Cracking India

At the beginning of the novel, Ayah brings a very young Lenny to the zoo and leaves her pram in front of the lion’s cage. Although Lenny knows that the lion is caged and toothless, he haunts her dreams for years. Eventually, the zoo gets lion cubs and Lenny knows that they will grow up to be terrifying as well. The lion represents a latent threat that is only dormant as long as safety measures—the cage, the zookeeper’s strength, or the goat keeping the lion from being too hungry—hold up. Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims use the idea of forestalling a latent threat to justify their murder of innocent, helpless villagers—though of course, like the toothless lion, the majority of people in India pose no real threat to the extremist mobs.

In Hamida’s story, a tiger in a painting comes alive to eat the son of a king because of an inescapable prophesy about the king’s bad karma. This tiger represents the cruel vagaries of inevitable fate—a belief that excuses the violent acts men perpetrate against women. Hamida accepts as fated that her rape means her family and children must shun her: For her, there is nothing to do, since, “What can a sorrowing woman do but wail?” (273). Similarly, Godmother tells Ayah that her kidnapping and rape was fate and she can only move on. Only Lenny refuses to accept this, blaming the men for their actions instead.

When Imam Din catches a giant black cat that has been sneaking in to steal food, he is prepared to kill the animal. The helpless cat spits and hisses in desperation, until Mother intervenes, hitting Imam Din with a flyswatter—a tiny, weak weapon—hard enough to draw blood. It’s notable that while doing this, Mother, who has put her own safety on the line to rescue kidnapped women, refers to the cat as a “she.”