Summary
Lenny goes to school at her English neighbor Mrs. Pen’s house. They sit outside in the garden and Lenny recites her timetables, which she hates. Mrs. Pen makes her memorize all sorts of useless facts, but despite this Lenny learns something about life from these visits. Mrs. Pen and her Anglo-Indian husband are quite old. Mrs. Pen’s smell teaches her “the biology of spent cells and aging bodies.” The scent of young and attractive Ayah, in contrast, “carries the dark purity of creation.” Mr. Pen is also old and large. Lenny looks at his fat fingers and sickly toes, comparing them to the Masseur’s talented fingers and the Ice-candy-man’s toes that try to dart under Ayah’s sari.
Lenny goes to Godmother’s house, or rather the rooms she rents behind a bungalow. She lives there with Slavesister (also called Mini Aunty). They have a dangerous kerosene stove called a Primus. One day Lenny brings the three jars that she stole from Rosy. While they are cooking something, she slips behind cots that are between two cupboards and stacks of trunks. All of a sudden, Godmother tells Slavesister that she wants her Japanese kimono. Slavesister is hesitant to go while she is busy cooking but Godmother makes fun of her, imitating her movements. But when Slavesister goes for the kimono, she finds the jars. Lenny lies that Rosy gave them to her, but Godmother knows from her body language that she is lying. Lenny is upset that she cannot get away with anything. Lenny remembers that the day she was “set firmly and relentlessly on the path to truth” was when she broke a fancy Wedgwood plate of her mother's and confessed it immediately.
One day Gandhi (politely referred to as Gandhijee here) visits Lahore. Lenny is surprised that he is a real person. In fact, he’s too real: Lenny describes him as “small, dark, shriveled, old” and similar to their gardener Hari in appearance beside his “disgruntled, disgusted and irritable look.” Lenny, Mother, and her friend Gita sit in a circle and look at Gandhi. Gita has an “ethereal and content” look on her face and appears “washed of all desire.” Lenny wonders how he has this effect on women. Yet when Mother and Lenny go up to talk to him, he speaks about bowel movements and digestion. He says that “Sluggish stomachs are the curse of the Punjabis” and blames overly rich food. He advises flushing their system with enemas. Then Gandhi notices Lenny and calls her a sickly-looking child. Lenny reflects on Gandhi as they leave and considers him an “improbable toss-up between a clown and a demon.” Yet when he looks at her, she realizes his power. He touches her face and she lowers her eyes in shyness for the first time before a man.
Analysis
Lenny is a conflicted character. She wants to be able to lie, steal, and swear but something in her character makes it impossible. She takes Rosy’s jars but then fears intense “fear and guilt” over it. When Godmother discovers the hidden jars, she knows right away that Lenny is lying and tells her it "doesn’t suit her."
In previous chapters, Lenny was told the same thing about swearing. “I can’t get away with the littlest thing,” she complains to herself. She is honest to a fault. As Godmother explains, “Some people can lie and some people can’t. Your voice and face give you away.” Lenny is not pleased with this, seeing it as a “life sentence” to honesty. She thinks of herself as a “demon in saint’s clothing” because she wants to do bad things but outwardly is stuck acting correctly.
The second half of the chapter examines Gandhi’s character. Lenny at first doesn’t believe he is a real person: “I almost thought he was a mythic figure.” On the way to visit him at a house at the end of Warris Road, Lenny is anxious and thinks she might end up “in some private recess of the zoo and come face to face with the lion.” Here, as in previous chapters, the lion recurs as a symbol for Lenny’s anxieties. Yet when she finally sees Gandhi, she is surprised by how old and ordinary he appears. Looking at the faces of the other women there, she is shocked by his power. Unlike the characters like Ayah who inspire sexual desire, Gandhi inspires an other-worldly and pure look in these women. Looking more closely at him, Lenny realizes that there is a “pure shaft of humor, compassion, tolerance, and understanding” in him. That’s what people respond to. There is almost something feminine about him. He’s compassionate and loves women, children, and untouchables—the more vulnerable people in society.
Yet alluding to the future, Lenny hints that there might be more to him than meets the eye. It is only after the massacres occur during the Partition of India that she finally “comprehend[s] the concealed nature of the ice lurking deep beneath the hypnotic and dynamic femininity of Gandhi’s non-violent exterior.” Overall, the future leader of Pakistan, Jinnah, is presented more positively in the book. Later chapters will argue that Jinnah was treated unfairly by Indian and British biographies and histories of the period.
