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

ugh they didn't know it, a serpent waited in the wings… but in the meanwhil
e, let us permit Hanif Aziz to have his moment; because The Lovers of Kashmir conta
which was to provide my uncle with a spectacular, though brief, period of t
riumph. In those days it was not permitted for lover boys and their leading
ladies to touch one another on screen, for fear that their osculations mig
ht corrupt the nation's youth… but thirty three minutes after the beginning
of The Lovers the premiere audience began to give off a low buzz of shock,
because Pia and Nayyar had begun to kiss not one another but things.
Pia kissed an apple, sensuously, with all the rich fullness of her painted
lips; then passed it to Nayyar; who planted, upon its opposite face, a viri
lely passionate mouth. This was the birth of what came to be known as the i
ndirect kiss and how much more sophisticated a notion it was than anything
in our current cinema; how pregnant with longing and eroticism! The cinema
audience (which would, nowadays, cheer raucously at the sight of a young co
uple diving behind ? bush, which would then begin to shake ridiculously so
low have we sunk in our ability to suggest) watched, riveted to the screen,
as the love of Pia and Nayyar, against a background of Dal Lake and ice bl
ue Kashmiri sky, expressed itself in kisses applied to cups of pink Kashmir
i tea; by the fountains of Shalimar they pressed their lips to a sword… but
now, at the height of Hanif Aziz's triumph, the serpent refused to wait; u
nder its influence, the house lights came up. Against the larger than life
figures of Pia and Nayyar, kissing mangoes as they mouthed to playback musi
c, the figure of a timorous, inadequately bearded man was seen, marching on
to the stage beneath the screen, microphone in hand. The Serpent can take
most unexpected forms; now, in the guise of this ineffectual house manager,
it unleashed its venom. Pia and Nayyar faded and died; and the amplified v
oice of the bearded man said: 'Ladies and gents, your pardon; but there is
terrible news.' His voice broke a sob from the Serpent, to lend power to it
s teeth! and then continued, 'This afternoon, at Birla House in Delhi, our
beloved Mahatma was killed. Some madman shot him in the stomach, ladies and
gentlemen our Bapu is gone!'
The audience had begun to scream before he finished; the poison of his words
entered their veins there were grown men rolling in the aisles clutching thei
r bellies, not laughing but crying, Hai Ram! Hai Ram! and women tearing their
hair: the city's finest coiffures tumbling around the ears of the poisoned l
adies there were film stars yelling like fishwives and something terrible to
smell in the air and Hanif whispered, 'Get out of here, big sister if a Musli
m did this thing there will be hell to pay.'
For every ladder, there is a snake… and for forty eight hours after the abo
rtive end of The Lovers of Kashmir, our family remained within the walls of
Buckingham Villa ('Put furniture against the doors, whatsitsname!' Reveren