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

eel like a bad dream; to everyone except'me.
And (without any assistance from me) relations between India and Pakistan gr
ew worse; entirely without my help, India conquered Goa 'the Portuguese pimp
le on the face of Mother India'; I sat on the sidelines and played no part i
n the acquisition of large scale U.S. aid for Pakistan, nor was I to blame f
or Sino India border skirmishes in the Aksai Chin region of Ladakh; the Indi
an census of 1961 revealed a literacy level of 23.7 per cent, but I was not
entered in its records. The untouchable problem remained acute; I did nothin
g to alleviate it; and in the elections of 1962, the All India Congress won
361 out of 494 seats in the Lok Sabha, and over 61 per cent of all State Ass
embly seats. Not even in this could my unseen hand be said to have moved; ex
cept, perhaps, metaphorically: the status quo was preserved in India; in my
life, nothing changed either.
Then, on September 1st, 1962, we celebrated the Monkey's fourteenth birthda
y. By this time (and despite my uncle's continued fondness for me) we were
well established as social inferiors, the hapless poor relations of the gre
at Zulfikars; so the party was a skimpy affair. The Monkey, however, gave e
very appearance of enjoying herself. 'It's my duty, brother,' she told me.
I could hardly believe my ears… but perhaps my sister had an intuition of h
er fate; perhaps she knew the transformation which lay in store for her; wh
y should I assume that I alone have had the powers of secret knowledge?
Perhaps, then, she guessed that when the hired musicians began to play (she
hnai and vina were present; sarangi and sarod had their turns; tabla and si
tar performed their virtuosic cross examinations) , Emerald Zulfikar would
descend on her with callous elegance, demanding, 'Come on, Jamila, don't si
t there like a melon, sing us a song like any good girl would!'
And that with this sentence my emerald icy aunt would have begun, quite un
wittingly, my sister's transformation from monkey into singer; because alt
hough she protested with the sullen clumsiness of fourteen year olds, she
was hauled unceremoniously on to the musicians' dais by my organizing aunt
; and although she looked as if she wished the floor would open up beneath
her feet, she clasped her hands together; seeing no escape, the Monkey be
gan to sing.
I have not, I think, been good at describing emotions believing my audience
to be capable of joining in; of imagining for themselves what I have been
unable to re imagine, so that my story becomes yours as well… but when my s
ister began to sing, I was certainly assailed by an emotion of such force t
hat I was unable to understand it until, much later, it was explained to me
by the oldest whore in the world. Because, with her first note, the Brass
Monkey sloughed off her nick name; she, who had talked to birds (just as, l
ong ago in a mountain valley, her great grandfather used to do), must have
learned from songbirds the arts of song. With one good ear and one bad ear,