Just before noon in Los Angeles on December 25, a ripple spread through phone calls and social media across South Asia and the Americas: Bapsi Sidhwa has passed away.
I had not seen Bapsi for almost a decade since I left Houston for Los Angeles, but I am grateful for all the support she offered me over the years I knew her.
I first met her over a casual dinner at educator and writer Marv Hoffman’s Houston home. She joined my organisation’s board, participated in our Words for Peace reading in response to 9/11, visited my home when my daughter was born, and received an honour from my organisation. There were countless formal and informal gatherings at her home and at events around Houston.
Always knowledgeable about urgent issues in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Palestine, the US and around the globe, Bapsi remained accessible to all despite her stature in the literary community around the world.
Her loss will be felt in her home city Lahore, in Houston where she resided for many decades, as well as across South Asia. Her books will continue to be read, anthologised, and cited in libraries and campuses everywhere. And those who knew her, we will remember her laughter.
In 2014, The Houston Chronicle invited me to write a story about Bapsi, who was by then already ailing and had moved away from public life.
Bapsi Sidhwa: A gift to Houston
Bapsi Sidhwa, one of Houston’s and Pakistan’s best-known novelists, is housebound at age 76, suffering the long-term effects of the polio she experienced as a child. Now that she and her husband have moved outside the city to Sugar Land to be closer to family – even as they come to terms with not being able to fly to Lahore, their first home, so easily – many of us who know and admire Bapsi feel even more compelled to visit her for tea, stories, and laughter, always laughter.
Sometimes, I’m astonished to realise that there was a time when I didn’t know her. That was 1994, when I’d landed in Houston without a plan after finishing graduate school.
“You don’t know Bapsi Sidhwa?” Marv Hoffman asked me, eyebrows raised. I had encountered Marv, co-founder of Writers in the Schools, where I had just begun teaching.
Back then, I didn’t know many people in Houston’s literary or South Asian community, and there wasn’t much Internet to tell me who was in the city, or that Bapsi had adopted Houston as her second home.
I shook my head. “I do know her work – very well – but, no, I don’t know her personally.”
Of course, I knew her work. Anyone who reads and follows English literature emanating from South Asia is familiar with Bapsi’s writings.
Born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1938, nine years before the subcontinent was slashed into two countries, Bapsi has produced five novels, many short stories and essays, and has been heaped with honours – including a Bunting Institute fellowship at Radcliffe/Harvard, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers' Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, to name a few. Her novel Cracking India led to Deepa Mehta’s feature film Earth, which brings to life the violence and grief caused by the 1947 Partition. Other writers hold her in awe.
“I read Bapsi Sidhwa’s intelligent and moving novel Cracking India when I was starting out as a writer,” notes novelist and University of Houston professor Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. “I have learned so much about writing from that book. I still remember certain passages.”
Long-time Houston resident Zeba Shah adds: “In Pakistan, a country with such ethnic and cultural diversity and gender and class inequities, only a writer with Bapsi’s sensitivity and keen sense of observation can reveal the Pakistani thinking so realistically, whether men or women, chauvinistic or liberal, free or suppressed…but then, they are her people.”
“Bapsi is a major figure in Pakistan, as she should be, after her years of hard work and struggle as a female writer writing in English in a country where, at the time, this was practically unheard of,” says Rich Levy, a poet and executive director of Inprint, a Houston nonprofit that supports writers and readers. “I wish she were equally appreciated in Houston. She has taught creative writing at top universities, including Brandeis, Mount Holyoke, and the University of Houston, and received many prizes and accolades, all richly deserved.”
In Houston, Bapsi is known and respected in literary, academic and feminist circles. Elizabeth Gregory, director of the University of Houston’s Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies says: “Just knowing that Bapsi Sidhwa lives here makes Houston a more serious, literary place, with international cred. Her skill and vision sit lightly on her thoughtful, generous nature.”
Activist Sissy Farenthold observes: “Bapsi has meant so much to those of us in Houston. She brought another life experience – her own life experience – to life for us. And beyond the writer that she is, Bapsi is a wonderful person. We are blessed to have her.”
Sidhwa’s influence is felt further afield, as well.
“Bapsi Sidhwa has had a tremendous influence on Pakistani literature through her insightful work and through tirelessly mentoring other Pakistani writers, especially women,” says Pakistani novelist Sorayya Khan, who’s based in Ithaca, New York.
And from Karachi, Oxford University Press editor Ameena Saiyad says: “At a Karachi reading in her honour, Bapsi became overwhelmed with emotion and could not continue. She handed her book to me and asked me to begin reading from where she had stopped. I was touched by her sensitivity and close attachment to the themes and characters of her novels. She writes from her heart and puts her soul in her writings.”
Farewell Bapsi, you will be missed.
This article was first published in The Houston Chronicle on December 5, 2014. This is a Sapan News syndicated feature.
Sehba Sarwar is a novelist (Black Wings, Alhamra Books, 2024, Veliz Books, 2019), poet and essayist whose work has appeared in Aleph, Dawn, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. She is a recipient of multiple awards, including serving as Altadena Co-Poet Laureate, and her papers are archived at the University of Houston.
