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

'Respect she can have,' Pia flounced from the room, 'but she wants gas'… An
d my most treasured bit part of all was played out when during Pia and Hani
f's regular card games with friends, I was promoted to occupy the sacred pl
ace of the son she never had. (Child of an unknown union, I have had more m
others than most mothers have children; giving birth to parents has been on
e of my stranger talents a form of reverse fertility beyond the control of
contraception, and even of the Widow herself.) In the company of visitors,
Pia Aziz would cry: 'Look, friends, here's my own crown prince! The jewel i
n my ring! The pearl in my necklace!' And she would draw me towards her, cr
adling my head so that my nose was pushed down against her chest and nestle
d wonderfully between the soft pillows of her indescribable… unable to cope
with such delights, I pulled my head away. But I was her slave; and I know
now why she permitted herself such familiarity with me. Prematurely testic
led, growing rapidly, I nevertheless wore (fraudulently) the badge of sexua
l innocence: Saleem Sinai, during his sojourn at his uncle's home, was stil
l in shorts. Bare knees proved my childishness to Pia; deceived by ankle so
cks, she held my face against her breasts while her sitar perfect voice whi
spered in my good ear: 'Child, child, don't fear; your clouds will soon rol
l by.'
For my uncle, as well as my histrionic aunt, I acted out (with growing polis
h) the part of the surrogate son. Hanif Aziz was to be found during the day
on the striped sofa, pencil and exercise book in hand, writing his pickle ep
ic. He wore his usual lungi wound loosely around his waist and fastened with
an enormous safety pin; his legs protruded hairily from its folds. His fing
ernails bore the stains of a lifetime of Gold Flakes; his toenails seemed si
milarly discoloured. I imagined him smoking cigarettes with his toes. Highly
impressed by the vision, I asked him if he could, in fact, perform this fea
t; and without a word, he inserted Gold Flake between big toe and its sideki
ck and wound himself into bizarre contortions. I clapped wildly, but he seem
ed to be in some pain for the rest of the day.
I ministered to his needs as a good son should, emptying ashtrays, sharpenin
g pencils, bringing water to drink; while he, who after his fabulist beginni
ngs had remembered that he was his father's son and dedicated himself agains
t everything which smacked of the unreal, scribbled out his ill fated screen
play.
'Sonny Jim,' he informed me, 'this damn country has been dreaming for five t
housand years. It's about time it started waking up.' Hanif was fond of rail
ing against princes and demons, gods and heroes, against, in fact, the entir
e iconography of the Bombay film; in the temple of illusions, he had become
the high priest of reality; while I, conscious of my miraculous nature, whic
h involved me beyond all mitigation in the (Hanif despised) myth life of Ind
ia, bit my lip and didn't know where to look.