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

eminds Mm, 'Worli, Mahim, Salsette, Matunga, Colaba, Mazagaon, Bombay. The
British joined them up. Sea, brother Ahmed, became land. Land arose, and
did not sink beneath the tides!' Ahmed is anxious for his whisky; his lip
begins to jut while pilgrims scurry off the narrowing path. 'The point,' h
e demands. And Narlikar, dazzling with effulgence: 'The point, Ahmed bhai, is this!'
It comes out of his pocket: a little plaster of paris model two inches high:
the tetrapod! Like a three dimensional Mercedes Benz sign, three legs stand
ing on his palm, a fourth rearing lingam fashion into the evening air, it tr
ansfixes my father. 'What is it?' he asks; and now Narlikar tells him: 'This
is the baby that will make us richer than Hyderabad, bhai! The little gimmi
ck that will make you, you and me, the masters of that! He points outwards t
o where sea is rushing over deserted cement pathway… 'The land beneath the s
ea, my friend! We must manufacture these by the thousand by tens of thousand
s! We must tender for reclamation contracts; a fortune is waiting; don't mis
s it, brother, this is the chance of a lifetime!'
Why did my father agree to dream a gynaecologist's entrepreneurial dream? W
hy, little by little, did the vision of full sized concrete tetrapods march
ing over sea walk, four legged conquerors triumphing over the sea, capture
him as surely as it had the gleaming doctor? Why, in the following years, d
id Ahmed dedicate himself to the fantasy of every island dweller the myth o
f conquering the waves? Perhaps because he was afraid of missing yet anothe
r turning; perhaps for the fellowship of games of shatranj; or maybe it was
Narlikar's plausibility 'Your capital and my contacts, Ahmed bhai, what pr
oblem can there be? Every great man in this city has a son brought into the
world by me; no doors will close. You manufacture; I will get the contract
! Fifty fifty; fair is fair!' But, in my view, there is a simpler explanati
on. My father, deprived of wifely attention, supplanted by bis son, blurred
by whisky and djinn, was trying to restore his position in the world; and
the dream of tetrapods offered him the chance. Whole heartedly, he threw hi
mself into the great folly; letters were written, doors knocked upon, black
money changed hands; all of which served to make Ahmed Sinai a name known
in the corridors of the Sachivalaya in the passageways of the State Secreta
riat they got the whiff of a Muslim who was throwing his rupees around like
water. And Ahmed Sinai, drinking himself to sleep, was unaware of the dang
er he was in.
Our lives, at this period, were shaped by correspondence. The Prime Minist
er wrote to me when I was just seven days old before I could even wipe my
own nose I was receiving fan letters from Times of India readers; and one
morning in January Ahmed Sinai, too, received a letter he would never forg
et.
Red eyes at breakfast were followed by the shaven chin of the working day;
footsteps down the stairs; alarmed giggles of Coca Cola girl. The squeak of