Four-year-old Lenny, disabled by polio and fitted with a leg brace, is introduced being pushed through Lahore by her beautiful Ayah.

Lenny undergoes surgery on her twisted right leg and wakes in pain, relieved to find her foot remains visibly deformed.

A multi-religion group of admirers—including the Ice-candy-man and a Hindu masseur—gathers daily around Ayah at Queen's Park.

Colonel Bharucha urges Lahore's small Parsee community to stay neutral and align with whichever majority ends up ruling the city.

Muslim and Sikh village elders in Pir Pindo swear solemn oaths to protect one another's lives against outside violence.

Lenny suddenly perceives that everyone around her has shrunk into a single religious identity—Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, or Christian.

Sikh leader Master Tara Singh delivers a speech at Queen's Park inciting his followers to violence against Muslims and Hindus.

From the Ice-candy-man's rooftop, Lenny witnesses a man torn apart between two jeeps and a young girl impaled on a pike.

Pakistan is officially born on the same day as Lenny's eighth birthday, transforming Lahore from India into Pakistan overnight.

Ice-candy-man brings the Sethis' backyard gathering the news that a trainload of Muslims arrived from India massacred, the women missing.

Lenny and the gardener Himat Ali discover Masseur's hacked body stuffed inside a gunny sack on Warris Road.

A Muslim mob demands Ayah; Lenny tells Ice-candy-man where Ayah is hidden, and the mob drags Ayah away in a cart.

Ranna, Imam Din's great-grandson, arrives at the Sethis' home—skeletal, scarred, and nearly the sole survivor of the Pir Pindo massacre.

Godmother confronts Ice-candy-man about keeping Ayah as a dancing girl and publicly shames him for profiting from her dishonor.

Ayah departs the women's refuge to return home to her family in Amritsar; Ice-candy-man disappears across the border into India.

Told through Lenny's eyes, this pool follows the major turning points of Partition—from her pampered childhood in a harmonious, multi-ethnic Lahore to the city's violent transformation into Pakistan. The peaceful coexistence embodied by Ayah's diverse circle of admirers gives way to bloody mob violence and the slaughter of innocents on the streets. Lenny witnesses unspeakable atrocities from a rooftop on the night Lahore burns, then turns eight on the very day Pakistan is officially born. A devastating betrayal—Lenny unknowingly revealing Ayah's hiding place to the Ice-candy-man—costs Ayah her freedom and her spirit. Ranna's arrival as the skeletal sole survivor of the Pir Pindo massacre puts a human face on the wider horror of Partition. The pool concludes with Godmother's heroic campaign to expose and shame the Ice-candy-man and send Ayah home to her family across the border in Amritsar.

The headline events that transform Lahore and shatter Lenny's world.

Papoo, the sweeper's eight-year-old daughter, is found unconscious from a brutal beating by her mother and is hospitalized for two weeks.

Colonel Bharucha shocks Lenny by blaming the British for bringing polio to India and urges Parsees to stay politically adaptable.

Ice-candy-man dangles Adi upside down by his ankle, threatening to drop him unless Ayah agrees to go to the movies with him.

The Sethi family travels to Murree to escape the summer heat and hears the end of World War II announced over the radio.

At a tense dinner party, Sikh neighbor Mr. Singh attempts to stab the English Inspector General Rogers in the eye with a fork.

Lenny attempts to hide Rosy's three small glass jars in fireplace ash, but Rosy returns and Lenny's conscience forces her to give them back.

A Pathan knife-sharpener named Sharbat Khan joins Ayah's circle of admirers and reports that prosperous men of all faiths are being found dead across the city.

Godmother discovers Lenny has stolen the glass jars and declares simply that Lenny is not suited to lying or stealing.

Imam Din's second visit to Pir Pindo ends with a cold reception at the Sikh festival; Sikh neighbors escort the Muslim group partway home.

Fifteen of Imam Din's land-poor relatives from Pir Pindo arrive by government truck, dumped at the Sethis' front gate as evacuees.

Ice-candy-man swaggers into the Sethis' yard boasting about throwing gasoline bombs into Hindu and Sikh homes to drive families from Lahore.

The Sethis' Hindu gardener Hari is circumcised by a barber and converts to Islam, renaming himself Himat Ali.

A Muslim mob arrives at the Sethis' demanding the sweeper's family, but they have already safely converted to Christianity.

Lenny spots Ayah passing in a taxi dressed in fine clothes and heavy makeup, barely recognizable as her beloved nursemaid.

Ice-candy-man stands outside the women's refuge day after day, throwing rose petals and candy over the wall toward Ayah.

This pool captures the smaller but deeply significant events that build the world of Partition-era Lahore around Lenny. From Papoo's brutal mistreatment and the political sparks at a Sethi dinner party to the creeping news of murders across the city, these moments reveal a society already fracturing before the official violence begins. As Ayah attracts new admirers and displaced relatives begin arriving at the Sethis' gate, the scale of the catastrophe becomes impossible to ignore. The Ice-candy-man's boastful confession about his own atrocities marks the moral collapse of a man Lenny once regarded as part of Ayah's cheerful circle. The pool traces how each secondary character—the converted gardener, the knife-sharpener, the evacuated villagers—registers the human cost of Partition in miniature. It ends with Ice-candy-man's obsessive vigil outside the women's refuge, reduced from a charming predator to a lovelorn, hollow shadow.

Behind-the-scenes moments and significant secondary events across the years of Partition.

Lenny's leg cast is removed and her foot stays deformed, making her realize she fears losing her disability more than she fears illness.

Cousin shows Lenny his genitals and lets her shock herself with electricity, beginning her informal education in forbidden adult knowledge.

Lenny visits Pir Pindo for the first time with Imam Din and bonds with young Ranna over their shared slight physical deformities.

Lenny meets Gandhi during his visit to Lahore and later recognizes an icy, pitiless core behind his outwardly compassionate eyes.

The previously harmonious circle of Ayah's mixed-religion admirers begins to fracture dangerously at Queen's Park as political tensions overtake friendship.

Inspector General Rogers, a recent dinner guest at the Sethis' home, is found murdered and mutilated in a Lahore gutter.

Ayah falls openly in love with Masseur; Ice-candy-man confronts Lenny and reveals the depth of his hatred and jealousy of his rival.

After a heated restaurant debate about Lahore's fate in Partition, Lenny suffers a nightmare in which children are crucified.

After witnessing the night's atrocities from the Ice-candy-man's rooftop, Lenny tears her doll apart to understand violence and cries hysterically.

Masseur vows to protect Ayah from the violence; Ayah says she already belongs to him; Lenny sobs and begs Ayah not to leave.

Cousin attempts to coerce Lenny into a sexual act; she weeps and recoils, seeing a new and frightening side of someone she trusted.

Twelve-year-old Papoo is drugged by her mother and forced into marriage with a cruel, greedy middle-aged dwarf.

Godmother reveals to Lenny that the women confined in the compound next door are not criminals but victims of kidnapping and sexual violence.

Lenny's mother confesses she is not an arsonist but a black-marketeer who funds the secret rescue of women from sex slavery.

Godmother takes Lenny to the red-light district where they find Ayah—renamed Mumtaz—begging on her knees to be freed from Ice-candy-man.

This pool focuses on the pivotal moments of realization and moral change that define Lenny's emotional growth throughout the novel. From the quiet revelation that she treasures her disability as a social tool, to her first encounters with sexuality, political violence, and the consequences of her own honesty, each event marks an irreversible shift in her understanding of the world. The murder of Mr. Rogers, Lenny's nightmares, and her helpless witness of Masseur's devotion to Ayah all accelerate her exit from childhood innocence. Papoo's forced marriage and the discovery that the women confined next door are victims rather than criminals expose the systemic oppression of women running beneath Lahore's surface. Lenny's mother's confession about her secret black-market rescue work overturns everything Lenny believed she knew about the adults around her. The pool ends with Lenny standing face to face with Ayah—renamed, broken, but alive—deep in the red-light district, in the moment that sets Ayah's rescue in motion.

The key discoveries, decisions, and emotional shifts that shape Lenny's coming of age.