As evidenced in Heaven on Wheels, this proved the case everywhere from London literary circle to Bradford Pakistani community centre, from Birkenhead ferry to Edinburgh gay bar. Firdaus has always found that one of the bizarre consequences of his situation is that people tend to tell him things about themselves that they would not readily tell anyone else. Firdaus arrived in London for the first time prior to publication of his first autobiographical novel, Trying to Grow, an account of a Parsee childhood in Bombay in which a congenital condition characterized by brittle bones left him disabled but undaunted. To see Britain through the eyes of Firdaus Kanga is a rare revelation. Heaven on Wheels (Firdaus Kanga, 1990, Viking) Trying to Grow is a many-splendoured book built around the experiences of a physically handicapped boy on the brink of manhood, a deeply moving story told with a remarkable blend of directness, humour, and irreverence.ġ8.
But when you reach eighteen and still are the size of an eight-year-old, it is not much fun, and Brit has to try and grow in his own way. None of the other children drank powdered pearls in their milk or had almond oil rubbed into their legs until they gleamed like Bangalore silk, and Brit knew he could always get his own way with Dolly-even if it took a little blackmail. Besides Parsees, don’t really like long first names, and it pleased his mother Sera because it sounded so English. It was his sister Dolly’s idea to call him Brit, short for brittle, because of his bones. His teeth crumble and chip if he tries to bite into anything. Brit Kotwal breaks his legs eleven times before he is five years old.
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