Ice Candy Man

A black box appears in the Sethis’ bathroom; the children gather around it, and Cousin and the other neighborhood children agree that it must be a coffin. However, it is a tiny coffin, so they cannot agree upon what type of corpse is inside the box. Lenny and Adi dare not ask their father about the box: it belongs to him, and therefore it is no one else’s business.

The children have all stopped eating due to the stress and conflict they feel around them. Lenny’s mother starts spoon-feeding Lenny and Adi; Electric-aunt feeds Cousin, and the otherworldly Mrs. Singh begins to supervise Peter and Rosy’s feeding.

The black box disappears from the bathroom.

Imam Din worries about his kinfolk in Pir Pindo, so he arranges a visit and Lenny insists upon going with him again. He agrees, but they travel by train this time, which is considered safer.

When Imam Din’s whole family, including Lenny, attend the Sikh festival commemorating the founding of their religion, they are received coldly in the neighboring village. Children who once would welcome and play with Ranna pretend not to see him. A Sikh friend welcomes them to his group, and the elders discuss what is going on. It seems that the divisions plaguing the cities have come to the country. The men reassure themselves that there is nothing to fear from each other here in the country, but the Sikhs escort Imam Din’s family halfway back to Pir Pindo.

Back home in Lahore, radio reports tell of attacks on Muslim villages only 40 miles away. The details of the attacks are too bizarre and brutal to be believed. Two weeks later, a government truck disgorges 15 of Imam Din’s relatives from Pir Pindo at the Sethi’s front gate. They are dazed and confused; they have been evacuated from land that will become India and trucked to land that will become Pakistan. Only the poor relatives without land in Pir Pindo have left; all of Imam Din’s land-owning relatives, including his sons and grandchildren, remain in Pir Pindo.

Winter arrives, and with the cold comes the terrible news that Mr. Rogers, the Inspector General of Police, has been found murdered and mutilated in a gutter. Lenny says, “For a moment I cannot breathe. I feel I might fall” (120). A death of someone she knows—a visitor to her house—shocks her as other deaths have not. Slavesister, also known as Mini Aunty, viciously tells Lenny that Mr. Rogers will burn in an English hell. Lenny reports, “The relish in her voice is ghoulish. I feel so upset at the awful fate awaiting Mr. Rogers’s mutilated carcass that I collapse on a stool” (121).

Godmother argues with Slavesister over whether the Parsees’ (also called Zoroastrians’) practice of exposing bodies to the vultures inside the Tower of Silence is preferable to burial. Lenny remains disgusted by the whole conversation.

On her way home, Lenny walks with the gardener, Hari. As their shadows cross a Brahmin Pandit, he throws away his food, because their shadows have polluted his meal and his being. Lenny begins to see how religion enforces the degradation of others. When, at home, Hari’s dhoti—a symbol of his Hinduism—is ripped from his body, exposing him to the whole household, Lenny, too, blames him for flaunting his Hinduism (126). At this point, Ayah has grown afraid of the Ice-candy-man’s obsessive stalking; she and Lenny watch him come from the shadows into the light of the yard.

Masseur woos Ayah all over Lahore, and Lenny follows as Ayah’s constant companion. Lenny understands that Ayah is in love with Masseur, as he massages, sings, and entrances Ayah. The Ice-candy-man woos Ayah, too, following Masseur and Ayah all over Lahore and coming at night to the Sethi house to share the gossip he gleans by day. The two men are locked in a battle for Ayah’s affection. However, as the Ice-candy-man grows frighteningly obsessed, Ayah falls in love with Masseur. In one evening encounter, Lenny asks the Ice-candy-man about his wife, who lives in a village with her mother and never comes to the city. In this conversation, the Ice-candy-man reveals his deep hatred and jealousy of Masseur. Both Lenny and Ayah are shocked by his bitterness.

At the local restaurant that has replaced the park as a meeting place, Ayah sits next to Masseur as Lenny and Adi eat their fill. The table of friends, including Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, and Parsees, argues about the fate of Lahore in the upcoming partition. Some argue that Lahore will become part of Pakistan, while others insist that it will stay part of India. For example, Masseur and the Government House gardener insist that money, not population, will determine Lahore’s fate. Because Hindus own most of the property and businesses in Lahore, India will keep Lahore. Others, including Ice-candy-man, insist that the population of Muslims will determine Lahore’s location in a newly-created Pakistan. The argument grows heated, with all sides insisting that violent atrocities will occur for any people who do not leave Pakistan if they are not Muslim, or India if they are not Hindu.

The disturbing emotions aroused within the group frighten Lenny. That night, Lenny has a horrible dream in which children are crucified.