Ice Candy Man Analysis

The Partition of India in 1947 was one of the most horrific events of decolonization in the 20th century, bringing death, rape and plunder in its wake. The agony of partition has reverberated in literature in various India Languages in as many ways as the writers themselves.BapsiSidhwa’s Ice Candy Man offers intimate glimpse into the events leading to the division of the country from the point of view of a young Parsee girl living in the city of Lahore after the birth of Pakistan. Ice Candy Man is a major novel dealing with the impact of partition on yet another ethnic community namely the Parsees. Besides it resulted in a deep-rooted animosity between two communities leading to blood bath and unprecedented violence and lack of trust. Many families sharing common …show more content…
In fact, this is how the Parsees have survived and prospered through the rise and fall of different dynasties and kingdoms through such a long time. This certainly goes for their survival instinct as well as a close concern for maintaining their religious beliefs, rituals and cultural traditions. This has, of course, resulted in the gradual decline in the Parsee population and, in recent times, there has been some serious thinking on their future prospects in the changed conditions of dogmatism and intolerance particularly after Post-Nehruvian periods. BapsiSidhwa’s first novel ‘The Crow Eaters’ deals with their origins and their survival in a seriocomic fashion and there have been deliberate exaggerations in the treatment of Parsee characters and their ways of living. However, in the light of self-constrained topic of the impact of partition, it is essential to shift the emphasis from the first novel The Crow Eaters to the next novels such as The Pakistani Bride and, ofcourse, the relevant Ice Candy Man. In fact, in the second novel, the novelist takes up the question of inter-communal