by Bapsi Sidhwa
Sala: brother-in-law. It is also frequently used as a mild profanity in Gujrati, Punjabi, and Urdu when addressing men.
Shalwar: baggy drawstring trousers, worn in the Punjab.
Shalwar-kamiz: the Punjabi outfit worn by both men and women in Pakistan and India, except that the women add the dopatta.
Shandy: a mixture of 7UP (or sometimes lemonade) and beer. A British drink introduced to India during the Raj and considered appropriate for women.
Sharah-e-Quaid-e-Azam-Mohammad Ali Jinnah: road named after the founder of the nation, Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Quaid-e-Azam, which means Great Leader, is the respected title he is known by. Most people still call it the Mall Road.
Shatoose: shawl; also known as ring-shawl, because it can be passed through a man’s ring. The material is woven from the fine hair on the underside of the neck of a rare and endangered species of mountain goat.
Sudra: Zoroastrian religious undergarment made of pure white muslin, worn like a slip next to the skin. It has a small pocket at the V of the neck, which is the repository of good deeds. The child first wears it, together with the kusti, at the navjote.
Sufi: Muslim mystic.
Tanchoi: a particular type of hand-loomed silk sari with a small motif, rich and expensive.
Tandarosti: good health.
Thann: a bale of unstitched cloth from the factory. It comes wrapped around a board.
Thanna: police station.
Ulloo: fool. The owl’s expression is considered foolish rather than, as in English, wise.
Uthamna: important Zoroastrian ceremony for the dead body.
Vekh! Vekh! Sher-di-battian!: Punjabi for “Look! Look! City lights!”
Walla: usually attached to signify someone’s trade or profession (eg: tonga-walla is a tonga driver). Among the Parsees these have become last names. For example, the Ginwalla family must have originally owned a cotton-gin or a still to manufacture gin. The Junglewallas — a fairly common Parsee name — must have either been in the logging business or lived in a place like a jungle, wilderness, or forest.
Yaar: lover, in Urdu. Used loosely by most people in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent as slang for friend.
Yatha: refers to the Yatha Ahu Vairo prayer, which promises God’s Good Mind and the Lord’s Strength if the person helps others and thus serves the Lord.
Zina: adultery, or fornication by bachelors and unmarried women, as defined by Islamic law.
Zindabad!: long live!
Zurvan: an obscure Zoroastrian concept of Time and Timelessness (eternity), with half his face in light and half in shadow. As a principle, Zurvan is the father of Good (Ahura Mazda) and Evil (Ahriman).
Acknowledgments
I received valuable assistance from the Bellagio Study Center. Among my fellow sojourners there, I thank Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett for her intense recreation of New York, Penny Eileen Bryan for her descriptions of Denver, and Pat Auster Vigderman, my fellow Bunting Fellow, for details about Boston and Cambridge. I also thank Don and Joanne McClosky for their help with my software, Sissela and Derek Bock for seeing me off at some unearthly hour, John and Dagmar Searle and Lee and Stephen Whitfield for continuing their friendship, and Gianna Celli and the others associated with Bellagio for their unfailing care.
I will remember 1992 for the shadow of grief it cast at my friend Laurie Colwin’s tragic and untimely demise.
In this age of technological complexity, there is a whole new series of debts I owe, and my largest debt is to Neville Patel for his instant and constant assistance. I also thank Lois Mervyn and Imad Mirza at the USIS in Lahore, and Jack Moudy, in Houston.
With each passing day, I feel I owe more to my family and friends. Among those friends I have not thanked before, and who are very special, are Jean-Pierre and Fransoise Masset, Afsar and Riza Qizilbash, and Nasreen Rehman. I also thank Rosellen Brown, always generous, for offering valuable suggestions, Marv Hoffman for his sympathetic perspective on our increasingly intolerant times, Robert Baumgardner for enlivening the linguistics scene in Lahore, and in Houston Aban Rustomji and Arna Setna — that rare species who helps everyone. I thank Ann Zimmer for advising me on the American character in my novel The Bride when she and her husband were in Pakistan, and Nick and Sheila Platt for their support and encouragement.
A special thank you to Aasma Jehangir for information on the Hadood Ordinance, and Walid Iqbal for his help with translations.
At Milkweed, I thank my friends, my discerning and considerate editor Emilie Buchwald, and the wonderful and generous friends of Milkweed.
About the Author
Born in Karachi and raised in Lahore, Bapsi Sidhwa has been widely acclaimed as Pakistan’s finest contemporary novelist. She is the author of four novels: An American Brat, Cracking India, The Bride, and The Crow Eaters. Her work has been published in translation all over the world.
Sidhwa served on the advisory committee to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on issues of women’s development, and her novel Cracking India has been made into the film Earth by Indian director Deepa Mehta.
Sidhwa has taught at Columbia University, the University of Houston, Mount Holyoke College, Brandeis University, and Southampton University in the United Kingdom. She has also been the recipient of numerous honors and awards, among them a NEA fellowship, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, and the Sitara-I-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s highest honor in the arts. She lives in Houston.
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