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

my aunt Alia's school, which she continued to attend; while the second viru
s subjected her to the exaggerations and simplifications of self which are
the unavoidable side effects of stardom, so that the blind and blinding dev
outness and the right or wrong nationalism which had already begun to emerg
e in her now began to dominate her personality, to the exclusion of almost
everything else. Publicity imprisoned her inside a gilded tent; and, being
the new daughter of the nation, her character began to owe more to the most
strident aspects of the national persona than to the child world of her Monkey years.
Jamila Singer's voice was on Voice Of Pakistan Radio constantly, so that i
n the villages of West and East Wings she came to seem like a superhuman b
eing, incapable of being fatigued, an angel who sang to her people through
all the days and nights; while Ahmed Sinai, whose few remaining qualms ab
out his daughter's career had been more than allayed by her enormous earni
ngs (although he had once been a Delhi man, he was by now a true Bombay Mu
slim at heart, placing cash matters above most other things), became fond
of telling my sister: 'You see, daughter: decency, purity, art and good bu
siness sense can be one and the same things; your old father has been wise
enough to work that out.' Jamila smiled sweetly and agreed… she was growi
ng out of scrawny tomboy youth into a slender, slant eyed, golden skinned
beauty whose hair was nearly long enough to sit on; even her nose looked g
ood. 'In my daughter,' Ahmed Sinai told Uncle Puffs proudly, 'it is my sid
e of the family's noble features which have prevailed.' Uncle Puffs cast a
quizzical, awkward glance at me and cleared his throat. 'Darn fine lookin
g girl, sir,' he told my father, 'Top hole, by gum.'
The thunder of applause was never far from my sister's ears; at her first,
now legendary Bambino recital (we sat in seats provided by Uncle Puffs 'Bes
t darn seats in the house!' beside his seven Puffias, all veiled… Uncle Puf
fs dug me in the ribs, 'Hey, boy choose! Take your pick! Remember: the dowr
y!' and I blushed and stared hard at the stage), the cries of 'Wah! Wah!' w
ere sometimes louder than Jamila's voice; and after the show we found Jamil
a back stage drowning in a sea of flowers, so that we had to fight our way
through the blossoming camphor garden of the nation's love, to find that sh
e was almost fainting, not from fatigue, but from the overpoweringly sweet
perfume of adoration with which the blooms had filled the room. I, too, fel
t my head beginning to swim; until Uncle Puffs began to hurl flowers in gre
at bushels from an open window they were gathered by a crowd of fans while
he cried, 'Flowers arc fine, darn it, but even a national heroine needs air!'
There was applause, too, on the evening Jamila Singer (and family) was invit
ed to President House to sing for the commander of pepper pots. Ignoring rep
orts in foreign magazines about embezzled money and Swiss bank accounts, we
scrubbed ourselves until we shone; a family in the towel business is obliged
to be spotlessly clean. Uncle Puffs gave his gold teeth an extra careful po