1. Representing The Unrepresented: Bapsi Sidhwa.
- Author
-
Kumar, Bimal
- Subjects
MOTION pictures ,GENDER differences in language ,POLITICAL participation - Abstract
Bapsi Sidhwa, an award winning Pakistani Novelist, also known for her social activism has come to fore in the current decade with a sincere concern for women's issues, especially of Indian subcontinent. She vivaciously strives to capture and steer our attention towards the female suffering against patriarchy and centuries old customs and conventions. Though her fictional canvas ranges from issues of traditional concerns to contemporary challenges, her trajectory scans many controversial and dialectical issues from pre-independent India to the great partition of 1947 and its aftermath. Many of her Novels have been adapted to screen versions which have turned out to be sensational success and a landmark in the genre of serious cinema. The novel and film "water" (2006) is the quintessential example of her clinical objectivity and subjective social concern. One is galvanized to appreciate the complexity of gendered power relations that Sidhwa portrays and comes to realize how she breaks free from the hegemony of patriarchal partition narratives and provides a distinct female counter-narrative. Her major novels like 'The crow eaters, 1980, The Pakistani Bride', 1983, 'Ice candy man' 1988, 'Cracking India' 1991, valiantly take up women's issues, the complication of colonization, and the bitterly divided quagmire of partition and re-evaluate and re-examine the socio-cultural mores that shaped the destiny of the Indian subcontinent. Though Sidhwa is versed in four languages she ingeniously chose to express herself in English because she intended to reach out to the world-audience beyond the boundaries and borders of the subcontinent and address the issues of the weaker sex and raise voice for their natural rights and deserving share in the pleasures and bounties of this earth. We encounter a world that is squalid and terrifying but there is a sincere attempt for redefining and reconstructing the social myths, mores and parameters which could accommodate the freedom and individuality of female species and feminine grace with respect and honor. Sidhwa truly represents the unrepresented half of humanity at large with candor and cautious stance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2013