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

is sibling? Once the Mubarak, the Blessed One, did I adore in my sister the
fulfilment of my most private dreams?… I shall say only that I was unaware
of what had happened to me until, with a scooter between my sixteen year o
ld thighs, I began to follow the spoors of whores.
While Alia smouldered; during the early days of Amina Brand towels; amid th
e apotheosis of Jamila Singer; when a split level house, rising by command
of an umbilical cord, was still far from complete; in the time of the late
flowering love of my parents; surrounded by the somehow barren certitudes o
f the land of the pure, Saleem Sinai came to terms with himself. I will not
say he was not sad; refusing to censor my past, I admit he was as sullen,
often as uncooperative, certainly as spotty as most boys of his age. His dr
eams, denied the children of midnight, became filled with nostalgia to the
point of nausea, so that he often woke up gagging with the heavy musk of re
gret overpowering his senses; there were nightmares of numbers marching one
two three, and of a tightening, throttling pair of prehensile knees… but t
here was a new gift, and a Lambretta scooter, and (though still unconscious
) a humble, submissive love of his sister… jerking my narrator's eyes away
from the described past, I insist that Saleem, then as now, succeeded in tu
rning his attention towards the as yet undescribed future. Escaping, whenev
er possible, from a residence in which the acrid fumes of his aunt's envy m
ade life unbearable, and also from a college filled with other equally disl
ikeable smells, I mounted my motorized steed and explored the olfactory ave
nues of my new city. And after we heard of my grandfather's death in Kashmi
r, I became even more determined to drown the past in the thick, bubbling s
cent stew of the present… O dizzying early days before categorization! Form
lessly, before I began to shape them, the fragrances poured into me: the mo
urnful decaying fumes of animal faeces in the gardens of the Frere Road mus
eum, the pustular body odours of young men in loose pajamas holding hands i
n Sadar evenings, the knife sharpness of expectorated betel nut and the bit
ter sweet commingling of betel and opium: 'rocket paans' were sniffed out i
n the hawker crowded alleys between Elphin stone Street and Victoria Road.
Camel smells, car smells, the gnat like irritation of motor rickshaw fumes, the aroma o
nd cigarettes and 'black money', the competitive effluvia of the city's bus
drivers and the simple sweat of their sardine crowded passengers. (One bus
driver, in those days, was so incensed at being overtaken by his rival fro
m another company the nauseating odour of defeat poured from his glands tha
t he took his bus round to his opponent's house at night, hooted until the
poor fellow emerged, and ran him down beneath wheels reeking, like my aunt,
of revenge.) Mosques poured over me the itr of devotion; I could smell the
orotund emissions of power sent out by flag waving Army motors; in the ver
y hoardings of the cinemas I could discern the cheap tawdry perfumes of imp