Cracking India

At Queen’s Park, Lenny and Ayah are surrounded by Ayah’s suitors. One of the men is an attendant at the zoo, and Ayah jokes that Lenny is afraid of the lion there. The attendant promises to keep the lion on a leash, which makes Lenny even more frightened until Ayah tells her that the cage is too strong for the lion to escape. Ice-candy-man and the masseur are also there, both selling pills they’ve invented with snake-oil promises. The men discuss current events in 1947 India: the rumor that the viceroy of India Archibald Wavell, who supposedly retired, had actually been fired; his replacement, Louis Mountbatten, seems to favor Hindus. At the end of the afternoon, Ayah tells the men that she won’t return if they won’t talk about anything but the tension between the Muslims and the Hindus. Ice-candy-man agrees.

Lenny is disturbed and confused by the predictions she hears that “India is going to be broken” (124). She wonders what would happen if India broke around her house or broke in such a way that she couldn’t visit Godmother. Lenny now sees religious differences between Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, and Christian people—and that her family is Parsee.