Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?
Set in India and Canada, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? is the story of three women linked and destroyed by the political turmoil that sweeps through the Punjab first during the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, and then in the 1980s when the demand for an independent Sikh state called Khalistan comes into violent existence.
Bibi-ji or Sharanjeet Kaur, is the beautiful ambitious wife of Papa-ji a wealthy Sikh businessman in Vancouver. She has grown accustomed to using her beauty and her wealth to get her way in everything. Leela Bhat, first her tenant and later her closest friend, is a woman much like Bibi-ji -- driven by dreams of success but, unlike Bibi-ji, frustrated in her ambitions.
Nimmo, a gentle fearful woman trapped by the nightmares of her past is Bibi-ji's niece. She lives a modest middle-class life in Delhi, certain that disaster lies around the corner of every single day. In 1935, sixteen-year old Sharanjeet Kaur achieves her heart's desire by stealing the future that might have been her sister's. In 1947 during the unimaginable violence of Partition, the reinvented Bibi-ji, wife of a wealthy Sikh immigrant in far-away Vancouver, discovers that nothing in life comes without its repercussions. What had seemed a small crime all those years ago returns to haunt her. When she finally finds her long-lost niece Nimmo in Delhi after nearly a quarter of a century of searching, Bibi-ji is ecstatic. She persuades Nimmo to let her bring up her older son Jasbir in Vancouver. By spending money on the boy, Bibi-ji believes that she can absolve herself of guilt. But fate and the politics of the Punjab intervene again.
In June 1984 the quarrel between the Khalistani separatists and the Indian government reaches a head. Indira Gandhi sends the army into the sacred Golden Temple in Amritsar profoundly shocking Sikhs all over the world and pushing some of them over the edge to violence. One of the people inspired to violence is Pappu, now a turbulent young man torn between his life in the west and his history which lies in India. Bibi-ji is troubled by his involvement in the politics of another country but cannot bring herself to stop him. Five months later, in Delhi, the Indian prime-minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. In the aftermath, a wave of violence against Sikhs is unleashed. Nimmo and her family are destroyed. Engulfed by sorrow and a corrosive, indiscriminate rage against all Hindus, Bibi-ji cuts off her long friendship with Leela Bhat. Her unease over Pappu's involvement in anti-India activities turns to tacit support. Through him she hears rumours of an impending crime, but so implacable is her anger that she refuses to warn anyone about it. As a result she is indirectly responsible for one more tragedy.
"As Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? shows, the enduring state of ‘in-between’ that is part of both immigrant life in Canada and Sikh life in post-partition India is equally rich in the complex joy of struggle and the possibility for tension, misunderstanding, and, sometimes, violence."
--Calgary Herald
"Like Canada, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? may be read on many levels, each of which illuminates a little more of who we are. . . . Rich in echoes and irony and questions, this is one book in the growing catalogue of books we need to read to understand ourselves."
--Globe & Mail
"Pulsates with humanity. . . . If you do manage to put this novel down, it’s probably only to compose yourself to keep on reading."
--Edmonton Journal
Links
- RandomHouse.ca | Books | Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? by Anita Rau Badami
- The Bukowski Agency - Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?
