Salman Rushdie Midnight's children Salman Rushdie Midnight's ...

of the moment, pressed a little too hard, and Sonny arrived with little de
nts beside each of his temples, shallow forcep hollows which would make him
as irresistibly attractive as the hairpiece of William Methwold had made t
he Englishman. Girls (Evie, the Brass Monkey, others) reached out to stroke
his little valleys… it would lead to difficulties between us.
But I've saved the most interesting snippet for the last. So let me reveal
now that, on the day after I was born, my mother and I were visited in a sa
ffron and green bedroom by two persons from the Times of India (Bombay edit
ion). I lay in a green crib, swaddled in saffron, and looked up at them. Th
ere was a reporter, who spent his time interviewing my mother; and a tall,
aquiline photographer who devoted his attentions to me. The next day, words
as well as pictures appeared in newsprint…
Quite recently, I visited a cactus garden where once, many years back, I buri
ed a toy tin globe, which was badly dented and stuck together with Scotch Tap
e; and extracted from its insides the things I had placed there all those yea
rs ago. Holding them in my left hand now, as I write, I can still see despite
yellowing and mildew that one is a letter, a personal letter to myself, sign
ed by the Prime Minister of India; but the other is a newspaper cutting.
It has a headline: midnight's child.
And a text: 'A charming pose of Baby Saleem Sinai, who was born last night
at the exact moment of our Nation's independence the happy Child of that
glorious Hour!'
And a large photograph: an A 1 top quality front page jumbo sized baby snap,
in which it is still possible to make out a child with birthmarks staining
his cheeks and a runny and glistening nose. (The picture is captioned: Photo
by Kalidas Gupta.)
Despite headline, text and photograph, I must accuse our visitors of the cri
me of trivialization; mere journalists, looking no further than the next day
's paper, they had no idea of the importance of the event they were covering
. To them, it was no more than a human interest drama.
How do I know this? Because, at the end of the interview, the photographe
r presented my mother with a cheque for one hundred rupees.
One hundred rupees! Is it possible to imagine a more piffling, derisory sum?
It is a sum by which one could, were one of a mind to do so, feel insulted.
I shall, however, merely thank them for celebrating my arrival, and forgive
them for their lack of a genuine historical sense.
'Don't be vain,' Padma says grumpily. 'One hundred rupees is not so little; aft
er all, everybody gets born, it's not such a big big thing.'
Book Two