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

I was batting (elegantly as Ranji, powerfully as Vinoo Mankad) when she ch
arged up the hill on her two wheeler, straw hair flying, freckles ablaze,
mouth metal flashing semaphore messages in the sunlight, a scarecrow astri
de a silver bullet… 'Hey, you widda leaky nose! Stop watching the schoopid
ball, ya crumb! I'll showya something worth watching!'
Impossible to picture Evie Burns without also conjuring up a bicycle; and n
ot just any two wheeler, but one of the last of the great old timers, an Ar
juna Indiabike in mint condition, with drop handlebars wrapped in masking t
ape and five gears and a seat made of reccine cheetah skin. And a silver fr
ame (the colour, I don't need to tell you, of the Lone Ranger's horse)… slo
bby Eyeslice and neat Hairoil, Cyrus the genius and the Monkey, and Sonny I
brahim and myself the best of friends, the true sons of the Estate, its hei
rs by right of birth Sonny with the slow innocence he had had ever since th
e forceps dented his brain and me with my dangerous secret knowledge yes, a
ll of us, future bullfighters and Navy chiefs and all, stood frozen in open
mouthed attitudes as Evie Burns began to ride her bike, fasterfasterfaster
, around and around the edges of the circus ring. 'Lookit me now: watch me
go, ya dummies!'
On and off the cheetah seat, Evie performed. One foot on the seat, one leg
stretched out behind her, she whirled around us; she built up speed and the
n did a headstand on the seat! She could straddle the front wheel, facing t
he rear, and work the pedals the wrong way round… gravity was her slave, sp
eed her element, and we knew that a power had come among us, a witch on whe
els, and the flowers of the hedgerows threw her petals, the dust of the cir
cus ring stood up in clouds of ovation, because the circus ring had found i
ts mistress, too: it was the canvas beneath the brush of her whirling wheels.
Now we noticed that our heroine packed a Daisy air pistol on her right hip…
'More to come, ya zeroes!' she yelled, and drew the weapon. Her pellets ga
ve stones the gift of flight; we threw annas into the air and she gunned th
em down, stone dead. 'Targets! More targets!' and Eyeslice surrendered his
beloved pack of rummy cards without a murmur, so that she could shoot the h
eads off the kings. Annie Oakley in tooth braces nobody dared question her
sharp shooting, except once, and that was the end of her reign, during the
great cat invasion; and there were extenuating circumstances.
Flushed, sweating, Evie Burns dismounted and announced: 'From now on, th
ere's a new big chief around here. Okay, Indians? Any arguments?'
No arguments; I knew then that I had fallen in love.
At Juhu Beach with Evie: she won the camel races, could drink more coconut
milk than any of us, could open her eyes under the sharp salt water of th
e Arabian Sea.
Did six months make such a difference? (Evie was half a year older than me.
) Did it entitle you to talk to grown ups as an equal? Evie was seen gossip