The Crow Eaters And Ice Candy Man Analysis

In the novels The Crow Eaters, and Ice-Candy-Man, Sidhwa recounts the traditional story of the Parsis’ arrival from Iran to India in the seventh century in which the Indian Prince sent his Vazir to them with a glass of milk filled to the brim signifying that his land was full and prosperous and he didn’t want outsiders with a different religion and alien ways to disturb its harmony. In response, the Parsis stirred a teaspoonful of sugar carefully into the milk and sent it back suggesting that they would get absorbed into his country like the sugar in the milk, and with their decency and industry sweeten the lives of his subjects.

Apart from The Crow Eaters and Ice Candy Man, Sidhwa’s An American Brat also projects the quintessential values

This bluntly shows the typical Parsi psyche of double standard. They are western in their education and social lifestyle but when it comes to their religion and ethno-cultural codes they are never ready to transcend them. Sidhwa very pertinently makes Feroza “An American Brat” (Zareen at the end of the novel calls her daughter so) to question these ideas of her religion. After getting broken off in her relation at the mediation of her parents Feroza discovers new interpretations of life. She decides not to get married with David, and at the same time also refuses to get back to her homeland, Pakistan, her familiar world, her own community, her parents and relations. Feroza’s staying back in America not only marks her revolt against her community but also charts how she internalizes the basic and essential ideas of her religion in her own way with a new kind of outlook towards life and its

They are exposed to sun’s rays and offered to birds on the same platform so that a king’s corpse may lie side by side with that of a pauper. All are equal and no monument is erected to tell the glory of the great as no costly funerals or coffins for the rich and the powerful. Parsis still stick to the ancient method of disposal of dead bodies. There is an explicit prohibition against cremation or burial underground. A Parsi’s last charitable act on earth is the donation of his dead body to hungry vultures. Bapsi Sidhwa describes: Parsis are a tiny community who leave their dead in open-roofed enclosures atop hills—to be devoured by vultures. The British romanticized this bizarre graveyard with the title ‘Tower of Silence.’ Just a word or two about the Tower: the marble floor slopes towards the centre where there is deep hollow. This receives the bones and blood. Underground ducts from the hollow lead to four deep wells outside the Tower. These wells are full of lime, charcoal and sulphur and provide an excellent filter. The outer rim of the floor is made up of enough marble slabs to accommodate fifty male bodies, then comes accommodation for fifty females, and the innermost space, around the hollow, is for children. It takes the birds only minutes to strip the body of all flesh. Now, the height of the Tower is