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

could I complain? The Monkey had tolerated my special position for years.
With the possible exception of the time I fell out of a tree in our garden
after she nudged me (which could have been an accident, after all), she h
ad accepted my primacy with excellent grace and even loyalty. Now it was m
y turn; long trousered, I was required to be adult about my demotion. 'Thi
s growing up,' I told myself, 'is harder than I expected.'
The Monkey, it must be said, was no less astonished than I at her elevation
to the role of favoured child. She did her best to fall from grace, but it s
eemed she could do no wrong. These were the days of her flirtation with Chri
stianity, which was partly due to the influence of her European school frien
ds and partly to the rosary fingering presence of Mary Pereira (who, unable
to go to church because of her fear of the confessional, would regale us ins
tead with Bible stories); mostly, however, I believe it was an attempt by th
e Monkey to regain her old, comfortable position in the family doghouse (and
, speaking of dogs, the Baroness Simki had been put to sleep during my absen
ce, lulled by promiscuity).
My sister spoke highly of gentle Jesus meek and mild; my mother smiled vagu
ely and patted her on the head. She went around the house humming hymns; my
mother took up the tunes and sang along. She requested a nun's outfit to r
eplace her favourite nurse's dress; it was given to her. She threaded chick
peas on a string and used them as a rosary, muttering Hail Mary full of gr
ace, and my parents praised her skill with her hands. Tormented by her fail
ure to be punished, she mounted to extremes of religious fervour, reciting
the Our Father morning and night, fasting in the weeks of Lent instead of d
uring Ramzan, revealing an unsuspected streak of fanaticism which would, la
ter, begin to dominate her personality; and still, it appeared, she was tol
erated. Finally she discussed the matter with me. 'Well, brother,' she said
, 'looks like from now on I'll just have to be the good guy, and you can ha
ve all the fun.'
She was probably right; my parents' apparent loss of interest in me should
have given me a greater measure of freedom; but I was mesmerized by the t
ransformations which were taking place in every aspect of my life, and fun
, in such circumstances, seemed hard to have.
I was altering physically; too early, soft fuzz was appearing on my chin, a
nd my voice swooped, out of control, up and down the vocal register. I had
a strong sense of absurdity: my lengthening limbs were making me clumsy, an
d I must have cut a clownish figure, as I outgrew shirts and trousers and s
tuck gawkily and too far out of the ends of my clothes. I felt somehow cons
pired against, by these garments which flapped comically around my ankles a
nd wrists; and even when I turned inwards to my secret Children, I found ch
ange, and didn't like it.
The gradual disintegration of the Midnight Children's Conference which fina