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

mpathetic; and in my own way, I began to dream dreams of revenge.
The legendary Caliph, Haroun al Rashid, is said to have enjoyed moving inco
gnito amongst the people of Baghdad; I, Saleem Sinai, have also travelled i
n secret through the byways of my city, but I can't say I had much fun.
Matter of fact descriptions of the outre and bizarre, and their reverse, nam
ely heightened, stylized versions of the everyday these techniques, which ar
e also attitudes of mind, I have lifted or perhaps absorbed from the most fo
rmidable of the midnight children, my rival, my fellow changeling, the suppo
sed son of Wee Willie Winkie: Shiva of the knees. They were techniques which
, in his case, were applied entirely without conscious thought, and their ef
fect was to create a picture of the world of startling uniformity, in which
one could mention casually, in passing as it were, the dreadful murders of p
rostitutes which began to fill the gutter press in those days (while the bod
ies filled the gutters), while lingering passionately on the intricate detai
ls of a particular hand of cards. Death, and defeat at rummy were all of a p
iece to Shiva; hence his terrifying, nonchalant violence, which in the end…
but to begin with beginnings:
Although, admittedly, it's my own fault, I'm bound to say that if you think
of me purely as a radio, you'll only be grasping half the truth. Thought i
s as often pictorial or purely emblematic as verbal; and anyway, in order t
o communicate with, and understand, my colleagues in the Midnight Children'
s Conference, it was necessary for me quickly to advance beyond the verbal
stage. Arriving in their infinitely various minds, I was obliged to get ben
eath the surface veneer of front of mind thoughts in incomprehensible tongu
es, with the obvious (and previously demonstrated) effect that they became
aware of my presence. Remembering the dramatic effect such an awareness had
had on Evie Burns, I went to some pains to alleviate the shock of my entry
. In all cases, my standard first transmission was an image of my face, smi
ling in what I trusted was a soothing, friendly, confident and leader like
fashion, and of a hand stretched out in friendship. There were, however, te
ething troubles.
It took me a little while to realize that my picture of myself was heavily
distorted by my own self consciousness about my appearance; so that the por
trait I sent across the thought waves of the nation, grinning like a Cheshi
re cat, was about as hideous as a portrait could be, featuring a wondrously
enlarged nose, a completely non existent chin and giant stains on each tem
ple. It's no wonder that I was often greeted by yelps of mental alarm. I, t
oo, was often similarly frightened by the self images of my ten year old fe
llows. When we discovered what was happening, I encouraged the membership o
f the Conference, one by one, to go and look into a mirror, or a patch of s
till water; and then we did manage to find out what we really looked like.