It is an entirely pleasing world peopled by her beloved Ayah, Iman Din, the genial cook, by Dil Navaz, the Ice Candy Man, a rogue, who is Lenny's hero by Hassan, the masseur, who invents oils made from pearl dust and fish eggs and also by her precocious Cousin Adi. When the film opens, the British are finally preparing to quit their empire in India and the searing process of spitting British India into Independant India and Pakistan is about to begin. For Lenny the trouble first appears in her Lahore home when a quarrel erupts between Mr. Singh and Mr. Rogers, a British Inspector General of Police, who have come to dine with her parents.
Bitter words metamorphose into slogan shouting mobs and arson.
Angry Hindus storm through Lahore one day, and angry Muslims the next. Still, it is all far enough away from Lenny's uneasy but untouched home where her mother, Bunty, teaches her to waltz and Ayah's crew of admirers continue to meet in the park as before. Then the serious killing begins. Lenny's idyllic world Lenny is with Ayah and a group of Ayah's Admirers outside the servants quarters of her home when troubling reports of violence around Gurdaspur in India begin coming over the radio. Whilst the group, gripped with fear, listens to the radio, Ice Candy Man waits for his sisters at Lahore Railway Station.