THE famed Pakistani novelist Bapsi Sidhwa died on Christmas Day 2024, making it a sad day for those who love Pakistani literature and looked up to Sidhwa as an auteur extraordinaire. She put Pakistani literature in English on the map with her second novel, The Bride, which I read at the age of 11 when it was first published. I had no understanding of half the things she wrote about: where was Kohistan? Punjab was in the north, so why was Zaitoon, the protagonist, described as dark-skinned rather than fair? Why was the bride’s life in danger because of honour? What did that mean? And what was this horrible event called Partition in which Zaitoon’s parents were slaughtered?

Sidhwa’s writing, easy to understand technically but so complex to grasp thematically, aroused my curiosity. It also resonated with me because here, for the first time, was someone speaking to the confusions and contradictions I observed as a child of the Zia era. Black laws, Hudood ordinances, the mistreatment of women — Sidhwa was pointing out the roots of the malaise, our own particular stew of patriarchy, honour-based and gender-based violence, and underlying that, the traumatic beginnings of Pakistan, birthed through bloodshed, division and a fractured, displaced populace. These were themes Sidhwa would return to again and again, considering them from different angles, giving them the keen interrogation of an outsider, a child, in Pakistani society in her masterpiece Ice Candy Man.

I’m lucky enough to have been able to call Sidhwa a mentor and a supporter: she took a great interest in my writing when I was introduced to her in 1999 by the writer Aamer Hussein, and the publisher Ameena Saiyid. I’d gone to Southbank Centre in London for a session on South Asian writers, and Sidhwa and Hussein were both participants. Crowds had come to hear her speak (Jhumpa Lahiri was also on the panel that day), so when Saiyid offered to introduce me to Sidhwa, I was thrilled. By then, I was a young adult and I understood much more about Pakistan, thanks in no small part to her subsequent novels Ice Candy Man and An American Brat (a friend from Lahore gave me this nickname when I was in graduate school).

Bapsi Sidhwa was generous, and a great believer in encouraging the young.

I shuffled shyly in front of her — she sat with Saiyed and Hussein at a table, drinking coffee. I must have reminded Sidhwa of an American brat, for she smiled genially at my America-returned accent, but she became truly excited when Saiyid told her I was an aspiring writer, with a book of short stories on the way (back then, OUP still published fiction). She asked me many questions about myself, and what I was writing, and left me with the instruction to get married: “It’s an experience, you mustn’t miss it out.” Again I was left perplexed and intrigued; although I never followed her advice, but she was graceful enough not to remember having given it to me.

But Sidhwa hadn’t forgotten about me. When she put together an anthology of essays about Lahore, City of Sin and Splendour, she requested me to contribute a piece. I protested that I had no experience with Lahore apart from a brief trip as a teenager. “It doesn’t matter,” she told me. “Send me anything. I love your writing.” My essay, ‘A Love Affair with Lahore’, was published in the anthology in 2005. I still remember the launch event, where I sat on the panel with Bapsi to my right and her brother, Minoo Bhandara, on my left. Raucous tales were told that evening about the filming of Bhow­ani Junction, Ava Gardner’s react­ion to the city of Lahore, and other scandalous things involving alcoho­l­­ic beverages (Bha­­ndara was the fou­nder of the Mur­-ree Brewery).

I recall this me­­mory not to cong­ratulate myself for my good luck, but to remember the two things about Sidhwa that moved me incredibly: she was generous, and she was a great believer in encouraging the young, especially when it came to writing. She taught creative writing classes at Columbia, Mount Holyoke and Brandeis on the East Coast, and then at Rice University in Houston, where she lived for many years after leaving Pakistan. She never worried about being outshone by anyone; she wanted to see others go as far, if not further.

From my brief stints teaching writing here and there, I know that Bapsi Sidhwa was a far more generous and loving mentor than I could ever be.

We must repay her by honouring her legacy as the godmother of Pakistani English writing, but also by nurturing future generations of writers. In that spirit, I suppose I’ll have to give teaching another go.

The writer is an author. Her latest novel is The Monsoon War.

Published in Dawn, January 8th, 2025