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

n at the paan shop at the top of Cornwallis Road chewed betel and suspected
a trick. 'I have lived twice as long as I should have,' the oldest one sai
d, his voice crackling like an old radio because decades were rubbing up ag
ainst each other around his vocal chords, 'and I've never seen so many peop
le so cheerful in such a bad time. It is the devil's work.' It was, indeed,
a resilient virus the weather alone should have discouraged such germs fro
m breeding, since it had become clear that the rains had failed. The earth
was cracking. Dust ate the edges of roads, and on some days huge gaping fis
sures appeared in the midst of macadamed intersections. The betel chewers a
t the paan shop had begun to talk about omens; calming themselves with thei
r game of hit the spittoon, they speculated upon the numberless nameless Go
dknowswhats that might now issue from the Assuring earth. Apparently a Sikh
from the bicycle repair shop had had his turban pushed off his head in the
heat of one afternoon, when his hair, without any reason, had suddenly sto
od on end. And, more prosaically, the water shortage had reached the point
where milkmen could no longer find clean water with which to adulterate the
milk :.. Far away, there was a World War in progress once again. In Agra,
the heat mounted. But still my grandfather whistled. The old men at the paa
n shop found Ms whistling in rather poor taste, given the circumstances.
(And I, like them, expectorate and rise above fissures.)
Astride his bicycle, leather attache attached to carrier, my grandfather wM
stled. Despite irritations of the nose, his lips pursed. Despite a bruise o
n his chest which had refused to fade for twenty three years, his good humo
ur was unimpaired. Air passed his lips and was transmuted into sound. He wh
istled an old German tune: Tannenbaum.
The optimism epidemic had been caused by one single human being, whose na
me, Mian Abdullah, was only used by newspapermen. To everyone else, he wa
s the Hummingbird, a creature which would be impossible if it did not exi
st. 'Magician turned conjurer,' the newspapermen wrote, 'Mian Abdullah ro
se from the famous magicians' ghetto in Delhi to become the hope of India
's hundred million Muslims.' The Hummingbird was the founder, chairman, u
nifier and moving spirit of the Free Islam Convocation; and in 1942, marq
uees and rostrums were being erected on the Agra maidan, where the Convoc
ation's second annual assembly was about to take place. My grandfather, f
ifty two years old, his hair turned white by the years and other afflicti
ons, had begun whistling as he passed the maidan. Now he leaned round cor
ners on his bicycle, taking them at a jaunty angle, threading his way bet
ween cowpats and children… and, in another time and place, told Ms friend
the Rani of Cooch Naheen: 'I started off as a Kashmiri and not much of a
Muslim. Then I got a bruise on the chest that turned me into an Indian.
I'm still not much of a Muslim, but I'm all for Abdullah. He's fighting m
y fight.' His eyes were still the blue of Kashmiri sky… he arrived home,