Analysis Of The Ice Candy Man By Bapsi Sidhwa

Bapsi Sidhwa has been acclaimed as a feminist post-colonial writer who deliberates the issues of cultural difference and the status of women in Indian and Pakistani society. She is a feminist and realist. One comes across in her women characters the intensity of emotion, the gentleness of love and boldness of one’s beliefs. They grapple to overcome the woes of time and escape from the shackles of fate in whose hands they are often mere puppets. Sidhwa’s women ultimately emerge victorious in their struggle for survival and honour. The Ice-Candy-Man is a kind of feminist discourse set in the backdrop of partition. The story is narrated through an eight year old crippled girl, living in the thick of, from the rising restlessness among the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs during the Partition of the Indian sub-continent. The central character of the novel is an eight year old girl named, Lenny, with a crippled leg. The novel encompasses several female characters with different dispositions. The novel is a chronicle of partition that examines the issues of socio political environment and the impact of this environment on the lives of people and how it leads to the ruin of partition victim Ayah and the way she encounters ordeals and sufferings. The women were ruthlessly abused and left morally and physically wounded and the men decapitated or inhumanly murdered. Bapsi Sidhwa observes the victimization of women in society and gives equal space to communal violence on both sides of the