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

would have to share her interests, to make her passions mine… guns have ne
ver appealed to me. I resolved to learn how to ride a bike.
Evie, in those days, had given in to the many demands of the hillock top chi
ldren that she teach them her bicycle arts; so it was a simple matter for me
to join the queue for lessons. We assembled in the circus ring; Evie, ring
mistress supreme, stood in the centre of five wobbly, furiously concentratin
g cyclists… while I stood beside her, bikeless. Until Evie's coming I'd show
n no interest in wheels, so I'd never been given any… humbly, I suffered the
lash of Evie's tongue.
'Where've you been living, fat nose? I suppose you wanna borrow mine?'
'No,' I lied penitently, and she relented. 'Okay, okay,' Evieshrugged, 'Get in
the saddle and lessee whatchou're made of.'
Let me reveal at once that, as I climbed on to the silver Arjuna Indiabike,
I was filled with the purest elation; that, as Evie walked roundandround,
holding the bike by the handlebars, exclaiming, 'Gotcha balance yet? Mo? Ge
ez, nobody's got all year!' as Evie and I perambulated, I felt… what's the
word?… happy.
Roundandroundand… Finally, to please her, I stammered, 'Okay… I think I'm…
let me,' and instantly I was on my own, she had given me a farewell shove
, and the silver creature flew gleaming and uncontrollable across the circ
us ring… I heard her shouting: 'The brake! Use the goddamn brake, ya dummy
!' but my hands couldn't move, I had gone rigid as a plank, and there look
out in front of me was the blue two wheeler of Sonny Ibrahim, collision c
ourse, outa the way ya crazy, Sonny in the saddle, trying to swerve and mi
ss, but still blue streaked towards silver, Sonny swung right but I went t
he same way eeyah my bike and silver wheel touched blue, frame kissed fram
e, I was flying up and over handlebars towards Sonny who had embarked on a
n identical parabola towards me crash bicycles fell to earth beneath us, l
ocked in an intimate embrace crash suspended in mid air Sonny and I met ea
ch other, Sonny's head greeted mine… Over nine years ago I had been born w
ith bulging temples, and Sonny had been given hollows by forceps; everythi
ng is for a reason, it seems, because now my bulging temples found their w
ay into Sonny's hollows. A perfect fit. Heads fitting together, we began o
ur descent to earth, falling clear of the bikes, fortunately, whummp and f
or a moment the world went away.
Then Evie with her freckles on fire, 'O ya little creep, ya pile of snot, ya
wrecked my…' But I wasn't listening, because circus ring accident had compl
eted what washing chest calamity had begun, and they were there in my head,
in the front now, no longer a muffled background noise I'd never noticed, al
l of them, sending their here I am signals, from north south east west… the
other children born during that midnight hour, calling 'I,' 'I,' T and 'I.'
'Hey! Hey, snothead! You okay?… Hey, where's his mother?'