Lenny Sethi
Lenny is four years old when the novel begins. She is a smart little girl who is suffering from polio, which gives her a limp. She lives with her family in Lahore. She loves her parents but worries about their relationship. She wants attention from her father but does not always receive it. Lenny’s family are Parsi (spelled Parsee in the novel) and they practice the Zoroastrian religion. Lenny is very close with Ayah, her nanny. Ayah takes her all around the city and she meets all sorts of interesting characters belonging to various religions. Lenny is painfully honest and unable to tell a lie. She is also becoming aware of sexuality as a force around her. Lenny is anxious about what is going to happen to her country and her city. She hears all sorts of adult conversations about India being partitioned and violence between different religious groups. Finally, on Lenny’s birthday in 1948, the British leave India and it is split into two separate countries. An angry mob kidnaps Ayah after Lenny gives up her hiding place. She spends the rest of the novel trying to find her missing nanny, eventually finding her with the help of her godmother.
Ayah
Ayah is Lenny’s 18-year-old nanny. Her real name is Shanta which means “peace.” She is described as “chocolate-brown and short.” She is so beautiful that everyone, from shopkeeper to beggar, stares at her in the street. She has a number of suitors, including Masseur, Sharbat Khan, and Ice-candy-man. After Partition, when most Hindus like Ayah leave Pakistan for India, Ayah decides to stay. One day a mob discovers her at home and kidnaps her. Ice-candy-man forces her into prostitution and then marries her. She converts to Islam and takes the name Mumtaz. Eventually, she is rescued from Ice-candy-man and leaves for India to find her family.
Ice-candy-man
Ice-candy-man is a Muslim popsicle seller. He also does other odd jobs and scams, such as freeing birds, selling herbal remedies, and pretending to be a Muslim saint. He is in love with Ayah and is one of her many suitors. However, over time he becomes jealous of the others, most particularly Masseur. When the population exchange between Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims begin, he finds a train full of Muslim refugees from India who have been slaughtered. He begins to turn on his former non-Muslim friends. He also helps kidnap Ayah, makes her work as a prostitute, and then marries her. They live in the red-light-district that hosts the kind of high-class brothels in which he grew up. Ayah wants to leave him and when she is freed he begins following her, first to the camp for rescued women and then across the border to India. He assumes the role of the mad lover, reciting poetry and pining for his love. When the novel was first published in England, the title was not Cracking India, but Ice Candy Man.
Godmother
The matriarch of Lenny’s family, Godmother is characterized by her strength and wisdom. Godmother’s real name is Roda. She is married to Oldhusband and lives with Slavesister. Godmother is Lenny’s role model. She is loving and independent. She seems to know everything happening in Lahore thanks to her wide connections and many informants. She helps discover Ayah’s whereabouts and then rescues her. Godmother acts as something of a counterpoint to Ice-candy-man in that she is empathetic to the suffering of women all around her. She dares to challenge the pervasive presence of sexual violence in society.
Mother/Mrs. Sethi
Lenny’s mother is a very beautiful and maternal woman. She runs the household efficiently and manages an entourage of servants. A woman of the privileged, economic class, she keeps herself busy with her social commitments. Mother is well-educated and has a wide circle of friends, including many foreigners. Lenny wants attention from her mother and gets jealous when it is given to others. She tries to put a good image forward to her community. She also secretly helps women who have been kidnapped reunite with their families after Partition.
Father/Mr. Sethi
Father works in an office. He is loving but not always very emotionally available. He spends a lot of time reading his newspaper at home. Lenny likes seeing her mother and father affectionate with each other, but it is rare. Father is worried about money. He also begins having an affair towards the end of the novel and hits his wife.
Electricaunt (also known as Mini-Aunty)
As her nickname implies, she is Lenny’s aunt by virtue of being Cousin’s mother. Electricaunt is a resourceful widow. She moves quickly, which is why she is known as electric. She is obsessed with the color blue.
Slavesister
Slavesister is Godmother’s younger sister. She is lower on the hierarchy than Godmother and is essentially her servant. She is constantly cooking and doing chores. She also likes to complain and uses any opportunity to try to gain power over Godmother.
Papoo
Papoo is the daughter of the family of sweepers that live on the Sethi property. She is a little younger than Lenny and is mischievous and defiant. She often fights with her mother Muccho. Despite ill-treatment by her mother, she possesses admirable courage and resilience. Eventually, she is married off as a child bride to an older man. In this way, her spirit is broken.
Muccho
Muccho is Papoo’s mother. She is a sweeper and lives in the bungalow behind the Sethi's house. She often beats her daughter, though she regrets it later.
Moti
Moti is Muccho’s husband and Papoo’s father. He is a sweeper and lives in the bungalow behind the Sethis' house.
Cousin
Lenny’s cousin is Electricaunt’s son. He spends a lot of time with Lenny and Adi, though he is older than them. It is expected that Cousin and Lenny will get married when they are older. Cousin finds Lenny attractive and takes every opportunity to touch her or make hints about what sex is. Lenny gets angry when he does this, and they agree to wait until she is older.
Imam Din
Imam Din is the Sethi family’s large and friendly cook. He is Muslim and has family in the village of Pir Pindo. He takes Lenny there several times. He is the great grandfather of Ranna. He is a good man, though sometimes grumpy. He fakes an oath to God in order to protect Ayah from the mob who eventually takes her away.
Imam Din
Imam Din is the Sethi family’s large and friendly cook. He is Muslim and has family in the village of Pir Pindo. He takes Lenny there several times. He is the great grandfather of Ranna. He is a good man, though sometimes grumpy. He fakes an oath to God in order to protect Ayah from the mob, which eventually takes her away.
Sher Singh
Sher Singh is the attendant of the zoo. He is Sikh and one of Ayah’s suitors. He is responsible for the lion there, which Lenny is scared of. He enlists Ice-candy-man’s help in getting rid of some of his Muslim tenants. Later, Ice-candy-man turns on him because he is Sikh. He leaves for India.
Adi Sethi
Adi is Lenny’s brother. He is a year and a month younger than her. He is quiet and aloof, often private with his thoughts and interests. He is attractive but in a feminine kind of way.
Dost Muhammad
Imam Din’s grandson who lives in Pir Pindo.
Ranna
Ranna is Imam Din’s great-grandson. He lives in Pir Pindo. He is a young, handsome boy a little older than Lenny. They become friends when she visits. During Partition, his village becomes part of India and Sikhs come and massacre almost everyone. He survives wounded and eventually is able to make it into Pakistan where he reunites with his aunt and uncle. Thanks to the Sethi family collections, he attends a convent school.
Dr. Manek Mody
Godmother’s brother-in-law who visits occasionally from Rawalpindi. He has a flirtatious relationship with Godmother and loves to make Lenny and Adi laugh with his jokes.
Oldhusband
A quiet man who is married to Godmother. He occasionally impresses Lenny with profound statements.
Yousaf
Yousaf is the Sethi family’s odd-job man. He is curly-haired and handsome.
Colonel Barucha
The head of the local Parsee community. He is also a famous doctor that treats Lenny for polio and her limp.
Gardener of the Government House
Another suitor of Ayah’s, the gardener sometimes has news or rumors about what the British rulers of India are doing.
Chidda
Imam Din’s granddaughter who prepares food for everyone when she visits Pir Pindo.
Khatija and Parveen
Ranna’s sisters who live in Pir Pindo. They are only a couple of years older than Lenny but they act like older women with their seriousness and modesty.
Hotel Cook
This suitor of Ayah’s is a hotel cook at the Faletti’s Hotel restaurant.
The Shankars
A newly-wed couple who are the Sethis’ tenants. They are deeply in love. Mr. Shankar and Gita are constantly having sex.
Mr. Singh
Mr. Singh is a turbaned and bearded Sikh who often acts like a villager. He is married to an American woman and their children are Rosy and Peter. He is very proud of being Sikh and is quick to get into arguments.
Mrs. Singh
Mr. Singh’s green-eyed and pale-skinned American wife. Mother of Rosy and Peter.
Rosy
Mr. and Mrs. Singh’s daughter. She is good friends with Lenny and is often over at the house. She owns glass jars that Lenny steals and then returns.
Peter
Mr. and Mrs. Singh’s son and Rosy's brother. He is Lenny’s friend.
Mr. Rogers
Mr. Rogers is English. He is the Inspector General of Police in Lahore. He gets into an argument with Mr. Singh about whether the Sikhs are ready to rule themselves. He thinks the Sikh leadership is too violent. He is found murdered and mutilated in the street during Partition. Lenny is traumatized by this news.
Mr. Bankwalla
An officer at the Central Bank of India. He debates the question of Indian independence at a Parsee gathering.
Mrs. Pen
Lenny’s English neighbor who gives her lessons. She is married to an old Anglo-Indian man.
Maggie Phailbus
A schoolteacher living in Lenny’s neighborhood.
Jagjeet Singh
He is the granthi (or Sikh religious leader) of a village near Pir Pindo. He swears to Imam Din and the Muslims of the neighboring village that he will protect them, but when armed Sikhs swarm the area during Partition, he is unable to do much.
Hamida
Hamida is a Muslim woman who is kidnapped from her husband and family during Partition. She is taken to the Indian city of Amritsar and then makes it to the camp for displaced women near the Sethi household. She becomes Lenny’s new nanny. She is ashamed of having been raped but believes that bad things that happen are fated.
Gita
A friend of Mother who goes with her to visit Gandhi.
Mahatma Gandhi
The Indian lawyer and non-violent activist against the British colonial government. In the novel, he is described as fasting frequently to raise awareness against the British as well as violence between religious communities. At one point he visits Lahore. Mother, her friends, and Lenny go to visit him. He talks about crude things like rich food and enemas, but he has a powerful effect on all the women there. Gandhi is one of several real historical figures who appear in the novel.
Master Tara Singh
Master Tara Singh was a Sikh religious and political leader who opposed the Partition of India. In the novel, he is described as hating Muslims and advocating for violence. He visits Lahore and gives an anti-Muslim speech that leads to murder and arson in the city.
Jawaharlal Nehru
Nehru was an Indian independence activist who later became the first prime minister of India. In the novel he is mentioned for his activities in the Indian National Congress and for being close with the British.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Jinnah was a lawyer and leader of the All-India Muslim League (known in the novel as the Muslim League). He became Pakistan’s governor-general after the formation of the country in 1948. The novel describes him as a practical, cold, but fundamentally humane person who historians and pro-Indian intellectuals have misunderstood.
Sharbat Khan
Sharbat Khan is a Pashtun, a Muslim tribesman from the area near Afghanistan. He is one of Ayah's admirers and brings her all sorts of fruits and nuts from the countryside. While in Lahore, he sharpens knives and also works as a money-lender. He is tough and sometimes uses violence for work but gentle and respectful to Ayah and Lenny.
