Seite 134 [134]
MÁRIA PALLA
be driven to the airport in Delhi on her journey to Vancouver by the husband
of Bibi-ji’s niece, Nimmo, whose whereabouts were unknown to Bibi-ji due
to the upheaval caused by the partition of the subcontinent. After Bibi-ji
and Nimmo meet, Bibi-ji and her husband become the guardians of Jasbeer,
Nimmo’s eldest child, and take him to Canada in order to ease the financial
difficulties Nimmo struggles with. Jasbeer, however, suffers under the burden
of his liminal existence and eventually finds a way out of it by joining the
fight for an independent Khalistan and returns to India. All three families
become entangled in the historical events of the 1980s outlined above with
tragic consequences.
By revealing how the personal lives of these characters intersect with
national, regional and global politics, Badamihas ample opportunity to present
facts of reality that numerous readers were craving for as a counterbalance
to the postmodern experimentation of authors like Salman Rushdie in the
postmillennial era. Instead of offering versions of what may have happened
and expressing epistemological dilemmas by having characters question
them, she employs a strong narrative drive to depict what she knows to be
verifiable facts. To do so, she combines the voice of a third person narrator
with the points of view of various focalizers. The explanations she thus
provides may be incomplete but are never contradictory because the same
events are never presented from varying angles. What Badami thus achieves
is a strong emphasis on the South Asian community in their ancestral home
and abroad while occupying a strong moral stance against all atrocities and
giving vocal expression to the need for social responsibility.
One of the focalizers in Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?, the oldest of
the three women protagonists, is called Bibi-ji throughout the larger part of
the plot, although this is not the name given to her at birth. Badami offers an
etymology of this hybrid linguistic creation, which appears to be a version of
the endearing word “Baby” that the woman’s husband uses as an affectionate
nickname for her “like the characters in the romantic Hollywood movies he
loved to watch, but his Punjabi accent interfered and messed up his English."
As a result of the mixing of English and Punjabi, the word becomes “Bebby”.
But “[pleople in their small Punjabi community [in Vancouver], who weren’t
sure what the word meant, tagged on their own marker of respect and called
her Bebby-ji."? Due to frequent use, “it was turned by the constant touch of
many tongues to Bibi-ji**’ meaning “Wife, and that was what she was: the
respected wife of a respected man.”* The woman’s contentedness with her
* Anita Rau Badami, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?, 2006, Toronto, Vintage Canada, 2007,
39-40.
4 Ibid., 40.
4 Ibid., 40.
44 Tbid., 40.
* 132 +