It is early morning on the day after Christmas. As I turn my phone back on, I notice a flurry of new messages in my creative writing workshop students’ group. What now? I brace myself as I click on the group icon, half expecting someone’s finding a new movie adaptation of some classic novel, which I have prescribed for reading, by one or the other and the rest getting all excited over the find just so they won’t have to read the book.

But no. One student has posted a picture of Bapsi Sidhwa with the message: ‘Renowned author Bapsi Sidhwa passes away at 86’ followed by the other students expressing their grief in heartfelt messages and emoticons in the group.

Just four months ago, they had not heard of Bapsi Sidhwa. I had introduced them to her.

No course of Pakistani literature or creative writing can begin without mention of the pioneers. Sidhwa was, after all, one of the first Pakistani novelists who wrote in English. I would bring her books to class and read out carefully selected passages. In a bid to encourage them into reading her, I also made them watch 1947 Earth, the film based on Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy Man by the Indian-Canadian film director Deepa Mehta. In conclusion of that film there is also Sidhwa in a cameo, wrapping up the story.

I told them who it was and they noticed her limp as she walked off from under the shadow of Queen Victoria’s statue. They knew then that the character of nine-year-old Lenny Baby, with leg braces to support her weak polio-ridden legs, was indeed Sidhwa herself, and that the novel was in fact autobiographical — from the eyes of a child whose illness kept her mostly home. She noticed everything. If the crippling illness didn’t steal her childhood, then Partition certainly did.

Bapsi Sidhwa, who passed away on December 25, was one of the pioneers of English novel writing in Pakistan and also one of its most important voices. Shazia Hasan, who discovered her first as a teenager, pays tribute to the woman who transcended her origins and brought a smile across generations …

I was introduced to Sidhwa as a teenager when my big brother presented me with a copy of her first novel The Crow Eaters. The book had me laughing from its very first page, when Faredoon Junglewalla, nicknamed Freddie, was coming to Pakistan from the other side of the new border, soon after Partition, with his family and belongings, which included his hens and a rooster.

The first scene itself had the rooster attacking poor Freddie’s naked behind while he was in the throes of passion with young wife Putli during a brief stopover. Sidhwa’s description of the episode was absolutely hilarious. More into the novel, one got to read of the Parsi ways. Not only was Sidhwa able to make her readers laugh with her words, she was also able to laugh at herself.

The title of the novel, as explained by the author, pointed to the Parsi community, who talk too much, so much so that it is said that they may have swallowed cawing crows. In senior school, we had a nerdy mathematics tutor named Freddie Irani, whom both my brother and I really looked up to. After reading The Crow Eaters I realised that he must actually be called Faredoon. “Why just him?” My brother smiled at my realisation. “The late British singer of Queen, Freddie Mercury, was also Parsi,” he pointed out.

The Crow Eaters may have come out first, in 1978, but Sidhwa had initially picked up her pen for The Bride. She was an avid reader from childhood. Books literally were her friends in the absence of school friends as she never went to school due to polio. Many years later, while on vacation in the Northern Areas, she heard of a local girl, unhappy in her marriage, who eloped with her lover to then meet an unfortunate fate. The story inspired Bapsi to turn it into a novel, her very first one, but one that was not easy to get published.

Those who write often advise that it is best to write about something that you know well. The Crow Eaters proved that point for Sidhwa. The Parsis are a quiet and peace-loving community, who never like to draw attention to themselves. But here was one of them telling the world about them, giving away each and every one of their little secrets in detail. Of course, everyone wanted to read it. Although the novel became a bestseller, Sidhwa also received some disapproval from her own. Still, she got away with it, as the acclaim it brought her was also a matter of pride for her community.

The Bride was eventually published in 1983. Together, the two books earned Sidhwa a Bunting Fellowship from Harvard University, along with a National Endowment of the Arts grant in 1986 and 1987, during which she completed her already started work on her third book, Ice-Candy Man. For marketing reasons, the book was titled Cracking India when published in the US in 1988. In the UK, it came out with the original title that Sidhwa had given it.

In between the fellowship and the publication of her third and most famous novel, the girl who had never attended school, started teaching creative writing to graduate students at Columbia University. Later, she moved to Houston and started teaching at the University of St Thomas, followed by teaching stints at Rice University, the University of Houston, Mount Holyoke College and Brandeis University.

More books followed. An American Brat, which came out in 1993, again highlighted Parsi idiosyncrasies. Feroza Ginwalla, an impressionable Parsi girl of 16, is sent to America by her parents to keep her away from Pakistan, which was turning too fundamental. But there in America, she turns into a ‘brat’, by the standards of her insecure mother, who is then afraid that she might marry an American.

The writing continued in the shape of more novels and short stories. The teaching also carried on. But all of this still could not keep her from visiting Pakistan. Lahore was the city she grew up in but she also had friends in Karachi, not to mention her countless fans all over the country, South Asia, the UK and USA.

It was on one such visit in Karachi that I had the good fortune of meeting her. I told her that I had read all of her books and that I was also a writer, though I had started with children’s stories. She said that she would love to read my stories.

Sadly, this was one year before my book came out. We did not meet again, though I kept in touch with her through her writings and her various interviews. Her writings will keep her alive as new generations keep on discovering her from those who have read her and love her.

The writer is a member of staff.

X: @HasanShazia

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, January 5th, 2025