Can You Hear The Nightbird Call? (2007) - Plot & Excerpts
The author captures the various inflections points in India’s political history: the partition from Pakistan, the conflicts with its neighbours China and Pakistan, the separation of Bangladesh, the military invasion of the Golden Temple, the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the brutal killings of Sikhs that followed, and finally the blowing up of Air India flight 182.Entwined in these events are the stories of three women whose own lives are woven together by quirks of fate and twists of history: Bibi-ji who steals her older sister’s intended husband and moves to Vancouver before partition, Nimmo, daughter of that older sister and the only survivor after the mob kills her parents during the painful birth of India and Pakistan, and Leela, half Indian and half German, who is perennially in a half-way house both in her native India and the country she follows her husband to, Canada.These characters wear their Indian-ness like a badge, never quite integrating, destined to be on the margins, be they wealthy like Bibi-ji or poor like Nimmo. This remoteness comes home even when the omniscient narrator refers to white people as Goras. In fact, I had difficulty with this narrator who kept indiscriminately popping in and out of the heads of the characters, both principal and minor alike, reducing them to cardboard cut-outs in places. This was the one flaw in an otherwise well crafted novel with slices of Indian life and dialogue that is fresh, humorous and insightful.The span of the action covers the greater part of the 20th century and many time periods and events in the lives of the characters are skimmed over to zero in only on key ones. Hence we do not hear much of the birth of Nimmo’s daughter Kamal, but we get a drawn out scene of Bibi-ji and Pa-ji’s visit to the school principal to discuss their adopted son Jasbir’s misbehaviour.The private tensions in the lives of the three women are reflections of the wider conflicts facing the newly independent India, both internally between its diverse citizens, and externally with its neighbours, even between its distant exiles in Canada. The indiscriminate loss of life in this conflict also comes home sharply when key people start dropping like flies from chapter to chapter.In the end, the survivors are left bereft and horribly changed and the only person finding redemption from the conflict is Jasbir, the bad apple in the family who left to join the Khalistan rebellion, and finds his way back home after seeing the damage that the movement, its actions and consequences wreak on his own family. When I put this book down, I couldn’t help but feel that as much as the author was humouring me with scenes of domesticity and social intercourse in Indian society both at home and abroad, she was hammering me with some brutal lessons of history that I never got to read about from the inside.
I picked this book up knowing very little about it, thinking that it was the story of families coming to Canada from India, and their struggles to belong. I admit I didn't exactly research it, it was given to me by a friend, and I thought, hey, free book!I was surprised to find out that it is primarily a historic account of the turbulent history of Punjab since the beginning of the 20th century. I know very little of the history of India's turmoil, I have heard pieces here and there but have not followed up. The last major plot point occurs the year I was born, so this history has never been something that has surfaced in my lifetime. Having read this novel, I found myself interested and intrigued by the events of the past as well as by the fictional aspects. The characters though, at times, somewhat trying and distant, evolve (or, as the case may be, remain the same) throughout an ever changing backdrop of tribulations and instability. We follow Sharan-jeet (Bibi-ji), Leela, and Nimmo as they struggle to belong, integrate, hold onto the past and in some cases, survive. The stories of the three women are interwoven neatly and rather predictably, but the draws of the novel need not be plot twists. The draw, for me, is the picture painted for the reader of women holding fast to their families and their beliefs (be those religion, or the belief that one must belong) as the world sweeps past them without care. At times hopeful and just as often, frighteningly tragic, this book is reminiscent of the theme of Leela's life: half and half. One foot in malleable fiction, the other in the harsh, unchangeable portrait of reality. An interesting read for those who want to learn about the modern history of India without having to peruse textbooks full of paragraph after paragraph of dull script. Nightbird allowed me a view into a world I knew very little of. It allowed me a history lesson wrapped up in the package of a fictional story about women, family and change.
What do You think about Can You Hear The Nightbird Call? (2007)?
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—Jobin J
I enjoyed the early part of this, i.e. Sharanjeet's childhood and I liked the story of how she and her husband's settled and made a success of their life in Vancouver. If ARB had stayed with that story and told it in depth I think I would have enjoyed the book more. But there's too many stories spread too thinly. "Visiting" the characters every few years meant that I didn't get to know or care about them. The Sikh character's - apart from Sharanjeet as a child - never seemed like real people (I'm guessing she's not Sikh). The last section of the book - the events of 1984 and the Air India crash - was forced and manipulative at the same time, it actually made me quite angry.Just checked: ARB is South Indian - which sort of makes sense as Leela is the best written character.
—Phredric
4 STARS "gantly moves back and forth between the growing desi community in Vancouver and the increasingly conflicted worlds of Punjab and Delhi, where rifts between Sikhs and Hindus are growing. In June 1984, just as political tensions within India begin to spiral out of control, Bibi-ji and Pa-ji decide to make their annual pilgrimage to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest of Sikh shrines. While they are there, the temple is stormed by Indian government troops attempting to contain Sikh extremists hiding inside the temple compound. The results are devastating.Then, in October of the same year, Indira Gandhi is murdered by her two Sikh bodyguards, an act of vengeance for the assault on the temple. The assassination sets off a wave of violence against innocent Sikhs.The tide of anger and violence spills across borders and floods into distant Canada, and into the lives of neighbours Bibi-ji and Leela. Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? weaves together the personal and the political - and beautifully brings the reader into the reality of terrorism and religious intolerance." (From Amazon)I loved it...great interweaving of Vancouver (Canada) and Punjab (India). This novel means a little more to me as 1984 was a tragedy that banded and separated Sikhs all over the world. Badami's characters are again engrossing and so realistic.
—Kris - My Novelesque Life
