Bapsi Sidhwa makes Pakistan proud.

ISLAMABAD, March 28, 2009 (Balochistan Times) -- The contribution of Bapsi Sidhwa, an award winning Pakistani novelist, in bringing womens issues of the Indian subcontinent into public discussion is commendable. It was acknowledged during a meeting of the journalists from the print media here on Saturday. The gathering highlighted Sidhwas literary contribution and services. Bapsi Sidhwa having profound insight into human psychology portrayed the social and political circumstances affecting the lives of the people of sub-continent. She amalgamated her imagination with the realities and complexities experienced by the common people. The renowned novelist was fond of reading books from his childhood and she studied diversified literature during her life. For Her, Reading is a mental exercise. Besides feminine aspects, Bapsi also wrote a lot about men in her novels. Her versatility reflects in her works as she wrote tragedies as well as comedy. Bapsi got inspiration from the story of a young Pakistani girl who had dared to run away from an intolerable marriage, and had been killed in the Hindukush mountains by her tribal husband. She heard the girls story during a trip to the Karakoram Highway. The story obsessed her and she began her literary career by writing a short story which grew into the first novel, The Bride which was published in 1982. Soon after publication of The Bride, Sidhwa began work on her second novel, The Crow Eaters which was published in 1978. The Cracking India, was published in several other countries in 1988 under the title Ice-Candy-Man in which she repeatedly condemned the dehumanizing impact that religious zealotry played in promoting mob mentality, separation, and revenge during the Partition. Sidhwas widely varied narration alternates between opulent description, subtle humour, and bone-chilling strife. Womens issues, the implications of colonization, and the bitterly divided quagmire of partisan politics that the British left in their wake were re-evaluated in the novel and picked apart by the sharp questions of a child. Bapsi received the Pakistan National Honours of the Pitras Bokhari award for The Bride in 1985. She also held various Novel Writing workshops and she taught in the University of Houston. In 1988 she conducted a Graduate Seminar: Humour In Novels at Columbia University. She also taught at Mount Holyoke, Brandeis 1998, and University of Southampton 2002. Cracking India was published in England by Heinemann in 1988, in Germany in 1990 where it won the Literature Prize in 1991 and in America by Milkweed Editions in 1991. In 1991 she got the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Pakistans national honor in the arts and in 1994 the Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Writers Award.

(THROUGH ASIA PULSE)