Bapsi Sidhwa

Wild, austere, and magnificently beautiful, the territories of northern Pakistan are a forbidding place. When a young bride from Lahore arrives in these mountains, the ancient customs of unquestioning obedience and backbreaking work make accepting her fate impossible. Unfortunately, the only escape is one from which there is no return.

Growing up in Pakistan in the 1970s, Feroza Ginwalla is precocious, impetuous, and increasingly affected by the rising tide of religious fundamentalism there. When her family decides to send her to America for a change of scenery and influence, a chain of amusing events and encounters ensues.

As the young daughter of an affluent Parsee family in Lahore, Lenny is keenly observant of the city’s astonishing diversity—Muslims and Hindus, Christians and Sikhs, coexisting together. But as Lahore descends into sectarian violence, Lenny’s innocence is lost, and with it the fragile unity of a nation.

The renowned author Bapsi Sidhwa and the equally renowned filmmaker Deepa Mehta share a unique artistic relationship: Mehta adapted Sidhwa’s novel Cracking India for her brilliant film Earth, and here, Sidhwa adapts Mehta’s controversial film Water to the printed page.

Loading his pregnant wife, infant daughter, and widowed mother-in-law into a bullock cart, Faredoon Junglewalla—Freddy for short—leaves his ancestral village for the bustling city of Lahore. Despite the nagging of his unbearable mother-in-law, Freddy’s business and family flourish, and he soon becomes a patriarchal figure in the thriving Parsee community.