Women and water have much in common. Both are lucid and appealing. Both satisfy and refresh the soul and body. In the night they capture all beauty and in the day they sparkle in the golden hues of the sun. Without it man dies. Yet women and water are also impressionable, and can be sculpted to assume a shape and form by those in authority over it. Having almost no will of its own, it is formed into the cast it finds itself placed. Taking on diverse forms or qualities, it adjusts to the changing environmental conditions surrounding itself, managing to subsist regardless of the circumstances it is made to confront. This simple analogy, though much oversimplified, briefly describes both the power and the vulnerability women possess. Reflecting upon the history of civilization, woman has proved herself to claim these qualities. Regardless of culture or time, women have appeared as the more beautiful, gentler and influential sex while also being the weaker. Contrarily, men have claimed the role of authority being the protector, provider and the one to make the decisions. Though it is natural for a man to take the role of lord and women that of maiden, these positions have ultimately been decided and enforced by declared religions of particular regions of the world. And since time immemorial these gender role traditions have been handed down through the learned behaviors retained by children of such cultures. Children, watching, listening and learning, come to understand who it is they must be by the environment they are raised in, and thus learn their appropriate positions within that society. This idea of what gender roles are, how are learned and how they can evolve in specific cultures, is poignantly portrayed in Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel Cracking India. Written from the naïve narration perspective of five-year-old child Lenny Sethi, the author represents the varied roles women in early twentieth century India exhibit. In portraying the lives of three women who play a pivotal role in Lenny’s upbringing, Sidhwa exposes the reader to the realities women in India had to face in a period of political and religious upheaval during its 1947 Partition. As horrific consequences manifest themselves in this state of unrest, Lenny attentively observes and considers the lifestyles of Mother, Ayah and Hamida, and comes to understand what gender roles are, how they are manipulated and how they are abused in a world of particular male dominance.
The first person a child learns the lessons of life from are its parents. For girls, it’s almost always her mother. However, depending upon the region of the world one comes from, the role of a mother in the life of her children varies. In Lahore, India, during the time of the early 1940’s, the definition of what a woman as a mother was depended upon the class in which she existed and sometimes the religion which her husband followed. Being the sole provider for one’s children came most frequently in those households of poverty. Class structure, therefore, played a significant part in deciding what a woman’s expectations were as a wife and mother in the family household and in society at large. Because Lenny’s mother is a woman of middle to upper class status, she shares her husband’s money to hire servants and uses them to help raise her children. Though she loves her children and does not neglect them to provide for their needs, she does not become the prime feminine influence in Lenny’s life, though she does teach her much about the importance of gender roles during this time.
The relationship between Mother and Father Sethi represents much of what Lenny learns about married women. Since Lenny’s parents were modern in that they were not radical religious followers, as they belonged to the more passive Parsee religion, they had more freedom with their style of living and embraced more of the British culture in the way they dressed and ran their home. However, when regarding gender roles, Father preferred those the Hindu/Muslim religious cultures demanded. This division between the new western customs and the old eastern traditions existing in the Sethi household causes a tension for Mother and creates in her a way of compromising both cultures into one of her own. This she does by obeying her husband while also manipulating her feminine guiles to soften her husband into giving her what she wants. The cat and mouse games she plays with her husband to get him to lend her money, the flirtatious advances on him to get him out of bed, the childlike behaviors on his way home from work, these all show the ways she dotes upon her husband in order to coerce him into subjection to her. In seeking to please her husband and do all things according to his pleasure, she fulfills what women of her position are meant to fulfill and he though liking it, hides this secret pleasure from her.
As times change, so too do the characters as they begin to experience the pains of violence and death which war creates thus cracking not only India, but the Sethi home as well. When dangers surmount and people start killing each other for the sake of land and religion, Mother transforms from a woman of frivolity to a woman of heroic action. Though her secret deeds of hoarding gasoline tanks and driving distances to rescue fallen women and return them back to their families are known to her husband, he never-the-less seems perturbed by her new role as a woman. For soon after this alteration occurs, Father and Mother begin fighting in the bedroom at night. Crying and even physical abuse are suffered by Mother. They barely speak to the children or to one another. Though Mother’s actions are noble, this idea of a woman performing tasks more man-oriented does not sit well with Father, which reveals how profoundly men of that culture, even of the more progressive households, resented the idea of a woman being more than just a wife and mother. Mother realized she wanted to do more than sit back and watch as women suffered under the hands of men and so she, being a true mother with magnanimous love went out to save them. And so she breaks the gender tradition to do what her true motherly heart bits she do for the preservation of her sex. And for this she is derided.
Aside from the role Mother has in Lenny’s life, Ayah plays a most significant role, for she both directly and indirectly exposes Lenny to the truth about life for women of single status and what happens to them if they fall into the hands of dissolute men. Because Ayah is beautiful, she attracts the attention of many men throughout the city of Lahore. Her “presence galvanizes men” (41). However, this possession of beauty works both for and against her as the men in her life use her to their own advantage once the country breaks into warfare.
Opposed to Mother who had to cajole Father by posing as the cute and sensuous housewife to acquire her desires, Ayah had only to speak and her wishes were granted. Being a contemporary Hindu woman who didn’t place her religious beliefs before her personal life, it was easy for her to welcome suitors from various diverse religious affiliations. She was the paradigm of religious ecumenism in female form. “Hindu, Muslim, Parsee [all…] unified around her” (105). Her beauty did not discriminate nor reject any man of differing beliefs. Though she used her beauty towards her advantage by getting free food, silks, and sharpened knives, she made sure that men respected her, for she was a virgin and would not give herself physically to any of them unless through marriage. This sense of self-respect made her all the more desirable and drove men to do all in their power to make her theirs. Furthermore, this acquaintanceship she shared with men allowed her to partake in discussions most women would not be aloud to engage in at that time. Although these men made her think that they respected her by including her in their conversations of war and politics, they also, when given the chance, would pay to see her perform acts exhibited only by women of ill repute or desperation.
Once Ayah’s lover Masseur is killed and she is kidnapped by Ice-Candy-Man, Ayah’s character falls apart and Lenny witnesses what happens to women because of selfish men who’ll kill to possess what they desire. This realization that men can have their way with women and take them for their property and abuse their beauty, kills Ayah’s spirit. For when Ice-candy-man arrested and forced her to become a dancing girl and prostitute in order to survive, she died within herself. “… I can not forget what happened[…] I am not alive” (273-4). All the men whom she thought respected her now used her for her body and showed themselves for who the brutes they were. Because she was a single woman beautiful to behold and free to taste and because corrupt men exploited the war to get what they wanted from women they lusted to consume, Ayah turns into a woman of misfortune though much against her will.
Though families of this area of the world would refuse to admit women who had “fallen” (233) Ayah attempts to escape knowing that she may be rejected by her family. Regardless of the consequences, she risks everything to be liberated from her master. “Please get me away from him […] I want to go to my folk”(275). Having suffered the robbery of her freedom and beauty, she leaves Lahore to start a new life though with no promise for success. In the name of freedom her freedom was despoiled. This brutal reality breaks the heart of Lenny touching her so deeply as to be willing to travel all distances to rescue her from her lot.
The other women figure to teach Lenny the brutality in women’s lives is her subsequent nanny , Hamida. Hamida is most subservient as she is a woman rescued by Mother from the fallen women camps. She was kidnapped by the Sikhs because she was Muslim and was raped by their men, making her a victim of social disgrace. Although what happened to her was against her will, society condemned her as an outcast and she suffered the rejection of her husband who refused to admit her back to his home or to care for her children since she “was touched by other men”(227). Lenny is told by Hamida that her “kismet ”(234) or fate is bad and that there is nothing she can do to change it. Muslim women believed that life’s course was predestined and unchangeable, and Hamida, being Muslim obediently submitted herself to the beliefs of her religion. Lenny, however wonder if what they believed was true. “I don’t believe that! […]The line on our hands can also change”(234). While Hamida’s clings to her beliefs, she fails to see that it is precisely because of the rejection of such ideas that she escaped from her horrid “fate” in the first place. This blind acceptance of one’s fate resulted in many women’s demise and Lenny would not be a victim of such destiny. Hamida’s character reveals how fanatical religions and oppressive patriarchical cultures take away women’s hope for amelioration and how such belief’s leave women to feel controlled by their circumstances.
As the story ends, much is left unsaid about the future of all three women. Ayah ventures to be reunited with her family though without the knowledge of their accepting her, Mother continues in her role as the heroine to help the victim women at the Recovered Women’s Camp without much reconciliation between she and her husband and Hamida stays with the Sethi’s to care for Lenny and her brother without making attempts to be with her children again. But from these women, Lenny learns of what it is to be a woman and what it is to love. Though her role as a woman is yet to be decided, her preparation for whatever life hands her will not be without readiness. For from the lives of these women who touched her life, she beheld the power, strength and suffering women can endure. Like water they touched her soul and strengthened her body; they sustained life when life seemed doomed. In the cracking of India all was cracked, but for these women their crack was like cracking water which kept on flowing and refused to dried up.
Works Cited
Sidhwa, Bapsi. Cracking India: A Novel. Minneapolis: Milkweed, 1991.
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