`Any People, Any Culture'

Bapsi Sidhwa was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and spent her childhood in Lahore. She has written four novels, including Cracking India, The Crow Eaters and The Bride. She now lives in Houston and travels frequently to Pakistan. The Crimson spoke recently with Sidhwa about her latest novel, An American Brat. Sidhwa will read from her book at the Cambridge Public Library tonight at 6:00 p.m.

Question: What kind of audience do you feel that you have tapped into? Do you have one in mind when you write and does it change from a novel like Cracking India or An American Brat, which perhaps, is more directed towards an American audience?

Answer: No, you see, I already have an audience in India and Pakistan. My books are pirated wholesale in Pakistan and they have been read for years and they are sold very well so I have this huge, huge readership there. In India, I was amazed, I was invited by all the universities in Delhi in February this year, last year...this conference, that conference. I was quite astonished at what a lot had been written about me, how much I'd been read. So, a writer writes to be read and I am read and taught a lot in America, read and taught a lot in Britain. I am translated into French, translated into German and well whichever language, wherever, whoever wants to read me, that's my targeted audience. If it's an Eskimo country, or an African country, wherever.

Q: Your new work may have been likened to Bharati Mukherjee's work--the female protagonist from the subcontinent who comes to the U.S. and confronts issues of her sexuality and freedom--

A: I think I started writing long before Bharati Mukherjee was on the scene even.

Q: Have people made the comparison?

A: Fortunately, nobody has made that comparison. I've been compared to Jane Austen and a whole lot of people and even then, I feel quite humiliated because I write a lot more vigorously than them, but nobody has compared me to her. She writes quite differently from me.

Q:Your work deals heavily with the Parsi community in Pakistan, though not exclusively. Would you like to be viewed as the literary voice of the Parsi community?

A: No, no. My book, The Bride has not even one Parsi character. And in Cracking India, I use the perspective of a Parsi child, but Hindu characters, Sikh characters, Muslim characters are pivotal to the story. I would not like to be seen just as a Parsi writer. For example, in The Crow-eaters, the characters are all Parsi. But all my friends in India and Pakistan who are not Parsi say, "Ah, we know who you have written about. You have written about my mother-in-law." So you see I don't think it means anything if a character is a parsi or a Christian or Hindu. They are human beings primarily and they relate to the reader as a human being. We share experiences.

Q: But since the Parsis are such a miniscule community and are written about so seldomly, even in the subcontinent---

A: Initially, yes. With The Bride, I felt like I wanted to talk about the tribals, about the people hidden away by hills. Similarly about the Parsis, I felt, "Here's this endangered little species and they have some charm," and I wanted to tell a story about them. So I said, "Let me write about them," because as far as I knew there's nothing written about them, so it was the first book about Parsis as such. I think the only other book was at that time a book for young adults by Farokh Dande called Poona Company.

Q: Is it important to you to stake out a Pakistani voice separate from a general subcontinental voice?

A: No, no. What is important to me is to be an entertaining writer, a readable writer. If they say, "I want to know about Pakistan," I would be very happy if they read The Bride or read The Crow Eaters because it does tell them a lot about Pakistan, Lahore, whatever. And, in fact, any American who comes to Pakistan is almost ordered to read the two books, The Bride and The Crow Eaters. I mean, it's part of their syllabus or something like that. And if somebody wanted to know about the Parsis and read it, I would be very happy, but I think basically they are both rollicking good stories. I wouldn't want to represent just one voice. I am happy these are characters which can speak to a cross-cultural section of people, translatable into any language, any people, any culture.

Q: What about someone like Sara Suleri, has she been successful in creating a specifically Pakistani story in Meatless Days?

A: Oh good God! What a question! That is about Kinnaird College and part of it is the schoolgirl essay and part of it is romantic love and okay, that's fine. But I have written four novels and you cannot compare me with that.

Q: I'm really sorry--

A: She's a professor here and she is known by young people, that doesn't make her such a great writer. She's written just one book and it's a collection of essays.

Q: What about influences? Who have they been and have they changed as your work has changed?

A: Most of my influences were basically formed between the ages of eleven and eighteen when I read nonstop. I didn't go to school and I didn't have much of another life.

Q: You didn't go to school?

A: As a child, I was very sick, so the doctors had advised my parents not to send me to school. Ironically, they said, "She's not going to become a professor. She's going to get married and have kids, so what's the point of burdening her?" As a result, I had a rather lonely childhood and so I sort of delved into the world of books--whatever I could lay my hands on. I first read Little Women and that gave me this sick taste for books and until I got married, I was reading constantly. I didn't read authors as such, but certain books influenced me. For example, Pickwick Papers. And Anna Karenina, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn. You know, these things young people read. I must have read these books four or five times each, plus a whole lot of other things--Maupassant in English and Russian authors. You know, whoever I could lay my hands on. I think two books which I read later in my life which might have had an influence are Naipaul's House For Mr. Biswas and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

Q: What do you think of all these terms being thrown around--post-colonial literatures, commonwealth literatures, Anglo-Indian literature--are these distinctions helpful? Are they inadequate? Do you think your work can easily be placed into any of these categories?

A: Well, you know there is so much written. I have been taught in courses which are called post-colonial or world literature or comparative literature, so I don't care what category I am pigeonholed into as long as I am read and liked. And it's only in America, I think, that one is pigeonholed because there is just so much published. It's only at the university level. Secretaries, doctors, all types of people had read [Cracking India], not just people involved with the academic field. And that's how I'd like to be read. People who enjoy a good read, people belonging to book clubs. Ladies in book clubs have written to me and that sort of thing, you know. I would certainly not like to be viewed as a post-colonial novelist, that would be absurd. I hope that I write in a way which would be true to all times.

Q: Would you agree that there has been a burgeoning of interest in literature coming out of the subcontinent, especially with all of the hoopla that accompanied Vikram Seth's tome? Is there more of a market--

A: Yes, certainly. Let's put it this way, Latin America has been fashionable for a long time, and there's been very creative work coming out of there. Africa has also become fashionable, and there's a wide readership. These things have been dictated by the reading public. So you know Latin American writing is going to be very popular in America for a long time because there are a lot of people from that part of the world here who will be reading about it. And that doesn't mean it precludes a lot of other communities who enjoy that writing too. And I think slowly, India, too is gaining favor and popularity. It started perhaps with Rushdie and before Rushdie with Anita Desai before that with Narayan and Naipaul, Raja Rao, so there has been an interest because these have been great, great writers. So this is not something new. Vikram Seth has come out with a very bubbly, very effervescent novel and it's wonderful that people from the subcontinent are being read. And I am particularly pleased that he has written in this realistic, simple, easy, readable, entertaining style because then more people will read writers like us. For example, one of the best reviews was when somebody had written about The Crow Eaters, "It is a book you can whole-heartedly enjoy, rather than respectfully admire." I think Rushdie unfortunately falls into the category of `difficult to read, but respectfully admired.' But Vikram is much lighter and I think would be accessible to a lot more people. But I must clarify, when I say Indian literature is coming into its own, I mean Indian, I don't mean Pakistani. There's an Indian lobby and I'm out of that.

Q: How do you divide your time between the U.S. and Pakistan?

A: For the last ten years, we have sort of semi-moved. Right now, I am sitting pretty because I won a rather wonderful award, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award. They give $10,000 a year to get involved in some community activity which you feel passionately about. And what I do feel very passionately about are the problems in our part of the world and the antagonism between the subcontinental countries. My proposal is to set up a forums for subcontinental understanding through dialogue. I am planning to have about four writers a year, broad-minded people from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh. I want to set up forums and debates and try to defuse these awful things which are happening in India at the moment after the Ayodhya issue. It has to be bridged because we are harming nobody but ourselves. I have already asked Anita and Shashi Tharoor and from Pakistan, Sara Suleri. They have agreed, so we will start these sessions soon. They will be held in Houston because that's where I want to place myself for the next three years.

Q: What do you think of Houston?

A: I love it. Houston is a comfortable city in terms of parking space and you don't have to stand in long queues to get into cinemas. But I loved New York also when I was there. They both have their own charm. I like a lot of things about America. I love Cambridge. I was in Cambridge for two years.

Q: What do you think of Cambridge, Harvard Square?

A: Well, you know, Brother Blue--I don't know if he still exists there. A lot of characters are from that area. I certainly enjoyed my stay there. I audited a lot of classes, I met a lot of wonderful people. I had a great time.