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

I am watching Padma; her muscles have begun to twitch distractedly.'Consider
this,' I say. 'Is what happend to my grandfather so very strange? Compare i
t with the mere fact of the holy fuss over the theft of a hair; because ever
y last detail of that is true, and by comparison, an old man's death is sure
ly perfectly normal.' Padma relaxes; her muscles give me the go ahead. Becau
se I've spent too long on Aadam Aziz; perhaps I'm afraid of what must be tol
d next; but the revelation will not be denied.
One last fact: after the death of my grandfather, Prime Minister Jawaharlal N
ehru fell ill and never recovered his health. This fatal sickness finally kil
led him on May 27th, 1964.
If I hadn't wanted to be a hero, Mr Zagallo would never have pulled out my
hair. If my hair had remained intact, Glandy Keith and Fat Perce wouldn't
have taunted me; Masha Miovic wouldn't have goaded me into losing my fing
er. And from my finger flowed blood which was neither Alpha nor Omega, and
sent me into exile; and in exile I was filled with the lust for revenge w
hich led to the murder of Homi Catrack; and if Homi hadn't died, perhaps m
y uncle would not have strolled off a roof into the sea breezes; and then
my grandfather would not have gone to Kashmir and been broken by the effor
t of climbing the Sankara Acharya hill. And my grandfather was the founder
of my family, and my fate was linked by my birthday to that of the nation
, and the father of the nation was Nehru. Nehru's death; can I avoid the c
onclusion that that, too, was all my fault?
But now we're back in 1958; because on the thirty seventh day of the mourni
ng period, the truth, which had been creeping up on Mary Pereira and theref
ore on me for over eleven years, finally came out into the open; truth, in
the shape of an old, old man, whose stench of Hell penetrated even my clogg
ed up nostrils, and whose body lacked fingers and toes and was littered wit
h boils and holes, walked up our two storey hillock and appeared through th
e dust cloud to be seen by Mary Pereira, who was cleaning the chick blinds
on the verandah.
Here, then, was Mary's nightmare come true; here, visible through the pall
of dust, was the ghost of Joe D'Costa, walking towards the ground floor o
ffice of Ahmed Sinai! As if it hadn't been enough to show himself to Aadam
Aziz… 'Arre, Joseph,' Mary screamed, dropping her duster, 'you go away no
w! Don't come here now! Don't be bothering the sahibs with your troubles!
? God, Joseph, go, go na, you will kill me today!' But the ghost walked on
down the driveway.
Mary Pereira, abandoning chick blinds, leaving them hanging askew, rushes
into the heart of the house to throw herself at the feet of my mother smal
l fat hands joined in supplication 'Begum Sahiba! Begum Sahiba, forgive me
!' And my mother astounded: 'What is this, Mary? What has got your goat?'
But Mary is beyond dialogue, she is weeping uncontrollably, crying 'O God