“As a child I suffered from polio. So the doctor asked my parents not to send me to school…I was a lucky girl as I didn’t have to learn trigonometry or anything of the sort,” said Bapsi Sidhwa speaking at the last session of the Lahore Literary Festival.
The audience seemed spellbound with occasional fits of laughter followed by rapt silence as the session: A conversation with Bapsi Sidhwa continued.
Sidhwa said she was only 11 when she read her first book Little Women.
“You become a lonesome and disturbed sort of a person if you aren’t going to school,” she said.
Sidhwa said she read lots of books, at times spending as much as 10 hours daily reading each and everything she could get her hands on.
“I obviously didn’t read Shakespeare since there was no one who could help me understand it,” she said, adding that her family was not much into literature.
Sidhwa later took her secondary school examinations privately. “And then I did what all girls my age did during those times before being married; go to Kinnaird College”, she said. Sidhwa also talked about what made her write. She said that her first inspiration had come after her honeymoon when she had returned to Lahore.
“Only once I started writing did I realise it was a novel.” She said the only reason she was able to write was that she had read a lot.
“I had learnt all about structure, suspense and dialogue sub-consciously. It came automatically. I was a story teller”, she remarked.
After writing The Crow Eaters, Sidhwa said she had faced a lot of resentment from the Parsi community for how they were depicted in the novel.
In addition to their love for talking, Sidhwa said, Parsis were known to use a lot of swear words in their conversations.
“There’s a maxim regarding people who talk a lot – they might have eaten crows for breakfast. That’s where I got the name,” she said.
Sidhwa and Shahid Usman later read excerpts from The Crow Eaters and its Urdu version Junglewalla.
Sidhwa mesmerised the crowds as she spoke about memories from her past she said had stuck with her and how Lally – one of her characters was an inspiration.
“So while Lally is a reflection of me, she has been fictionalied,” she said.
Sidhwa, who remained humorous throughout the conversation, said “Oh I think I can hear you a bit too clearly,” when someone from the audience spoke rather too loudly.
The session concluded with Sidhwa talking about how Lahore made her feel.
“It is so energising for me to be in Lahore. It is such a splendid city,” she said as the audience rose to their feet.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 25th, 2013.