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

y words, because Tony Brent is reaching the end of his medley, and his final
e, too, is the same as Winkie's: 'Good Night, Ladies' is the name of the son
g. Merrily it rolls along, rolls along, rolls along…
(Fade out.)
The Kolynos Kid
From ayah to Widow, I've been the sort of person to whom things have been d
one; but Saleem Sinai, perennial victim, persists in seeing himself as prot
agonist. Despite Mary's crime; setting aside typhoid and snake venom; dismi
ssing two accidents, in washing chest and circus ring (when Sonny Ibrahim,
master lock breaker, permitted my budding horns of temples to invade his fo
rcep hollows, and through this combination unlocked the door to the midnigh
t children); disregarding the effects of Evie's push and my mother's infide
lity; in spite of losing my hair to the bitter violence of Emil Zagallo and
my finger to the lip licking goads of Masha Miovic; setting my face agains
t all indications to the contrary, I shall now amplify, in the manner and w
ith the proper solemnity of a man of science, my claim to a place at the ce
ntre of things.
'… Your life, which will be, in a sense, the mirror of our own,' the Prime M
inister wrote, obliging me scientifically to face the question: In what sens
e? How, in what terms, may the career of a single . individual be said to im
pinge on the fate of a nation? I must answer in adverbs and hyphens: I was l
inked to history both literally and metaphorically, both actively and passiv
ely, in what our (admirably modern) scientists might term 'modes of connecti
on' composed of dualistically combined configurations' of the two pairs of o
pposed adverbs given above. This is why hyphens are necessary: ac'tively lit
erally, passively metaphorically, actively metaphorically and pas sively lit
erally, I was inextricably entwined with my world.
Sensing Padma's unscientific bewilderment, I revert to the inexactitudes of
common speech: By the combination of'active' and 'literal' I mean, of cour
se, all actions of mine which directly literally affected, or altered the c
ourse of, seminal historical events, for instance the manner in which I pro
vided the language marchers with their battle cry. The union of 'passive' a
nd 'metaphorical' encompasses all socio political trends and events which,
merely by existing, affected me metaphorically for example, by reading betw
een the lines of the episode entitled 'The Fisherman's Pointing Finger', yo
u will perceive the unavoidable connection between the infant state's attem
pts at rushing towards full sized adulthood and my own early, explosive eff
orts at growth… Next, 'passive' and 'literal', when hyphenated, cover all m
oments at which national events had a direct bearing upon the lives of myse
lf and my family under this heading you should file the freezing of my fath