Ice-Candy Man by Bapsi Sidhwa

Ice-Candy-Man by Bapsi Sidhwa
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A graphic viewpoint of the Partition of India engineered by the British from the other side, from the point of view of a child and someone not a Hindu, Sikh or Muslim. Is the description of her encounter with Gandhi funny or blasphemous?

Gandhijee visits Lahore. I’m surprised he exists. I almost thought he was a mythic figure. Someone we’d only hear about and never see.
He is knitting. Sitting cross-legged on the marble floor of a palatial veranda, he is surrounded by women. He is small, dark, shrivelled, old… He is certainly ahead of his times. He already knows the advantages of dieting. He has starved his way into the news and made headlines all over the world.
He declaims, “Sluggish stomachs are the scrouge of the Punjabis … too much rich food and too little exercise. The cause of India’s ailments lies in our clogged alimentary canals. The hungry stomach is the scrouge of the poor – and the full stomach of the rich.” At which the protagonists’s mother<>furnishes him with the odour, consistency, time and frequency of her bowel movements. ‘Flush your system with an enema, daughter,’ says Gandhijee, directing his sage counsel at my mother. Do it for thirty days … every morning. You will feel like a new woman. Look at these girls,’ indicating the lean women flanking him. ‘I give them enemas myself – there is no shame in it – I am like their mother. You can see how smooth and moist their skin is. Look at their shining eyes.’

Another passage

I try not to inhale, but I must; the charged air about our table distils poisonous insights. Blue envy: green avidity: the grey and black stirrings of predators and the incipient distillation of fear in their prey. A slimy grey-green balloon forms behind my shut lids. There is something so dangerous about the tangible colours the passions around me have assumed that I blink open my eyes and sit up.

Also a self-deprecatory and humourous take on the foibles of the carefree Parsees.

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