Cracking India

Through the eyes of Lenny, a small, polio-stricken Parsee girl, the novel watches Lahore tear itself apart in the Partition of 1947, as her beloved Hindu nanny is betrayed by a besotted admirer, the Ice-candy-man. Sidhwa maps her city: the Parsee family's house on Warris Road, the Queen's Garden and the Mall where the nanny's many suitors gather, the old neighbourhoods that erupt in slaughter, and Hira Mandi, into whose brothels the abducted are sold.

Lenny

The Sethi house, Warris Road

Part 1

From the sheltered house on Warris Road, the sharp-eyed, polio-lamed child Lenny watches the adult world, protected by her family's neutral Parsee status. Her narrow, loving view of home is the vantage from which the coming catastrophe will be seen all the more terribly.

Part 1

inferred Lenny's Parsee family lives on Warris Road in Lahore, a real street of the colonial city; the specific house is invented and sited in that quiet, mixed neighbourhood.

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Ayah (Shanta)

Queen's Garden and the Mall

Part 1

In the garden by the Mall, Ayah, warm and lovely, holds a court of suitors from every community, and for a while the group's easy friendship embodies the mixed Lahore that Partition will destroy. The Ice-candy-man is among them, and his love for Ayah will curdle into the book's central betrayal.

Part 1

explicit Lenny's nanny takes her to Queen's Garden (Lawrence Gardens, now Bagh-e-Jinnah) off the Mall, real Lahore parks where the beautiful Ayah's circle of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Parsee admirers gathers.

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