![]() ![]() Years before she stole her sister Kanwar's fate and sailed across the world from India to Canada, before she became Bibi-ji, she was Sharanjeet Kaur. 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. The tide of anger and violence spills across borders and floods into distant Canada, and into the lives of neighbours Bibi-ji and Leela. ![]() The assassination sets off a wave of violence against innocent Sikhs. 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. While they are there, the temple is stormed by Indian government troops attempting to contain Sikh extremists hiding inside the temple compound. 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. Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? elegantly 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. ![]()
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