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

gotten to remove the pips, Mrs Dubash applied herself to the task of eras
ing her late husband from the personality of her son of remaking Cyrus in
her own strange image, Cyrus the great, ???? a plate, In nineteen hundred
and forty eight Cyrus the school prodigy Cyrus as Saint Joan in Shaw's pla
y all these Cyruses, to whom we had grown accustomed, with whom we had gro
wn up, now disappeared; in their place there emerged the overblown, almost
bovinely placid figure of Lord Khusro Khusrovand. At the age often, Cyrus
vanished from the Cathedral School and the meteoric rise of India's riche
st guru began. (There are as many versions of India as Indians; and, when
set beside Cyrus's India, my own version seems almost mundane.)
Why did he let it happen? Why did posters cover the city, and advertisement
s fill the newspapers, without a peep out of the child genius?… Because Cyr
us (although he used to lecture us, not un mischievously, on the Parts of a
Wooman's Body) was simply the most malleable of boys, and would not have d
reamed of crossing his mother. For his mother, he put on a sort of brocade
skirt and a turban; for the sake of filial duty, he permitted millions of d
evotees to kiss his little finger. In the name of maternal love, he truly b
ecame Lord Khusro, the most successful holy child in history; in no time at
all he was being hailed by crowds half a million strong, and credited with
miracles; American guitarists came to sit at his feet, and they all brough
t their cheque books along. Lord Khusrovand acquired accountants, and tax h
avens, and a luxury liner called the Khusrovand Starship, and an aircraft L
ord Khusro's Astral Plane. And somewhere inside the faintly smiling, benedi
ction scattering boy… in a place which was forever hidden by his mother's f
righteningly efficient shadow (she had, after all, lived in the same house
as the Narlikar women; how well did she know them? How much of their awesom
e competence leaked into her?), there lurked the ghost of a boy who had bee
n my friend.
'That Lord Khusro?' Padma asks, amazed. 'You mean that same mahaguru who
drowned at sea last year?' Yes, Padma; he could not walk on water; and ve
ry few people who have come into contact with me have been vouchsafed a n
atural death… let me confess that I was somewhat resentful of Cyrus's apo
theosis. 'It should have been me,' I even thought, 'I am the magic child;
not only my primacy at home, but even my true innermost nature, has now
been purloined.'
Padma: I never became a 'mahaguru'; millions have never seated themselves
at my feet; and it was my own fault, because one day, many years ago, I ha
d gone to hear Cyrus's lecture on the Parts of a Wooman's Body.
'What?' Padma shakes her head, puzzled. 'What's this now?'
The nuclear physicist Dubash possessed a beautiful marble statuette a fema
le nude and with the help of this figurine, his son would give expert lect
ures on female anatomy to an audience of sniggering boys. Not free; Cyrus