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Themes of Ice-Candy-Man

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Themes of Ice-Candy-Man
The novel deals with a monumental and potent slice of Indian history. Through Ice-Candy-Man,
Bapsi Sidhwa has indeed brought to life the spiritual, emotional, and very real implications of the
partition of India. In so doing, she has “cracked” the riddle of India and revealed to us the
cultural difficulties that plagued South Asia before, during, and after its split from the British and
creation of Pakistan. Ice-Candy-Man brings to life the deeply religious, national, social, and
economic tensions marking both historical and current Indo-Pak political dynamics.

Ice-Candy-Man is a story in which individuals and their community identities are inseparable, a
story of emerging nations as well as a story of single characters. Not only Lenny, but everyone in
this novel experiences substantial change in the context of partition.

Theme of partition
The story of partition is represented through the eyes of Lenny, who is lame. This disability of
her also signifies the problems that a female writer faces while representing her views. Lenny, an
eight-year-old child is the protagonist of the novel. She is innocent and unaware of the bitter
differences among different communities. This can be judged on the basis of the fact that she is
much attached to Shanta Devi, who is a Hindu.

But as the novel develops, her innocence withers away and the bloody experience of the partition
takes its place. She gradually becomes aware of the dark realities of life. She witnesses the city of
Lahore burning into the flames. She also becomes aware of the violence that happens. Males are
butchered and women are raped.

Such incidents of violence bother Lenny very much in the beginning, but with the development
ofthe novel, she becomes used to it. Burning flames, fights, slogans, rapes, mass killings etc.
becomethe incidents of every day. In most of the novels dealing with partition, leaders like
Master TaraSingh, J.L. Nehru, Jinnah and Gandhi are represented as heroes. But in Ice-candy
Man, we findthem represented as culprits of this violence in the views of Lenny. This is one of
the mostdistinguished features of this novel.
Told from the awakening consciousness of an observant eight-year old Parsi girl, the violence
ofthe Partition threatens to collapse her previously idyllic world. The issues dealt with in the
bookare as numerous as they are horrifying. The thousands of instances of rape, and public’s
subsequentmemory loss that characterize the Partition are foremost.

Without a doubt, novel provides more than a compelling story but it also illustrates the pains of
anation during a decisive time in India and Pakistan’s history. When there is a talk of a
possiblepartition in India and the creation of a Muslim state in Pakistan, the existing harmony
between
Ayah’s suitors disintegrates. The group of young men, who are a symbol of
India’smulticulturalism, find themselves quarrelling like never before. The most vociferous of
all, IceCandy-Man, gradually becomes morally bankrupt in the midst of the national uproar.

The fright and alarm of partition is showed through Lenny’s dream in the novel.

Lenny has a very horrible dream about the Salvation Army. These army men turned into German
soldier and the Nazi violence committed large scale of human lives by fire. This dream was
prepared Lenny to face such violence experiences in the future which are near. Then she has
another bad dream about the slaughters of innocent children. This is a feeling of the future
cruelty and violence when the country is partitioned later.

Godmother sits by my bed smiling indulgently as men in uniforms

quietly slice off a child's arm here, a leg
there................................what's happening"

This horrifying dream about her dismemberment portraits the picture of future partition of India.
Lenny's horror dreams were symbolic. It has a lack of understanding to the bloodshed of
Partition.
But no one being concerned about what is happening in future.

Lenny has another nightmare that the zoo lion breaking loose and sinking his fangs into
herstomach:
 “….. the hungry lion, cutting across Lawrence Road to Birdwood Road prowls from
therear of the house to the bedroom door, and sinking his fangs into her stomach.”

The hungry lion foreshadows the lust for blood and the murderous cruelty with which people
ofdifferent communities will treat one another at the time of Independence and Partition. With
thesepersonal nightmares of Lenny’s, sidhwa sets the stage of the lurid details of real violence in
publiclife.

On Lenny’s first visit to Pir Pindo, she listened the sikh granthi, Jagjeet Singh saying:

“Brother, our villages come from the same racial stock. Muslims or Sikh, we
arebasically Jats, We are brothers. How can we fight each other?”

Seconding the views of Sikh granthi, the Muslim Chaudhry of Pir Pindo said:

“Our relationships with the Hindus are bound by strong ties. The city folk
canafford to fight…. We can’t, we are dependent on each other; bound by our toil;
by
Mandi prices set by the Banyas – they’re our common enemy – those city Hindus.
To us villagers, what does it matter if peasant is a Hindu, or a Muslim, or a Sikh?”

With the passage of time, as people talk more and more about partition, the lovely dialogs
betweenall communities seems to diminish. It can be clearly seen when Mr. Singh, at Lenny’s
house says:

“Hindu, Muslim, Sikh: we all want the same thing! We want ”

independence

We can see the changing of love into hatred in one more place in the novel where it says that
forLenny. The domestic manifestation of Partition is sudden and menacing:

“One day everybody is themselves – and the next day they are Hindu, Muslim,
Sikh,Christian. People shrink, dwindling into symbols.”

Witnessing the inexorable cracking apart of her world, with its affection, humor, and
balancesuperseded by bigotry and violence, Lenny comes to a painful understanding of “human
needs,frailties, cruelties and joys.”
Seven years old Lenny senses a subtle change in the Queen’s Garden. The people of
differentcommunities are sitting apart,

“Only the group around Ayah remains unchanged, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh,
Parseeare, as always, unified around her”

The most shocking thing is that even children are not being allowed to interact with one
another.When Lenny goes to play with a bunch of Sikh children, Masseur follows her and drags
her away,people have become so ghettoized that the Sikh women ask little Lenny what her
religion is, andwhen she says she is Parsi, they express surprise at the discovery of a new
religion. These incidentsare just a specimen of what was happening on a large scale in Lahore
and other cities of Indiabefore partition. The air instead of getting clear becomes more suffocated
and vitiated. Everywherethere is some talk of India going to be cracked.

Traumatic events of Partition

Change is the byword in the newly created Pakistan. To save their lives, the people were
changing their religions. Hari who was a Hindu now became a Muslim, HIMMAT ALI.

“HARI HAS HAD his bodhi shaved. He has become a Muslim.”

There was another heartbreaking incident. While Lenny was escorted to her school by Himmat
Ali, they find a foul smell emanating from a sack lying on the way. A closer inspection of it was
the murder of Masseur. Ayah’s heartthrob “has been reduced to a body, a thing,” which has lost
all its vitality and become only a numerical statistic in post-Partition killings.

After partition, there was this new hollow picture of Lahore. The colorful streets of Lahore look
ominously dreadful and deserted.

“Lahore is suddenly emptied of yet another hoary dimension: there are no Brahmins with
caste mark or Hindu in dhoties with bodhis. Only hordes of Muslim refugees. Killings are
followed by the looting and plunder of palatial bungalows in Model town left by Hindus.
The houses resemble empty shells “pinning” for their inhabitants, “haunted” by their
past. Some are occupied by refugees from India who are learning to cope with grief over
dead kin and kidnapped womenfolk.”
Violent reports add fuel to the flame of communal frenzy. While Masseur, Hari, Sher Singh and
the Government House gardener sitting on Shankar's neglected verandah at the back of Lenny's
house, are listening to the news on the radio, Ice-candy-man comes breathless after a frantic
cycle journey and announces.

"A train from Gurdaspur has just come in. Everyone in it is

dead. Butchered women among the dead! Only two gunny-bags
full of women's breasts!"
Sidhwa has portrayed the price of partition paid by everyone in the novel. Whether it’s a Hindu
or a Muslim, everyone contributed to the fire of partition. This fire burnt everything and spared
nothing. She holds both Muslims and Hindus responsible for the misery and human suffering due
to the partition. Many people had to leave their houses and migrate to other place without their
consent. People lost their sense of ideology. They didn’t know whether they were Indian or
Pakistani or nothing. The powerful never cares about the people who become the victims of their
schemes.

In the novel, when the subcontinent was divided, we see the change in the lives of characters that
used to live peacefully before. Many of Lenny’s Hindu and Sikh neighbors had to leave their
house behind and migrate to India as soon as possible because of the fear of being slaughtered.
Ayah, who is a major character in the novel, she never wanted to leave the house of Lenny,
where she had worked all her life but due to Partition, Lahore has become a part of Pakistan and
it was not bearable for Hindus or Muslims to be in the presence of each other and she was
dragged off by Muslims, including the Ice-candy man. She was later rescued by Ice-candy man
and married him but it became impossible for her to live in Pakistan.

On a crucial moment in the story, he asks the Ayah:

“There is an animal inside me straining to break free. Marry me and

perhaps it will be contained.”

One way or another, the tight bonds that existed between people were shattered due to the
partition. Bapsi Sidhwa has depicted these horrors in order to describe the effects they had on the
psychology of people. Hindus who couldn’t migrate due to many reasons, they had to convert
their religion in order to live in Lahore. Similarly, Muslims who were in India, they were being
killed by Hindus. Women were raped. The trains coming from India were full dead bodies of
Hindus. Such were the inhumane activities of people whose hearts were filled with hatred for
each other. The marks these events left on the pages of history are still fresh. According to Bapsi
Sidhwa, the unnecessary bloodshed to gain a separate country will always haunt the minds of
those who lost their families, friends and closed ones. Through the mouthpieces of her
characters, she has perfectly described the history of this nation.

Feminism
Bapsi Sidhwais entirely a feminist. She stands for the rights of women and especially those
women who are unable to tackle the society and are deeply caught in the snare of male idealism
society. Women are helpless and cannot dare to challenge men's vices but Sidhwa has totally
abolished this very concept and paved a new way for the women.

Themes explored in feminism include discrimination, stereotyping, objectification, oppression

and patriarchies.

Ice-Candy-Man is a significant testament of a true picture of the society through the different
male and female characters. She has just presented the reality that how a magnetic female
character connected the male with females and caused a great destruction among the fellows just
because of the female character's sexual figure. She describes the theme of marriage and
problems of women’s regarding different aspects of their lives.

Feminism has been dealt with great skill and provides us a deep insight into the lives of eastern
women. The novel encompasses various female characters of varied temperaments and the
reactions and responses of the female characters for example Lenny’s visit with her cook Imam
Din to his village Pir Pindo where she finds true picture of how actually women live - “Khadija
and Perveen barely two or three years older than us, already wear the responsible expressions of
much older women”. While writing through the perspective of feminism, there is also an issue of
early marriages, Ranna’s sisters were not older than him but their family was planning to paint
their hands yellow and instead of negating “The sisters duck their heads and hide their mouths in
their veils” and they also avoided to smile, according to them it leads to disgrace. This is how
society limits woman by bounding them into marriage and making them responsible in before
time.

Lenny’s attitude towards herself is the result of the people’s remarks which she hears around her.
Once when Lenny is taking tea with Godmother, she recalls:

“Drinking tea, I am told, makes one darker. I’m dark enough. Everyone says, “It’s a pity
Adi’s fair and Lenny so dark. He’s a boy. Anyone will marry him”.

Implying that a woman has to be beautiful to be desirable while a man is excused from such
conditioning and this event also highlights the theme of gender discrimination in this novel.
Being the main character of Bapsi Sidhwa novel, she is not meant to be felt pitied. Her female
characters are very certain and conscious of their individuality and they cannot be easily
dominated.

Women shouldn’t curse, lie, and steal but men can do all this. All are unjustified rules of
patriarchal society who only sees men. Lenny is not comfortable with all restrictions and
complains by saying:

“It’s okay if cousin swears - but if I curse or lie I am told it does not suit the shape of my
mouth. Or my personality. Or something.”

Only women should mind their language and actions men are free to do anything whatever they
want to do. Real illustration of female has been shown in this novel what opposite gender thinks
how a woman ought to be Lenny schooling is stopped as suggested by her doctor Col. Bharucha,
because of her disability and he says, “She’ll marry—have children—lead a carefree, happy life.
No need to strain her with studies and exams” implying that a women has no need for education,
for her only duty in this biased society is to marry, born children and be indulged in household
duties. While discussing Ice-candy man through the eye of feminism, another incident where
Lenny asks tailor Bhagwandas about his wife that whether he has only one wife or more than like
Muslim men and where is she but Ayah shut her mouth and says, “Men don’t like to talk about
their women folk” the certain portrayal of Asian men who like to hide their women behind
thousands curtains.

A major part of the novel’s discussion is on Lenny’s Ayah Shanta. She is a Hindu girl of
eighteen. Though she is employed with kind masters, her condition is that of an unprotected girl
whom everybody treats only as a sex object. Looking at Ayah, Lenny also becomes conscious of
her sexuality:

“The covetous glances Ayah draws educate me. Up and down, they look at her. Stub
ended twisted beggars and dusty old beggars on crutches drop their poses and stare at
her with hard, alert eyes. Holy men, marked in piety, shove aside their pretences to ogle
her with lust. Hawkers, cart-drivers, cooks, coolies and cyclists turn their heads as she
passes, pushing my pram with the unconcern of the Hindu goddess she worships.”

This shows feminism perspective because people see women not more than anything but as sex
object.

Another feminist perspective with respect to ayah is when she wants separation between her and
ice candy man and when she said to godmother ‘I want to go to my family’. But godmother
replied:

“What’s happened has happened, says godmother ‘but you’re married now. You must
make the best things. He truly cares for you.”

But Ayah rejected this by saying she does not want to live with him and godmother keep
convincing her by saying it was fated and what if your family won’t accept you back?

In our society, if women is not living happily with her men and if women in our society wants to
leave men, because of their cruelties, our society won’t let women to do that. Or if she leaves her
man willingly then in some cases families don’t accept them and mistreat them. So this is also
feminist perspective that in our society there’s gender discrimination and women won’t get much
importance in society.

Lenny's mother belongs to the privileged economic strata of the society. She can engage several
servants to look after the children and other daily chores. She is kept busy with her social
obligations, entertaining guests and partying exhaust her time. Lenny's physical handicap has
generated a sense of guilt in her which often surfaces in her conversations.

She says to Col. Bharucha:

"It's my fault, I neglected her—left her to the care of Ayah."

We also see Lenny’s mother fitting in the submissive, attentive, and serving wifely role in her
marital relationship. Images such as:

“She puts toothpaste on Father’s toothbrush, removes his sandals, his socks if he is
wearing socks, blows tenderly between his toes, and with cooing noises caresses his
feet.”

Evidence that Lenny’s mother role at home is subordinate to the man of the house. We are even
led to think that Lenny’s mother might be suffering from physical abuse:

“Father has never raised his hands to us, one day I surprise Mother at her bath and see
the bruises on her body.”

Thus, Mother is an empowered woman outside her wifely role, where she can become an active
humanitarian person, but when she is at home, she is just another abused woman.

In addition to this, Lenny’s mother used to call her husband “jan”and when he came
home, she welcomed him enthusiastically but never met with a positive answer. Lenny’s mother
always showed her concern but the answer she got was always a negative attitude:

“You’ll suffocate”

Through this line of the novel, Bapsi Sidhwa depicts patriarchal society, in which women
bear harsh words spoken by their men.
Hamida in this novel is represents the oppressed and victimized women during the wars. Where
women kidnapping and rape is used as weapon of war. Lenny was told that she was called the
fallen women because some Sikhs kidnapped her and took her to Amritsar.

“Hamida was kidnapped by the Sikhs…she was taken away to Amritsar. Once that
happens, sometimes, the husband – or his family won’t take her back”.

Bapsi Sidhwa also describe another aspect of Feminism that:

“Muslim community like to keep their girls in the family; so marriages between first
cousins are common.”

Politics and leaders

In the novel Sidhwa presents her own opinions and beliefs about the personalities and characters
of Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah through the narration by Lenny. Sidhwa seems to be giving her own
opinion about Gandhi jee though the brief portrayal of Gandhi’s character in the novel narrated
by Lenny. In the novel the author gives the description of the event when Gandhi jee comes to
Lahore wherein she has focused more on Gandhi's advices related to dieting and enema. Gandhi
jee has been depicted having feminine characteristics and the description sometimes appears to
be laughing at the personality and character of Gandhi jee. When Gandhi jee visits Lahore,
Lenny and her mother meet Gandhi jee. He is knitting surrounded by women. When Lenny and
her mother go to Gandhi jee, he politely puts aside his knitting and asks softly to practice enema,
a medical way to clear the intestines.
“Flush your system with an enema, daughter, says Gandhi
jee...’Look at these girl’', says Gandhi jee, indicating the lean
women flanking him…….Flush her stomach! Her skin will
bloom like roses.”
The writer has compared Nehru with Jinnah. In the comparison she criticizes Nehru and favors
Jinnah. The writer shows Nehru as Lady Mountbatten’s lover. Writer wants to convey that in the
allotment of areas at the time of partition Britishers and Nehru took the benefit of Jinnah’s good
character and personality and did injustice to him. Sidhwa ranks Jinnah as constitutional man.
 “His training at the Old Bailey and practice in English courtrooms
has given him faith in constitutional means, and he puts his
misplaced hopes into tall standards of upright justice.”

These are clear comments of the writer in defense of Jinnah through the words of Lenny the
narrator of the novel. There are various other instances in the novel where writer defends Jinnah.
Sidhwa quotes Jinnah's voice announcing Pakistan as a secular country. She herself once
considered the book as a defense of Jinnah.

Configuration of love
Ice candy man is the novel that tells us about the different shades of love. The cruel, pitiless and
obsessive form of love is exhibited in the Ayah and ice candy man relationship. Ice candy man
after knowing that ayah has no place for him in his heart, abducted her with the help of some
gonads by fooling Lenny. He made sure that she is sullied to such extent that no man marries her
and after forcing her into an asphyxiating marriage that she rescued with the help of Godmother.
Ice candy man became a wandering woe-begone lover looking for her love when Ayah was sent
back to her relatives in Amritsar. Ice candy man too crossed Wagah border behind her.

The Godmother and electric aunt to smuggled petro in order to help Hindus and Sikhs to escape
mobs and kidnapping displayed humanitarian love.

The unconditional love between Lenny and Ayah is the purest form of love. Lenny realized the
consequences of telling the bare truth. She was filled with deep sense of remorse and repentance
after knowing that she has betrayed Ayah by believing Ice candy man. She repented so much that
even she tried to hurt her tongue for speaking out the truth.

Lenny’s cousin who got to know that the way to Lenny heart is Ayah. He tried to find Ayah in
Lahore.
Love for ancestral lands and to one’s soil where they were born and lived their life is portrayed
through village of Pir Pindo who cannot conceive leaving behind the lands of their forefathers to
migrate to an unknown land simply for the sake of religion.

Betrayal
Betrayal is a central theme in the novel. The country of India betrays its own people—whether
Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Christian, or Parsee—by enforcing a hasty, ill-conceived plan of moving
millions of refugees from one country to another. The loss of life, lands, houses, crops, livestock,
and kinship stands as the reminder of this betrayal. Ranna’s story of the massacre of his village
by Sikhs demonstrates the betrayal of the neighboring Muslim and Sikh villagers’ promises to
protect one another.

“We’ll protect our brothers with our own lives”

On a personal level, Sidhwa uses betrayal as a theme to reveal hidden character traits, loyalties,
and the truth through various characters. For example, early in the novel, after Lenny’s surgery,
she wakes in terrible pain. Her parents lie to her, saying that her father has gone to call the doctor
and fetch him to the house to help her. In reality, no such call is made. Lenny learns her first
lesson in betrayal; even those you love will not always come to your aid.

“Daddy has gone to fetch Col.Bharucha”.

Furthermore, Lenny betrays many people because she cannot lie, including her beloved Ayah.
When the Ice-candy-man arrives with his Muslim gang to kidnap Ayah, he uses his relationship
with Lenny to persuade her into betraying Ayah’s hidden presence in the household. Lenny is
devastated by her betrayal, and her family cannot believe her naivety. Everyone is shocked that
Lenny would betray Ayah.

“Don’t be scared, Lenny baby, I’m here. I’ll protect Ayah with my life!

You know I’ll… I know she’s here… where is she?”

In the aftermath, the Ice-candy-man forces Ayah into prostitution, as her pimp. Lenny blames
herself for Ayah’s ruination, but the women in her family, including Godmother and Lenny’s
mother, will not stop until they have found and rescued Ayah from the terrible life resulting from
Lenny’s betrayal.

Religious Intolerance
Throughout the novel, characters’ desires for power or influence over others mirrors the desire
for political power that fuels religious intolerance. Religious intolerance erupts into violence,
pitting different religious and ethnic groups against each other. Lenny witnesses many acts of
killing, maiming, and death, including finding Masseur, Ayah’s beloved, dead in a sack on the
sidewalk.

As Lahore becomes a refugee center and an entrance to the new country of Pakistan, now a
majority-Muslim country, the Hindus and Sikhs are driven out of the city.

Religious intolerance also becomes a way for men to subjugate women. For example, Ayah is
taken prisoner by the Ice-candy-man, whom she has rejected for Masseur, and he pimps her out
to other men as a “dancing girl.” Women become victims of extreme sexual violence, including
rape and sex slavery, under the guise of religious intolerance.

Sense of loss and dislocation

All the novels that are written in the backdrop of Partition give a vivid account of the communal
violence that erupted in the subcontinent when the British announced its division into Pakistan
and India. The most affected area was the Punjab province since it was one of the two provinces
that were divided into two halves. This led to the huge migration from one city to another to seek
a peaceful land for their survival while giving rise to unprecedented violence and crime scenes.
In this traumatic partition Hindus and Sikhs were fighting against Muslims. Which revealed the
concealed anger and hate from both sides. Partition gave birth to the greatest migration of the
world. People begin to move from one place to other, them to their similar societies and
communities. Hindus move towards Hindus in Amritsar and Muslims move towards Lahore to
join their religious brothers.
 “The Muslims of the refugees flood Lahore and the Punjab west of Lahore.
Within three months seven million Muslims and…..”

After this migration a lot of house in the neighbor of Lenny remained empty, no one occupied
them. There was no Sikh or Hindu living in Lahore, they all migrated towards India and left their
houses empty. The Muslims who came from India begin to live in these empty houses.

“Rosy-Peter’s house and the house opposite to it still remained unoccupied.”

Conclusion
The above given points and themes that are discussed in the novel, they show that Bapsi Sidhwa
has created a successful post-colonial novel which presents the thoughts and feelings of people
who survive the tyranny of being colonized and then the partition of their homeland. In Ice-candy
Man, the event of Pakistan and India becoming prominent as two different countries after living
together for centuries is taken as the main theme. The character of Lenny, who is the narrator of
the novel, she narrates her own thoughts regarding the changes that she observes in Lahore, and
the behavior of the people she is surrounded with. The partition of a country is not a happy event.
It involves bloodshed and sacrifices. Although the need for a separate homeland for both
Muslims and Hindus had become inevitable but Bapsi sidhwa, being a Parsee, maintains
objectivity and blames both for the horrific events in order to achieve separate countries. She
tells us about how innocent people were killed and dragged out of their house through Lenny.
The novel, although is a fiction, but the atrocities are not made up as Bapsi Sidhwa herself
witnessed all of this when she was just a child. What makes Ice-candy Man a historical and
political novel is the realities she has depicted by developing fictional characters in the novel.

“Ice-Candy-Man deserves to be ranked as amongst the most authentic and best on the partition
of India… Sidhwa has blossomed into Pakistani’s best writer of fiction in English.”

-Khushwant Singh/The Tribune

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Reference
Ice-Candy-Man (text) by Bapsi Sidhwa