The Wisdom in Choosing a 5-year-old Narrator

    We've been talking about how Bapsi Sidhwa's choice of a narrator is problematic. Choosing to write a novel from the perspective of a 4- to 5-year-old child seems ludicrous but Bapsi Sidhwa actually found a few good reasons to do so in her novel “Cracking India.” The most important of which is that it adds a visceral feel to her novel about a very physical thing — splitting a nation.
    Children experience the world through their senses. That’s why everything goes in the mouth. It all has to be touched, smelled, and tasted. They have to mash it in their fingers, stick it up their noses and slobber it up really good. By choosing a child narrator Sidhwa is invoking the focuses of this stage of development in her novel. What better way to talk about the physical breaking up of a nation than through a child who spends all her time trying to make sense of the physical world?
    Children spend most of their day puzzling through the physical necessities of life. At four and five years old children are fascinated by all bodily functions from urinating to eating to sex because they’re worlds are small and their bodies take up a big part of their reality. Children are born with a rudimentary understanding of the mechanics of such bodily functions as urinating and eating, but are ignorant of the social customs and restrictions attached to them. So using a child narrator to talk about India at this very physical moment, when they’re talking about cracking a physical thing, like India, open, makes a little sense.
    Bapsi uses physical things like the defecating in the streets in the early morning hours, Ayah’s sexual antics and Cousin’s gropings, to tell her story. The novel is full of odd bodily moments, such as when Lenny watches the early risers perform their morning ritual, and this focus on the visceral keeps readers focused on the fact that these are people who eat, sleep, and breath just like them. It keeps readers focused on their humanness, not their race, nationality, religion, or creed.    
    Furthermore, Children, like the villagers Lenny visits with Imam Din, are closer to the Earth where “ancient friendships seem more important than political machinations,” which is a major theme of the book. How long-time friendships and neighborly ties are broken is a central concern of the novel. To children the immediate, close bonds formed in everyday life are all important. When these bonds are broken, to a child narrator, the act would particularly stand out.   
    Between four and five years old children are also learning social customs, thus they are particularly aware of the inconsistencies and peculiarities of social interactions. In a novel where differing social customs led to unspeakable atrocities and brutal massacres, a child narrator’s hypersensitivity to this issue would support the author’s focus. 
    Another reason there is some wisdom to choosing a child narrator is that it is a constantly changing perception: “My perception of people has changed. I still see through to their hearts and minds, but their exteriors superimpose a new set of distracting impressions.” The adult Lenny’s words suggests that when people are young their perceptions are clearer and when people enter the adult world they are more deceived by illusory things. This argument actually gives greater credibility to Lenny’s impression over those of an adult’s.