Reactions to Trauma in Bapsi Sidhwa\u27s Cracking India: The Use of Fiction to Reconstruct Reality

Reality is like a mirror upon which a person establishes their own sense of self and world. By interfering with the mind\u27s way of organizing experience, trauma shatters a person\u27s mirror, and with it, their sense of identity and understanding of the world around them. With the ability to use only shards to interpret experience, a victim feels unsafe and unable to trust their own perceptions of their shattered reality. Each time the victim is triggered, they lose their personal power and agency as trauma overtakes them. Through this process, trauma creates a new reality built upon distorted connections which can disfigure the victim\u27s perspective of themselves and their world. In this presentation, I will explore the way in which Bapsi Sidhwa\u27s Cracking India illustrates the effects of the traumatic divide of India during the Partition on both a national and personal scale. Three of the novel\u27s characters-Ranna, Lenny, and Ice-candy-man-each use fiction, albeit with different levels of effectiveness, in order to survive in their changing and traumatic environment. Ultimately, they demonstrate that fiction is both a powerful and dangerous tool that can help a victim create a new identity from the fragments of their shattered mirrors