Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India as a Bildungsroman

Abstract

The objective of this study is to prove Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India as a bildungsroman, exploring the development of its girl-child narrator Lenny from childhood to adulthood. Lenny, a precocious Parsi girl, observes and narrates the political and social turmoil taking place before and immediately after the Partition of India in Lahore in 1947, and thus attains political maturity. Besides, her association with the people like Ayah, Ice-candy-man, Masseur and Cousin develops sexual awareness in her. Her political maturity and sexual maturity go side by side. Lenny attains this maturity as she observes and narrates the incidents and the characters of the novel. It sounds as if her narration is straight-forward but it imperceptively bears the mark of adult Sidhwa's political view of the Partition.