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

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, mass arrests in red run kerala: SABOTEURS RUN AMOK: GHOSH ACCUSES CO GRESS GOONDAS, and got 'arm' from chinese armed forces' border activiti es spurn bandung principles. To complete the name, I snipped the letter s 'ati' from dulles foreign policy is inconsistent, erratic, p.m. avers . Cutting up history to suit my nefarious purposes, I seized on why ind ira gandhi is congress president now and kept the 'why'; but I refused to be tied exclusively to politics, and turned to advertising for the ' does YOUR' in DOES YOUR CHEWING GUM LOSE ITS FLAVOUR? BUT p.k. k s savour! A sporting human interest story, mohun bagan centre forward t akes wife, gave me its last word, and 'go ??' I took from the tragic ma sses go ?? abul kalam azad's funeral. Now I was obliged to find my word s in little pieces once again: death on south col: sherpa plunges provi ded me with a much needed 'col', but 'aba' was hard to find, turning up at last in a cinema advertisement: Ali baba, seventeenth SUPERCOLOSSAL WEEK PLANS FILLING UP FAST!… Those were the days when Sheikh Abdullah, the Lion of Kashmir, was campaigning for a plebiscite in his state to determine its future; his courage gave me the syllable 'cause', because it led to this headline: abdullah 'incitement' cause of his re arrest govt spokesman. Then, too, Acharya Vinobha Bhave, who had spent ten yea rs persuading landowners to donate plots to the poor in his bhoodan cam paign, announced that donations had passed the million acre mark, and l aunched two new campaigns, asking for the donations of whole villages ('gramdan') a Narayan announced the dedication of his life to Bhave's work, the headli ne narayan walks in bhave's way gave me my much sought 'way'. I had near ly finished now; plucking an 'on' from pakistan on course for political chaos: faction strife bedevils public affairs, and a 'sunday' from the m asthead of the Sunday Blitz, I found myself just one word short. Events in East Pakistan provided me with my finale. FURNITURE HURLING SLAYS DEP UTY E PAK SPEAKER: MOURNING PERIOD DECLARED gave me 'MOURNING ch, deftly and deliberately, I excised the letter 'u'. I needed a termin al question mark, and found it at the end of the perennial query of thos e strange days: after nehru, who? In the secrecy of a bathroom, I glued my completed note my first attempt at rearranging history on to a sheet of paper; snake like, I inserted the docum ent in my pocket, like poison in a sac. Subtly, I arranged to spend an eveni ng with Eyeslice and Hairoil. We played a game: 'Murder in the Dark'… During a game of murder, I slipped inside Commander Sabarmati's almirah and insert ed my lethal missive into the inside pocket of his spare uniform. At that mo ment (no point hiding it) I felt the delight of the snake who hits its targe t, and feels its fangs pierce its victim's heel… commander SABARMATI (my note read)
WHY DOES YOUR WIFE GO TO COLABA CAUSEWAY ON SUNDAY MORNING? No, I am no longer proud of what I did; but remember that my demon of reve nge had two heads. By unmasking the perfidy of Lila Sabarmati, I hoped als o to administer a salutary shock to my own mother. Two birds with one ston e; there were to be two punished women, one impaled on each fang of my for ked snake's tongue. It is not untrue to say that what came to be known as the Sabarmati affair had its real beginnings at a dingy cafe in the north of the city, when a stowaway watched a ballet of circling hands. I was secret; I struck from the cover of a bush. What drove me? Hands at th e Pioneer Cafe; wrong number telephone calls; notes slipped to me on balcon ies, and passed under cover of bedsheets; my mother's hypocrisy and Pia's i nconsolable grief: 'Hai! Ai hai! Ai hai hai!'… Mine was a slow poison; but three weeks later, it had its effect. It emerged, afterwards, that after receiving my anonymous note Commander S abarmati had engaged the services of the illustrious Dom Minto, Bombay's b est known private detective. (Minto, old and almost lame, had lowered his rates by then.) He waited until he received Minto's report. And then: That Sunday morning, six <strong>children</strong> sat in a row at the Metro Cub Club, watc hing Francis The Talking Mule And The Haunted House. You see, I had my ali bi; I was nowhere near the scene of the crime. Like Sin, the crescent moon , I acted from a distance upon the tides of the world … while a mule talke d on a screen, Commander Sabarmati visited the naval arsenal. He signed ou t a good, long nosed revolver; also ammunition. He held, in his left hand, a piece of paper on which an address had been written in a private detect ive's tidy hand; in his right hand, he grasped the un holstered gun. By ta xi, the Commander arrived at Colaba Causeway. He paid off the cab, walked gun in hand down a narrow gully past shirt stalls and toyshops, and ascend ed the staircase of an apartment block set back from the gully at the rear of a concrete courtyard. He rang the doorbell of apartment 18c; it was he ard in 18b by an Anglo Indian teacher giving private Latin tuition. When C ommander Sabarmati's wife Lila answered the door, he shot her twice in the stomach at point blank range. She fell backwards; he marched past her, an d found Mr Homi Catrack rising from the toilet, his bottom unwiped, pullin g frantically at his trousers. Commander Vinoo Sabarmati shot him once in the genitals, once in the heart and once through the right eye. The gun wa s not silenced; but when it had finished speaking, there was an enormous s ilence in the apartment. Mr Catrack sat down on the toilet after he was sh ot and seemed to be smiling. Commander Sabarmati walked out of the apartment block with the smoking gun in his hand (he was seen, through the crack of a door, by a terrified Lat in tutor); he strolled along Colaba Causeway until he saw a traffic police
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Salman Rushdie Midnight's children
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s presence was as it crouched under
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ghost, just beneath the surface of
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thesis of Oskar Ilse Ingrid's belie
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are you, honestly? From Tai, Aadam
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tters angrily, 'A fine business. A
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onnected with a glint of light in G
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ma demands, her right hand slicing
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that, after three years, the landow
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him even more disturbing. Aziz foun
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I make no comment; these events, wh
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cy sweet fumes rose from a street s
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ing mobs are breaking them up. Doct
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e of standing between the opposing
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n at the paan shop at the top of Co
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s a very heavy pot; and if just onc
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men, my grandmother sat in triumph,
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ittoon. 'What nonsense,' our Padma
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mbers made tents under their robes.
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and there was a beautiful nautch gi
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ought that fried spiders could cure
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mpossibly adult gaze of young Emera
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ing of crescent knives and howling
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ce, 'We would have had children in
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shelter for three years, what did y
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he car parked outside my grandfathe
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d getting irritated whenever my nar
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lt ill at ease; but also excited by
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sacred here. Bicycle bells rang con
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y Mr Kemal, rice tea lentfls he hoa
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n in his moments of triumph, there
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e into these gullies, grown ups as
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g more for you.' 'Thank you,' my mo
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key was also dancing, but with disa
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shes now! into the distant meanness
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man with several chins, wearing whi
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ts to silly women or the genuine ar
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Padma shouts, furiously. 'How dare
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gynaecologist knew property was tem
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d the old Willingd on Club… Throu
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ng crueller, some sweet murderous s
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These were the people amongst whom
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cocktail hour joke, Amina remained
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nine colleagues) beside and beneath
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ely put you straight; but one does
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, shining and starched, and pajamas
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is bedside and an underground Taj M
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t, of course; but Mughal, certainly
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ow minded? Well, perhaps; but excus
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ds, also conforming to the colours
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. And now we come to it: the noise
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of the moment, pressed a little too
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gnarled, net mending sailor did he
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Intriguing features of my early lif
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tain Indians 'the better sort' to s
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' he insisted stubbornly. Before he
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ngs; but she gave a door in my mind
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give the girls a collective name. '
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a chair drawn up to a desk topped w
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constantly in and out between his p
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d Mother filled Amina with a kind o
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All games have morals; and the game
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d Mother ordered. 'If there are Hin
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es the room; and Amina, aghast, ask
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s stuffed into their necks? 'Damn l
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e, and I miss her. Yes, that's it.
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Already, at the age of nearlynine,
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he fisherman's finger pointed, misl
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agging down the floods of tears lur
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s tight; and by the time the roof f
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ping from a thick black cloud. And
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sealed by maternal command, I was u
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ches above the ground, his eye sock
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In 1956, then, languages marched mi
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ad learned that secrets were not al
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Let me sum up: at a crucial point i
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pied, briefly, the mind of a Congre
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d to stroll down to Chowpatty Beach
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d all of Narlikar's business deals;
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Ibrahim who is sitting next to and
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ing with old man Ibrahim Ibrahim; s
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'Yeah, but you didn't even help…'
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Interruptions, nothing but interrup
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es vanish from the mind as if they
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nstration; S.M.S. voices chanted 'S
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1947 but in another version, that i
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on the Mahanadi river in Orissa, th
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ves; but inevitably our problems, w
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oss? Rest now, rest some while, tha
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Page 181 and 182: lord?' but she only succeeded in aw
Page 183 and 184: to the new Midnight Children's Conf
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Page 187 and 188: on, or class origins; Mary Pereira
Page 189 and 190: ied together, wings clipped, flutte
Page 191 and 192: The skin on his face hung in folds
Page 193 and 194: mpathetic; and in my own way, I beg
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Page 199 and 200: eyes; and then like a blur the Monk
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Page 203 and 204: The first mutilation of Saleem Sina
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Page 207 and 208: e giggling: '??? hee.' Masha Miovic
Page 209 and 210: Ahmed Sinai, his face ravaged by wh
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Page 215 and 216: 'Respect she can have,' Pia flounce
Page 217 and 218: hansi; rakshasas have been seen man
Page 219 and 220: fa, his words penetrate my one good
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Page 225 and 226: lly fell apart on the day the Chine
Page 227 and 228: all; because children are the vesse
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Page 233 and 234: filled his cell, and although he as
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Page 237 and 238: ad and believe! Know that in true e
Page 239 and 240: the great charged a fee. In exchang
Page 241 and 242: arriers which permit families to su
Page 243 and 244: e, but his back was bent. Shuffling
Page 245 and 246: 'But I saw Him,' my grandfather say
Page 247 and 248: I am watching Padma; her muscles ha
Page 249 and 250: innocent; who called down upon hims
Page 251 and 252: lled, briefly, with the illusory op
Page 253 and 254: er's namesake ship, proving once ag
Page 255 and 256: his bed?' and it was my sense of th
Page 257 and 258: Heads nod; murmurs of assent. 'Gent
Page 259 and 260: d than I even I had dreamed. 'Reall
Page 261 and 262: I listened to her faultless voice,
Page 263 and 264: too, to strange fears. When the Chi
Page 265 and 266: nce with me at last. 'O, Saleem,' s
Page 267 and 268: aligned in the war between our pare
Page 269 and 270: … We halted in front of an unfami
Page 271 and 272: e of the place of revelation, of pu
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Page 277 and 278: tly after Jamila's fifteenth birthd
Page 279 and 280: my aunt Alia's school, which she co
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is sibling? Once the Mubarak, the B
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Sacred: purdah veils, halal meat, m
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Once upon a time, in the far northe
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at the scene of great historical ev
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on and the lust drenched breeze, ab
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akistan, however, the clocks ticked
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ve birth, instead, to an unspeakabl
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Tick, tock… In January 1965, my m
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adly. (No: I do not exempt myself.)
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nd then on the last night their wor
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ageing of pregnant Amina Sinai… a
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short of funds on account of one ma
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ere coming to an end, the story of
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s, fated to plunge memoryless into
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capture. How will you work? In cani
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I) had been cleansed of the whole b
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g units in camouflaged jeeps, he de
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usand, like sixty one, were all in
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eap gutter newsprint, and the offic
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A nameless morning. Ayooba Shaheed
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ing,' proving that they were alread
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le in his heart and on to Ayooba's
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ame clear that they would have to m
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them at any moment; and then, in a
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k with your blue eyes of a foreigne
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arrow into the soil while he, 'No s
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Niazi have been in the city that De
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le urge to look up… afterwards, i
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ld because of his unsurpassable ski
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hing was. Then Parvati whispered so
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inging: @@@Anything you want to be,
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'The Madam' was basking in the full
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eceived a constant stream of visito
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ied the war hero? Was it high minde
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e day during my stay my aunt Sonia
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I lived in the home of Mr Mustapha
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had been cheated for so long by the
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sket on the step beside the Congres
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on which forbade women to climb man
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The magicians devoted much of their
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I made pepperpots march; There was
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choed on occasion in his ears. Ther
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S. P. Shetty; and at the Mahalaxmi
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whore. The whoring trails of the wa
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And then there was Parvati, with he
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so wonderful that rumours of it spr
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g to force down her eyelids over ey
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He was the possessor of a navel whi
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t, in those midnight months when th
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and its consequences) of our birth;
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g in my ransacked memory vaults lik
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lips like women's labia, and the el
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ere captured; not all of them were
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is no chutney or pickle capable of
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Pass it on: some of us have escaped
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k of then. Now does not bear thinki
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When four hundred and twenty suffer
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eyes, and you were obliged to bang
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I cannot; instead, meekly and with
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tore my strength by letting me suck
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oon be adrift and incompetent in a
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e of the snakes, and allowed us a m
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of us knocked on its doors. Movemen
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und the Maharaja's neck. What Pictu
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, who called herself Mrs Braganza,
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pirits emanating from the god Abrax
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ering. And now there is rip tear cr
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