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

Hanif Aziz, the only realistic writer working in the Bombay film industry, w
as writing the story of a pickle factory created, run and worked in entirely
by women. There were long scenes describing the formation of a trade union;
there were detailed descriptions of the pickling process. He would quiz Mar
y Pereira about recipes; they would discuss, for hours, the perfect blend of
lemon, lime and garam masala. It is ironic that this arch disciple of natur
alism should have been so skilful (if unconscious) a prophet of his own fami
ly's fortunes; in the indirect kisses of the Lovers of Kashmir he foretold m
y mother and her Nadir Qasim's meetings at the Pioneer Cafe; and in his unfi
lmed chutney scenario, too, there lurked a prophecy of deadly accuracy.
He besieged Homi Catrack with scripts. Catrack produced none of them; they
sat in the small Marine Drive apartment, covering every available surface
, so that you had to pick them off the toilet seat before you could lift i
t; but Catrack (out of charity? Or for another, soon to be revealed reason
?) paid my uncle a studio salary. That was how they survived, Hanif and Pi
a, on the largess of the man who would, in time, become the second human b
eing to be murdered by mushrooming Saleem.
Homi Catrack begged him, 'Maybe just one love scene?' And Pia, 'What do yo
u think, village people are going to give their rupees to see women pickli
ng Alfonsos?' But Hanif, obdurately: 'This is a film about work, not kissi
ng. And nobody pickles Alfonsos. You must use mangoes with bigger stones.'
The ghost of Joe D'Costa did not, so far as I know, follow Mary Pereira int
o exile; however, his absence only served to increase her anxiety. She bega
n, in these Marine Drive days, to fear that he would become visible to othe
rs besides herself, and reveal, during her absence, the awful secrets of wh
at happened at Dr Narlikar's Nursing Home on Independence night. So each mo
rning she left the apartment in a state of jelly like worry, arriving at Bu
ckingham Villa in near collapse; only when she found that Joe had remained
both invisible and silent did she relax. But after she returned to Marine D
rive, laden with samosas and cakes and chutneys, her anxiety began to mount
once again… but ?? I had resolved (having troubles enough of my Own) to ke
ep out of all heads except the Children's, I did not understand why.
Panic attracts panic; on her journeys, sitting in jam packed buses (the tra
ms had just been discontinued), Mary heard all sorts of rumours and tittle
tattle, which she relayed to me as matters of absolute fact. According to M
ary, the country was in the grip of a sort of supernatural invasion. 'Yes,
baba, they say in Kurukshetra an old Sikh woman woke up in her hut and saw
the old time war of the Kurus and Pandavas happening right outside! It was
in the papers and all, she pointed to the place where she saw the chariots
of Arjun and Kama, and there were truly wheel marks in the mud! Baap re baa
p, such so bad things: at Gwalior they have seen the ghost of the Rani of J