Bapsi Sidhwa's Blog

This past March I was invited to the Abu Dhabi Kitab Book Fair. Out there I was interviewed by Sunil Sethi of NDTV. My appearance begins at the 11 minute mark of the video.

Although my Zoroastrian faith is credited with introducing the concept of Heaven and Hell into religion, I find myself more in sync with the Buddhist concept of rebirths and Nirvana.  I feel we are put on earth to absorb lessons that will purify of our souls;  being slow learners, we are born again and again.

One such lesson life has insistently taught me is humility. I think I have a healthy ego and every little success blooms disproportionately large and exultant in my mind. And again, startlingly immediate, something occurs to topple me from my inflated self-regard and teaches me how temporal and foolish my bloated ego was.

1. Life has taught me that circumstances that appear to adversely affect us can mysteriously work to our advantage. I had polio as a child. Since this illness affects the nerves, my parents were advised not to put pressure on me by sending me to school. This made for a childhood of extreme loneliness. I assuaged this by an inordinate amount of reading and daydreaming. I realise now that this time I had to myself and the resources my imagination fashioned to entertain my mind turned me into a writer. The hours spent reading taught me how to create characters and suspense, and also to structure my novels. Who would have thought what my parents considered an affliction would turn into a source of pride for them? And a source of immense satisfaction in my life.

2. There are sorrows in our lives we cannot talk or write about, but these hard lessons develop one as a person and give us an understanding of human nature. They help us realise the enormous reserves the mind has if we tap into it.

3. Each of us, at some point in our lives, comes across a special guide or mentor. One such person, a Parsee priest who was so poor that he slept on a bench in a temple in Bombay, visited Lahore at the invitation of my mother. He bequeathed me a fleeting glimpse of the eternal state of bliss out of which we are born and in which we dwell in the afterlife; or at least that’s what I’ve come to believe.

4. Be a fatalist. I feel much of our life is preordained, although we may think it is chance or luck or some sorrow we have brought upon ourselves that governs our lives.

5. We are deeply linked to the spirituality that sustains all life and matter. There are noble people on earth – one could call them saints – who help us to recognize this.

After my visit to the Abu Dhabi book fair, I will go to Pakistan to launch my beloved brother, Minoo Bhandara’s book Calling a Spade a Spade. It is a selection from his articles in Pakistani and foreign newspapers. The Lahore launch will take place on March 14, 2010. Ayesha Jalal will give a talk about the book. It was published by Vanguard, which is owned by Minoo’s good friend, Najam Sethi. He will also give a talk. The book launch in Rawalpindi is on March 22 at his son,  Isphanyar Bhandara’s residence.

I am delighted to have recieved an invitation to participate in the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. The Book Fair will take place from March 2 – 7, 2010. The Book Fair is organized by KITAB, a joint venture of the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage.

  I will be interviewed on March 3rd at the KITAB Sofa by Edward Nowotka, editor of Publishing Perspectives.

On March 4th Qasera Shahraz and I have been invited to give readings at the home of Khursheed Junejo, the Ambassador of Pakistan.   

On March 5th I have been invited to a prominent literary club in Abu Dhabi by Ms. Asma Seddiq Al Mutawa. The club has been recognized by UNESCO for its efforts to promote reading and a love for literature in the UAE.

Although I had read some articles by Nicholas Kristof in the NYTimes, I wasn’t prepared for the impact his book Half the Sky had on me. Six hundred million women have disappeared from the face of the earth in the last two decades? How? If the fetuses of the devalued girl children are not aborted the girl usually dies of neglect or malnutrition.  Trafficking in girl children and women has increased exponentially all over South East Asia in countries like the Philippines, India, and Cambodia. Girls as young as seven or eight are either sold by their impoverished parents or kidnapped by traffickers. Hooked on drugs, the prostituted girls get infected with AIDs and die young. These are the ills of poverty and greed. I could go on …

 The book also gives us a sliver of hope; protests from around the world have forced governments to try and stop the abuse of under aged girls.   Half the Sky has compelled me to do something in whatever way I can, and I thank Rufi Natarajan for showing me a way. I also applaud Mercy Corps for the tremendous work they are doing in distressed and forgotten pockets of the world. I find myself endlessly talking about the book and feel I accomplished something at dinner last night by having a man from the World Bank volunteering to purchase and read it.  It is a must read, not only for women, but also for men.  

I could hardly believe my ears when a woman called to say she was inviting me to a fundraiser for Greg Mortienson in  New Jersey.  She was Sadia Ashraf from Greg Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute (CAI). Greg has been my hero ever since I read his magnificent “Three Cups of Tea.” When she told me they would add my novel “Cracking India” to the gift package each guest would recieve, I was blown away.

The fundraiser took place at the Hyatt in Brunswick, New Jersey on Oct. 24^th 2009. It began with a reception at which Greg Mortenson and I signed our books for patrons.  By six o’clock the banquet hall was packed with over 800 guests.  A group of children easily won over the audience when they recited verses pertaining to Mortenson’s schools in the remote mountains of North Pakistan. Mortenson and to a much lesser extent I, were continuously approached by the crowd to autograph our books. The gift package included “Three Cups of Tea”  and the young adult and an illustrated children’s version of the book.

The theme for the evening was defined by the book’s subtitle “One Man’s Mission to Promote peace – One School at a Time.”  Mortenson, a mountaineer who has built over 150 schools in North Pakistan and Afghanistan, spoke of the pressing need for schools in almost inaccessable regions that still exist in a bygone age. Since its inception, The Central Asia Institute founded by him has promoted and supported community based education, especially for girls, in the remote and almost inaccessible reaches of the mighty Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountains. The Institute not only helps build schools, but provides scholarships, medical facilities, teacher training and seeds incipient libraries.

Through his personal story in “Three Cups of Tea”, Greg Mortenson has been influencing people globally. He has been able to motivate students to launch the Pennies for Peace program in schools all across America. For more information on this program, please visit http://www.penniesforpeace.org/.

Today, “Three Cups of Tea” is not only sold in bookstores worldwide, but is part of curriculums in schools and a mandatory read within US military and government organizations assigned to the area. Earlier last year, Mortenson launched a Young Readers version of the book aimed at elementary school children and in December 2009 he launched the long awaited sequel: “Stones into Schools” This has already climbed to the fourth position in the New York Times Bestseller List.

Mortenson gave a stirring talk of how his project came about. On his way back from an unsuccessful assault on the K2 Mountain he got lost and was befriended by the inhabitants of a small hamlet. When he asked the village elder, who Greg came to look upon as a father, what he could do in return, the elder told him, “I have no education and neither do our children because we have no schools.” He requested that Greg build them a school. Greg determined to do so. He got virtually no response to the hundreds of letters he sent requesting funds for the project. Eventually another mountaineer gave him the seed money for a school. “Three Cups of Tea” details the enormous struggle to build the first school. Later an article on him in Parade Magazine suddenly brought him donations from readers to build several more schools.

The event was well organized and the evening’s talks and films were inspirational. The dinner raised around $230,000.

To learn more about The Central Asia Institute or to make a donation, please visit https://www.ikat.org/. Photo courtesy Usheen Davar

Bapsi Sidhwa’s wedsite: www.BapsiSidhwa.com