Abstract:
Bapsi Sidhwa’s characterization of Lenny Sethi in her fourth novel, the 1991 historical fiction IceCandy-Man, is formulated by the heterogeneous impact of the 1947 partition of India on the
psychopathology of children. This paper observes how the trope of trauma problematizes the
embodiments of childhood, contradicting its axiomatic paradisiacal nature. Parallel to the chaos
of communal massacre, mass migration, dysfunctional parenting and the marginality of women
and children, Lenny’s traumatic experience surpasses a singular-episodic trauma, and is laden
with a multiplicity of source factors, thereby generating “complex trauma” (van der Kolk et al.,
2007, p. 202). The child narrator acquires symptoms of irregular curiosity, hyper-vigilance,
somatic complaints, fear, PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and transgresses specific social
norms. Lenny is a choreographed child, a problem-child, taxonomized as the ‘adult-child’ in the
paper. Now, the question is whether to see the ensuing malfunction symptoms as a diagnostic
criterion or adaptative human resilience? Drawing from Anjali Gera Roy’s concept of “intangible
violence” (Roy, 2020, p. 43) the paper examines textual openings where the stages of childhood
and adulthood deconstruct itself, approximates, and overlaps inside each other; taking cues from
a relatively less-documented narrative angle of the child victim of partition.
