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

nally gave up the struggle against congestion. While parliamentarians poure
d out speeches about 'Chinese aggression' and 'the blood of our martyred ja
wans', my eyes began to stream with tears; while the nation puffed itself u
p, convincing itself that the annihilation of the little yellow men was at
hand, my sinuses, too, puffed up and distorted a face which was already so
startling that Ayub Khan himself had stared at it in open amazement. In the
clutches of the optimism disease, students burned Mao Tse Tung and Chou En
Lai in effigy; with optimism fever on their brows, mobs attacked Chinese s
hoemakers, curio dealers and restaurateurs. Burning with optimism, the Gove
rnment even interned Indian citizens of Chinese descent now 'enemy aliens'
in camps in Rajasthan. Birla Industries donated a miniature rifle range to
the nation; schoolgirls began to go on military parade. But I, Saleem, felt
as if I was about to die of asphyxiation. The air, thickened by optimism,
refused to enter my lungs.
Ahmed and Amina Sinai were amongst the worst victims of the renewed diseas
e of optimism; having already contracted it through the medium of their ne
w born love, they entered into the public enthusiasm with a will. When Mor
arji Desai, the urine drinking Finance Minister, launched his 'Ornaments f
or Armaments' appeal, my mother handed over gold bangles and emerald ear r
ings; when Morarji floated an issue of defence bonds, Ahmed Sinai bought t
hem in bushels. War, it seemed, had brought a new dawn to India; in the Ti
mes of India, a cartoon captioned 'War with China' showed Nehru looking at
graphs labelled 'Emotional Integration', 'Industrial Peace' and 'People's
Faith in Government' and crying, 'We never had it so good!' Adrift in the
sea of optimism, we the nation, my parents, I floated blindly towards the
reefs.
As a people, we are obsessed with correspondences. Similarities between thi
s and that, between apparently unconnected things, make us clap our hands d
elightedly when we find them out. It is a sort of national longing for form
or perhaps simply an expression of our deep belief that forms lie hidden w
ithin reality; that meaning reveals itself only in flashes. Hence our vulne
rability to omens… when the Indian flag was first raised, for instance, a r
ainbow appeared above that Delhi field, a rainbow of saffron and green; and
we felt blessed. Born amidst correspondence, I have found it continuing to
hound me… while Indians headed blindly towards a military debacle, I, too,
was nearing (and entirely without knowing it) a catastrophe of my own.
Times of India cartoons spoke of 'Emotional Integration'; in Buckingham Vil
la, last remnant of Methwold's Estate, emotions had never been so integrate
d. Ahmed and Amina spent their days like just courting youngsters; and whil
e the Peking People's Daily complained, 'The Nehru Government has finally s
hed its cloak of non alignment', neither my sister nor I were complaining,
because for the first time in years we did not have to pretend we were non