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

me from the page, demanding to be explained a curious heading for what will
be my story's half way point, one that reeks of beginnings and ends, when yo
u could say it should be more concerned with middles; but, unrepentantly, I
have no intention of changing it, although there are many alternative titles
, for instance 'From Monkey to Rhesus', or 'Finger Redux', or in a more allu
sive style 'The Gander', a reference, obviously, to the mythical bird, the h
amsa or parahamsa, symbol of the ability to live in two worlds, the physical
and the spiritual, the world of land and water and the world of air, of fli
ght. But 'Alpha and Omega' it is; 'Alpha and Omega' it remains. Because ther
e are beginnings here, and all manner of ends; but you'll soon see what I me
an.
Padma clicks her tongue in exasperation. 'You're talking funny again,' she cri
ticizes, 'Are you going to tell about Evie or not?'
… After the general election, the Central Government continued to shilly sha
lly about the future of Bombay. The State was to be partitioned; then not to
be partitioned; then partition reared its head again. And as for the city i
tself it was to be the capital of Maharashtra; or of both Maharashtra and Gu
jarat; or an independent state of its own… while the government tried to wor
k out what on earth to do, the city's inhabitants decided to encourage it to
be quick. Riots proliferated (and you could still hear the old battle song
of the Mahrattas How are you? I am well! I'll take a stick and thrash you to
hell! rising above the fray); and to make things worse, the weather joined
in the melee. There was a severe drought; roads cracked; in the villages, pe
asants were being forced to kill their cows; and on Christmas Day (of whose
significance no boy who attended a mission school and was attended upon by a
Catholic ayah could fail to be aware) there was a series of loud explosions
at the Wal keshwar Reservoir and the main fresh water pipes which were the
city's lifelines began to blow fountains into the air like giant steel whale
s. The newspapers were full of talk of saboteurs; speculation over the crimi
nals' identities and political affiliation jostled for space against reports
of the continuing wave of whore murders. (I was particularly interested to
learn that the murderer had his own curious 'signature'. The corpses of the
ladies of the night were all strangled to death; there were bruises on their
necks, bruises too large to be thumbprints, but wholly consistent with the
marks which would be left by a pair of giant, preternaturally powerful knees.)
But I digress. What, Padma's frown demands, does all this have to do with Ev
elyn Lilith Burns? Instantly, leaping to attention, as it were, I provide th
e answer: in the days after the destruction of the city's fresh water supply
, the stray cats of Bombay began to congregate in those areas of the city wh
ere water was still relatively plentiful; that is to say, the better off are
as, in which each house owned its own overhead or underground water tank. An
d, as a result, the two storey hillock of Methwold's Estate was invaded by a