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

of unspilled tears, too blue to blink. When I was fed, my eyes did not flut
ter; when virginal Mary set me across her shoulder, crying, 'Oof, so heavy,
sweet Jesus!' I burped without nictating. When Ahmed Sinai limped splint toe
d to my crib, I yielded to jutting lips with keen and batless gaze… 'Maybe a
mistake, Madam,' Mary suggested. 'Maybe the little sahib is copying us blin
king when we blink.' And Amina: 'We'll blink in turn and watch.' Their eyeli
ds opening and closing alternately, they observed my icy blueness; but there
was not the slightest tremor; until Amina took matters into her own hands a
nd reached into the cradle to stroke my eyelids downwards. They closed: my b
reathing altered, instantly, to the contented rhythms of sleep. After that,
for several months, mother and ayah took it in turns to open and close my li
ds. 'He'll learn, Madam,' Mary comforted Amina, 'He is a good obedient child
and he will get the hang of it for sure.' I learned: the first lesson of my
life: nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time.
Now, looking back through baby eyes, I can see it all perfectly it's amazi
ng how much you can remember when you try. What I can see: the city, baski
ng like a bloodsucker lizard in the summer heat. Our Bombay: it looks like
a hand but it's really a mouth, always open, always hungry, swallowing fo
od and talent from everywhere else in India. A glamorous leech, producing
nothing except films bush shirts fish… in the aftermath of Partition, I se
e Vishwanath the postboy bicycling towards our two storey hillock, vellum
envelope in his saddlebag, riding his aged Arjuna Indiabike past a rotting
bus abandoned although it isn't the monsoon season, because its driver su
ddenly decided to leave for Pakistan, switched off the engine and departed
, leaving a full busload of stranded passengers, hanging off the windows,
clinging to the roof rack, bulging through the doorway… I can hear their o
aths, son of a pig, brother of a jackass; but they will cling to their har
d won places for two hours before they leave the bus to its fate. And, and
: here is India's first swimmer of the English Channel, Mr Pushpa Roy, arr
iving at the gates of the Breach Candy Pools. Saffron bathing cap on his h
ead, green trunks wrapped in flag hued towel, this Pushpa has declared war
on the whites only policy of the baths. He holds a cake of Mysore sandalw
ood soap; draws himself up; marches through the gate… whereupon hired Path
ans seize him, Indians save Europeans from an Indian mutiny as usual, and
out he goes, struggling valiantly, frogmarched into Warden Road and flung
into the dust. Channel swimmer dives into the street, narrowly missing cam
els taxis bicycles (Vishwanath swerves to avoid his cake of soap)… but he
is not deterred; picks himself up; dusts himself down; and promises to be
back tomorrow. Throughout my childhood years, the days were punctuated by
the sight of Pushpa the swimmer, in saffron cap and flag tinted towel, div
ing unwillingly into Warden Road. And in the end his indomitable campaign
won a victory, because today the Pools permit cer