokes the same attention. (PB 113)

Modesty, however, is as much a veil as the actual garment. Underneath the lowered eyes,

as underneath the all-encompassing burka, lurks a latent sexuality. A meeting between

Zaitoon and Carol suggests that, though the Muslim girl lacks the free and easy ways of

the American, underneath the shyness and modesty is an awareness of the ways of men

and women. Carol asks Zaitoon about her marriage. The incorrect grammar and the

American accent make Zaitoon smile. Carol understands that Zaitoon is too shy to

respond. Farukh, her husband, tells her that she should not have asked that question.
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“Our women, particularly the young girls, are modest, you know” (PB 133). Furious at

the rebuke, Carol remarks that Pakistan has one of the highest birth-rates in the world.

Was it achieved by immaculate conception? she asks. (The confusion is as much

Sidhwa’s as her character’s. Immaculate conception does not refer to Mary’s conception

of Christ.) Mushtaq attempts to mend matters. The girl was just nervous, he says, and

notes, “Beneath their shyness, these little girls can be delightfully earthy, you know” (PB

133).

Sidhwa stresses that the segregation of the sexes, creates a world highly charged

with sexuality. Zaitoon lives in the highly charged atmosphere that emerges from

enforced segregation. The little girl, otherwise so innocent, learns how to flirt. One of

the lessons she learns is from the movies. The coy love scenes of Indo-Pakistani movies,

the looks and dances, are eagerly imitated by Zaitoon. Finding no other male to try these

on, she practises them occasionally on Qasim - to his bewilderment. She is also able to

practise these charms during the marriage festivities of which there are plenty.

Jumping and gyrating, making eyes and winking, shaking her shoulders to

set her adolescent breasts a tremor, she flaunted her body with guileless

abandon ....

The absence of men permitted an atmosphere of abandon within the

zenana. Occasionally youths and even young men burst in, grinning

mischievously. The dancing stopped and they were shooed out in good-

natured outrage. Old men were sometimes invited to watch the girls’

antics and participate in the fun. (PB 88)

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The dance that Zaitoon performs in private in front of an audience of women is a

courtesan’s dance, provocative and erotic. Paradoxically, the courtesans of Hira Mandi

begin their evening’s entertainment with a classic Kathai. Only gradually do these

dances turn erotic, even ending occasionally - after suitable remuneration - in a classical

striptease. Decorum is, however, preserved. Despite the sensuality and erotic nature of

the dance, the dancer purports to be nothing other than a dancer. The sexually excited

men tear the naked woman to pieces, the madam doctors their drink. Thus, when the

dance ends, and the dancer, naked but salaaming in classic fashion, takes her departure,

Qasim, Nikka, the American and his friend are slumped among the cushions, unable to

stir.

The major female figures, like Zaitoon, Carol and Mariam (Nikka, the shop

vendor’s wife) are confined within the narrow framework of rules imposed in general by

the patriarchal society and the male figures of the household in particular. They are not

expected to play any pivotal role in the “significant” decisions, even though their feelings

and their whole being might be at stake. This aspect of their suppression is abundantly

enunciated by the treatment meted out to the young Afshan.

The rules for women of the household are never fixed and continuously shifting

thus preventing one from resisting and creates an unstable atmosphere which means that

“wife” is an ambiguous and not a closed position. The women become “spaces” on

which the “status” of “their” men is marked, they could either be husbands, fathers or

brothers. The notions of “honour,” “shame,” and “social position” are all imposed on a

woman’s body and actions attain honour and status. Thus, there is an incessant obsession

with men to have “control” over their women. The society places man’s “honour” in the
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achievement of his woman’s rather than his own. The wives/women, it seems, have to

know what “needs” to be done. As Nikka established himself in his business: “Mariam,

reflecting her husband’s rising status and respectability, took to observing strict purdah.

She seldom ventured out without her veil” (PB 51).

Afshan is married to Qasim. She has a knacking ability to adapt herself to the

new environment. She easily wins the love of Qasim’s mother. Her feelings towards

Qasim are maternal. Sidhwa details : “He loved her vivacious, girlish ways and was

totally won by her affection. He teased her and played pranks, when he was particularly

unkind or obdurate his wife and his mother combined to give him a thrashing. Then

Qasim would shout, ‘I am your husband. How dare you’ and he would hate her” (PB 10).

Afshan is assertive enough to protect her space in her personal life.

Zaitoon’s escape from the Kohistani tribal world is a victory against the dominant

patriarchal society. It becomes clear even to old Hamida, Sakhi’s mother, though she

herself belongs to the tribal world of Kohistan. In fact, Sidhwa details : “she, who had

been so proud and valiant and whole heartedly subservient to the ruthless code of her

forebears, now loathed it with all her heart” (PB 191). However, she is too weak and old

to change anything. Hamida, once full and pretty, now looks as a hideous hag, aged

prematurely at only forty by the hard labour and disease. She is brutally beaten by her

son. She is already battered by her husband.

In Bride, Sidhwa portrays that women are at ease and truly themselves when they

inhabit their own created shadows together in the absence of men. The Zenana, for

example, is seen as a refuge from the male-world. It is described as “a domain given

over to procreation, female odours and the interminable care of children [...] Redolent of
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easy hospitality, the benign squalor in the women’s quarters inexorably drew Zaitoon, as

it did all its inmates, into the mindless, velvet vortex of the womb” (PB 56). Considering

the very existence in Zenana, Ralph J. Crane in “’A Passion for History and for Truth

Telling’ : The Early Novels of Bapsi Sidhwa” observes negatively :

But, of course, this also emphasizes once more the sexual apartheid within

Pakistani society. The positive sisterhood of the Zenana, or women’s

quarters, is often by the image of the Zenana as a prison-the women are

described as inmates-while the comfort and safety of the ‘velvet vortex of

the womb’ is partially denied by the fact that it is also a ‘domain given

over to procreation’ and thus not entirely free from the influence of men.

(52)

In Bride, Sidhwa uses burkha as a symbol of shadow and silence. When Zaitoon

borrows a burkha she can walk past her father unrecognised, but the tribal women are not

allowed to wear a burkha. Similarly, Carol, offended by the stares of a group of tribal

men sarcastically comments : “May be I should wear a burkah” (PB 113). It suggests

that burkha will be a shadow which will hide her and metamorphosize her into an

anonymous part of a woman kind. However, in the novel, Zaitoon wins over her decision

to leave the society. She denies purdah. She can be compared to other women characters

too. Makarand R. Paranjape in “The Early Novels of Bapsi Sidhwa” compares Zaitoon to

other women characters in the novel, when he says :

Zaitoon’s triumph can be appreciated properly only when she is compared

with the prominent images of the other women in the novel : Afshan,

married to Qasim, a boy of ten, in lieu of a loan, Miriam, matronly and

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domesticated, always in purdah; the grotesque, misshapen prostitute, and

Shahnaz the high-class courtesan; Hamida, a woman broken by the hard

life in the hills, beaten by her own son; Carol, the American wife of

Farukh, sexually exploited by Major Mushtaq; the unknown tribal girl,

decapitated, head floating in a dirty pond; and the crazy beggar woman of

Lawrence Gardens, a plaything of her rapists. Against these images,

Zaitoon’s choice of freedom over slavery, her rejection of the oppressive

and brutal tribal society, her courageous and heroic struggle for survival

against impossible odds-all these are a testimony to the fighting spirit of

the weak and the crushed. (104)

As Lenny in Man is marginal, Ayah too is marginal. She is a Hindu in a primarily

Muslim Community. She creates Pakistan before partition around her. Sikhs, Muslims,

Hindus, a Chinaman and various other men circle about her. They create communities.

Ayah’s presence erases all borders between them. Commenting on the character of Ayah

in Man, V.L.V.N. Narendra Kumar in Parsee Novel says :

Ayah, an eighteen-year old Hindu, is at the centre of Lennie’s scheme of

things. The nexus between Lennie’s world of childish pleasures and

innocence and the fast-changing ambience is realised in Ice-Candy-Man

whose presence is exhilarating for the young child. Ayah’s amorous

adventures become central to Lennie’s perceptions. If the covetous

glances of Ayah’s admirers including the Masseur and Ice-Candy-Man

awaken her to sexuality and passion, the passes of ‘holy’ men and dusty

old beggars give her a glimpse of the adult life. Initially her world is made
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secure by strong, courageous and loving women like Rodabai and the

young Ayah. Sidhwa very clearly establishes in the narrative that Parsee

women are quite strong and their strength is revealed in moments of crisis.

For Lennie, the process of growing up, of seeking to understand the adult

world is largely an attempt to make sense of the senseless events of the

Partition. (48)

In Man, Lenny’s marginality and her separation from the colonizing forces is found in

the second vignette of the novel. She and her Ayah are accosted by an Englishman who

intends to straighten out Ayah’s presumed laziness for letting Lenny ride in the pram.

He begins to scold Ayah, who responds by telling the Englishman that Lenny cannot

walk because she becomes tired. He continues to scold until Lenny lifts her pants and

shows him the braces on her legs. He is startled at first, but he begins again to insist that

Lenny be made to walk. By the time he recovers his voice, however, Ayah and Lenny

are already strolling away (ICM 2). This section points out several borders in the novel.

It shows not only the borders between the colonizing British and the indigenous people,

but it also reveals the borders between the sick and the well, a border Lenny glories in.

In addition, this section shows that though marginality may mean a lowering of status

for the marginalized, it can also have its benefits, for one outside the structure is not

always affected by its mores.

So Lenny is marginal in several ways, but marginality in Man cannot be

confused with impotence. Ayah is also a marginal. She is a Hindu in a primarily

Muslim community. Ayah’s pacifying presence erases all borders. Lenny first begins to

feel that Ayah’s pacifying influence is waning when they join the Masseur, Ice-Candy-
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Man, and a variety of other suitors in a Lahore restaurant. An argument over the

position of Lahore after the impending Partition swirls around Lenny and Ayah as they

sit down, and though Masseur says, “There are no differences among friends [...] We

will stand by each other”, (ICM 131) but Lenny feels uncomfortable. Her discomfort

comes not only in the realization that there are thirteen of them sitting around the table,

but also from the synesthesia she experiences while Ayah’s friends argue. She says:

Blue envy; green avidity; the grey and black stirring of predators and the

incipient distillation of fear pin their prey. A slimy gray-green balloon

forms beneath my shut lids. There is something so dangerous about the

tangible colors the passion around me have assumed that I blink open my

eyes and sit up. (ICM 132)

So, marginality does not mean impotence. Ayah provides a clear example of the dangers

the marginal faces when the society in which he or she is marginalized and changes its

borders. For Ayah, this shifting of the margins presents her scorned suitors with an

opportunity to reclaim the control she has held over them. It is Ice-Candy-Man who

seizes the opportunity to hold her at the end of the novel. Commenting on the character

portrayal of Ice-Candy-Man, Robert L. Ross in “The Search for Community in Bapsi

Sidhwa’s Novels” says :

The personification of evil and the ever-present menace to community,

Ice- Candy-Man still emerges as a feckless kind of villain. It is no small

wonder that the narrator Lenny, who has succumbed to his charm and

inadvertently betrayed her beloved Ayah, still pities him. Sidhwa has said

that Ice-Candy-Man represents the remote (and icy?) politicians who

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decide the fate of millions, their opinions shifting with the winds, their

motives sometimes noble and sometimes selfish. Like them, Ice-Candy-

Man changes, slipping from one role to another. When ice-candy-man

sales plummet in cold weather, he turns into a birdman who takes pride in

deceiving his customers. At another point, he becomes “Allah’s

telephone,” posing as a holy man with a direct line to the Al-mighty and

apologizing to his clients that Allah has “been busy of late ... You know;

all this Indian independence business.” (107) First a seller of an Asian

luxury that melts and has no substance, then a trickster with flying things,

than a holy pretender, Ice-Candy-Man weaves in and out of the action to

take up, at last, the despicable profession of pimping. (75)

It is he who makes Ayah a prostitute in Hira Mandi and later marries her. Commenting

on the character of Ayah in Man, Subhash Chandra in “Ice-Candy-Man : A Feminist

Perspective” states : “The Ayah is a flame of sensuousness and female vitality around

whom the male moths hover constantly and hanker for the sexual warmth she radiates.

She acts like the queen bee who controls the actions and emotions of her male admirers :

the Fullattis tuted cook, the Government House gardener, the butcher, the compactly

musscled ‘head and body masseur’ and the Ice-Candy-Man” (178). She is a fierce

woman. She epitomizes femininity of a female. She infuses in Lenny the idea of

independence and choice. She is flirtatious and coquettish. She is fully aware of herself.

She is confident of herself and her self. She is fiercely loyal to the interests of the family

she serves. She is extremely protective of Lenny. She is emotionally attached to her like

a mother. She suffers during the partition. She is abducted by the cronies of the Ice-
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Candy-Man. She is ravished and raped by the hoodlums and is kept as Ice-Candy-Man’s

mistress for sometime. Then she is forced to become the Ice-Candy-Man’s bride. Her

name is changed from Shanta to Mumtaz and she is kept at a kotha even after her

marriage. She can be taken as a colonial construct which is deconstructed by the Ice-

Candy-Man after the partition of the Indian sub-continent. So that only Manju Jaidka in

“Hyphenated Perspectives on the Cracking of India : Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy-Man”

is of the opinion that “Etymologically, ‘ayah’ is a colonial construct the response of a

servant to a master, meaning ‘I’m coming’” (47). Ayah’s case illustrates the fact that the

sexuality of a woman makes her vulnerable. The Ayah is exposed to violence because of

her radiance she exudes, her earthiness, her bouncy walk and rotund appeal. She belongs

to the minority Hindus Community in Muslim dominated area. She becomes an easy

target, a scapegoat and a symbol of ‘other’.

In Man, when the riots erupt, the Ice-Candy-Man seizes his chance to debase the

Ayah and leads a Muslim mob to Lenny’s house. The Parsi family and its Muslim

servants hide the Ayah, but Lenny unwittingly betrays her. Ayah is dragged away by the

mob and raped. After her degradation, the Ice-Candy-Man sets up her in a house in the

prostitutes’ Quarters in Lahore. Having proved his mastery over her, he now professes to

be crazily in love with her and wants to marry her. She, having been betrayed by him and

physically abused by the mob, refuses to accept him. Ayah suffers in silence. The novel

as a whole discusses the issue of sexual transgression. Matti Katherine Pennebaker in

“The Will of Men: Victimization of Women During India’s Partition” says: “The fact that

Ayah is forced to prostitute her body and coerced into having sex with Ice-Candy-Man

indicates that women’s bodies have been historically become territory in which men act
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out their aggression” (http://www.tamu.edu/chr/agora/summeroo/Pennebaker.pdf).

Commenting on Ayah’s violence Harveen Sachdeva Mann also in “’Cracking India’ :

Minority Women Writers and the Contentious Margins of Indian Nationalist Discourse”

brings out the pathos of her life in the following words :

Thus marked by her gender and religion as well as class, Ayah

unsurprisingly, becomes the site upon which the violence inherent in

nationalist discourse is emplotted. Abducted during the post-Partition

atrocities by some of the very men who earlier wooed her with words,

Ayah is herself rendered voiceless. “The resisting curve of her throat

opening her mouth like [a] dead child’s screamless mouth” (183). Gang-

raped and forced into prostitution, she is renamed Mumtaz by Ice-Candy-

Man thereby becoming the ironic contemporary reincarnation of Mumtaz

Mahal, a modern-day “Exalted of the Palace” of Hira Mandi, the red-light

district of Lahore, rather than of Shah Jechan’s lavish residence.

Condemned to eternally remember the past. Sidhwa’s “Mumtaz” is “not

alive” (262) in India and Pakistan’s post-Independence present; and even

as she joins her family in Amritsar at the end of the novel, her future is

ambivalent; perhaps they will disown her because of what they regard as

her fallen past; perhaps she will be married to whoever will have her.

What is certain, however, is that she will continue to play a gendered role

in the story of patriarchal familial relations, whether at the macrocosmic

level of India and Pakistan, or at the microcosmic level of consanguinal

relations, so that her offhand statement. “What’s it to us if Jinnah, Nehru

 147

and Patel fight? They are not fighting our fight” (75), carries particular

significance for women in the patriarchal arena of nationalism. (74-75)

The female protagonist of Sidhwa ‘s Brat, Fcroza is sent to America, for a short period,

to distance her from the attentions of an unacceptable young boy. Feroza, a Parsi girl, is

placed in a moderately modern Karachi society where even the Ayahs and the sweeper’s

wife asked, “What are these women’s rights?”. The ladies of the Parsi families also object

if the mullahs ask their daughters to cover their heads. Apparently, Feroza’s family,

quite progressive in their life-style, had overcome the bane of gender discrimination but a

little delving unearths the discrepancy between appearance and reality. The iron-willed

matriarch of the family, Khutlibai, does not consider it “proper” to visit regularly a

married daughter “day after day”. This age old tradition emphasizes the gender

difference between sons and daughters: the sons have the right to look after their ageing

parents but the daughters forfeit that right after marriage. This societal practice enhances

the significance of the male child and diminishes the importance of the female off-spring.

Despite a modem outlook, the issue of female education, within the context of tradition,

is treated with complacency. It was expected of men to become engineers, doctors,

scientists, stock-brokers etc and thus, very sarcastically, it is commented by Sidhwa, “Not

been burdened with similar expectations, the girls were not required to study abroad. If

they persisted...they might be affectionately indulged.· It was expedient sometimes to

send them to finishing schools in Europe, either to prepare them for or divert them from

marriage” (AB 39). For the latter purpose, Feroza was being sent to America. Woman’s

goal was marriage, children and domesticity. Woman’s desire or ambition has no place

in this dogmatic design. Khutlibai, on the eve of Feroza’s departure to America, showers
 148

these traditional blessings on her. Woman’s contentment and happiness as per the

traditional ideology must be epitomized through children, home and family. It was not

expected that they would dare to look beyond the parameters set by patriarchy and if for

any reasons they strayed from the pre-determined path, they were supposed to be treated

like the pigeons of Khutlibai’s childhood. She recollects proudly:

If one of the birds from our loft spent the night on another’s roof, we’d

have pigeon soup the next day. He’d [Khutlibai’s grandfather] have its

throat slit. (AB 121)

Some hundred years later, Feroza’s throat is metaphorically cut when she decides to

choose a non-Parsi life partner. By her defiant act, she was demanding sexual autonomy

not permitted by social traditions. A woman’s life-partner is chosen by parental authority

and despite cultural difference. Feroza’s fate has been the same in this context. Feroza

must destroy essential parts of herself in order to satisfy the controllers of gender politics.

Her other desire of economic independence is not appreciated by her mother because the

prevailing sentiment inculcated in women finds the notion of independence as something

alien. Financial dependence on man is natural to woman. Anything different is

intolerable.

Religious fanaticism has always fanned the fire of gender bias. In this novel, there

are veiled references to the sexual exploitation of women in Pakistan. Safia Bibi’s case is

mentioned in the passing. The sixteen-year-old servant who is raped and made pregnant

was charged with “adultery.” “It required the testimony of four “honourable” male eye-

witnesses or eight female eye-witnesses to establish rape” (AB 236). This law reduced the

worth of the female eye-witness by fifty percent as if women’s eyes were incapable of
 149

perceiving the truth. “The gender bias was appalling” (AB 237). Sidhwa during the

course of the narration, constantly and deliberately, attacks the system of gender

discrimination. She makes Feroza to marry outside which is stopped by her mother.

Commenting on Feroza’s intention to marry outside her religion and the consequences of

mixed-marriages, V.L.V.N. Narendra Kumar in Parsee Novel relates :

Sidhwa thus employs a situation in the narrative to focalize the dissent

among the younger generation of the Parsee community. She seems to

suggest that the demand of some rethinking as regards the rigid code is

justified. However she does not take a rebellious stance against the

prevailing ideology in the Parsee community; nor does she advocate blind

conformity. Through the gestures of Feroza and Zareen, she hints at the

need for a change. Without taking sides, she emphasises the need for a

compromise on crucial issues like mixed marriage as the survival of the

microscopic community is at stake. If she resents the mindless current of

fundamentalism in Pakistan, she is equally critical of the rigid custodians

of the Zoroastrian faith. (72)

On the whole, Sidhwa’s women may be classified as follows : An un-nurtered, lonely

woman who perceives strangers as enemies and employs primitive strategies to retain her

power—Zaitoon. A woman of status and privilege is divested of her position and

privileges when she enters a new world, experiencing profound devaluation and

devastation as a result of making the journey which is, by its physical and psychic nature

a descent into darkness—Ayah, the initial experiences of Feroza, and even Carol in

Pakistan. The realization is that in order to regain her lost status and powers there must
 150

be a payoff. The experience of her humiliation and vulnerability can never be denied or

removed. It must be acknowledged and given an appropriate place in her experience in

order for ‘Wholing’ to take place. This acknowledgement allows her to overcome

subsequent obstacles without losing completely that which she loves and values - her

identity, the restoration of her self-worth and a more liberated personality which allows

her to make difficult choices as appropriate for her—Feroza.

Thus, Sidhwa’s novels provide an alternative perspective to the predominant

narrative of Pakistani literature. It subverts the roles assigned to female characters. The

alternative voice re-creates women’s sense of history and belonging. Her protagonists

are mainly women, who have refused to accept the narrow and constricting roles assigned

to them under vague terms such as ‘honour’, ‘shame’, and ‘modesty’ among others. In

fact, Sidhwa’s narratives articulate the pain and injustices endured by these victims who

are made to suffer in silence and whose protestations are denied a voice. Sidhwa not only

offers the struggle and courage of a woman but also the woman’s struggle to fight and

survive in the contemporary society. It is a condemnatory view of the practices of the

patriarchal society of Pakistan. It is a gender constructed world of women in Parsi

Community.

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