Injustice In The Ice Candy Man

Lenny’s handicap is piled one on top of the other and her lameness is allied to her femaleness to deprive her of a proper education. The doctor tells her parents. “She’s doing fine without school, isn’t she?’ says the doctor. Don’t pressure her..... Her nerves could be affected. She doesn’t need to become a professor. He turns to me. Do you want to become a professor? She’ll marry, have children…lead a carefree, happy life. No need to strain her with studies and exams’ he advises: thereby sealing my fate” (Ice-Candy Man.15). Thus, deprived of schooling, Lenny is thrust more and more into the company of her Ayah with whom she explores the multifaceted modern world of Lahore. When the house next to Lenny 's house becomes a camp for survivors of

Lenny refuses to participate in the silence, pursuing her curiosity. She wants to know why a survivor 's family may ostracize them. Lenny 's sense of this injustice, as well as her growing intimacy with Hamida, the new ayah who joins the Sethis family from the fallen women 's camp, keep the text focused on the bodily realities of sexual victimization. Women, once they fall prey to men 's violence like Lenny 's two ayahs, cannot hope for their restitution to their own families. The dialogue between Lenny and her godmother effectively comments on the position of women. “What 's a

Lenny who betrays Ayah to the mob which had come looking for her at Lenny’s house. Believing the flowery language of the Ice-Candy man, she shows him her hiding place and regrets later. Her sense of guilt is acute. “I have betrayed Ayah Even Imam Din’s desperate lie fails us save her, I am the money-man performing money, the trained circus elephant, the snake-man’s charmed cobra, an animal with conditioned reflexes that cannot lie” (Ice-Candy Man.169). Ayah suffers during the riots, as she is abducted by the cronies of the Ice-candy-man. It is Lenny’s probity which brings about the ultimate catastrophe-the abduction of Ayah. The most tragic aspect of the abuse of Ayah is that it is set off by Lenny’s truth infected tongue. She cries, for three days “I stand in front of the bathroom mirror staring at my tongue. I hold the vile, truth-infected thing between my fingers and try to wrench it out... I punish it rigorous souring’s from my prickling toothbrush until it is sore and bleeding” (Ice-Candy Man.254). Concern about woman, allegation, the discomfort that prevailed and the soreness which fully filled in the minds are very apparently conceived in the question of the child, Lenny. Her mental agony is seen when she urges Godmother to take her to see Ayah. She says gallantly, “I want to tell her I am her friend... I don 't want her to think she 's bad just because she 's keen kidnapped”