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

caught exactly such a fever on my tenth birthday, and spent two days in bed
; now, as my memories return to leak out of me, this old fever has come back
, too. 'Don't worry,' I say, 'I caught these germs almost twenty one years a
go.'
We are not alone. It is morning at the pickle factory; they have brought my
son to see me. Someone (never mind who) stands beside Padma at my bedside,
holding him in her arms. 'Baba, thank God you are better, you don't know w
hat you were talking in your sickness.' Someone speaks anxiously, trying to
force her way into my story ahead of time; but it won't work… someone, who
founded this pickle factory and its ancillary bottling works, who has been
looking after my impenetrable child, just as once… wait on! She nearly wor
med it out of me then, but fortunately I've still got my wits about me, fev
er or no fever! Someone will just have to step back and remain cloaked in a
nonymity until it's her turn; and that won't be until the very end. I turn
my eyes away from her to look at Padma. 'Do not think,' I admonish her, 'th
at because I had a fever, the things I told you were not completely true. E
verything happened just as I described.'
'O God, you and your stories,' she cries, 'all day, all night you have made y
ourself sick! Stop some time, na, what will it hurt?' I set my lips obstinate
ly; and now she, with a sudden change of mood: 'So, tell me now, mister: is t
here anything you want7'
'Green chutney,' I request, 'Bright green green as grasshoppers.' And some
one who cannot be named remembers and tells Padma (speaking in the soft vo
ice which is only used at sickbeds and funerals), 'I know what he means.'
… Why, at this crucial instant, when all manner of things were . waiting to
be described when the Pioneer Cafe was so close, and the rivalry of knees an
d nose did I introduce a mere condiment into the conversation? (Why do I was
te time, in this account, on a humble preserve, when I could be describing t
he elections of 1957 when all India is waiting, twenty one years ago, to vot
e?) Because I sniffed the air; and scented, behind the solicitous expression
s of my visitors, a sharp whiff of danger. I intended to defend myself; but
I required the assistance of chutney…
I have not shown you the factory in daylight until now. This is what has re
mained undescribed: through green tinged glass windows, my room looks out o
n to an iron catwalk and then down to the cooking floor, where copper vats
bubble and seethe, where strong armed women stand atop wooden steps, workin
g long handled ladles through the knife tang of pickle fumes; while (lookin
g the other way, through a green tinged window on the world) railway tracks
shine dully in morning sun, bridged over at regular intervals by the messy
gantries of the electrification system. In daylight, our saffron and green
neon goddess does not dance above the factory doors; we switch her off to
save power. But electric trains are using power: yellow and brown local tra