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

are miles of Pakistani soil; Pakistan had conquered just 340 square miles o
f its Kashmiri dream. It was said that the ceasefire came because both side
s had run out of ammunition, more or less simultaneously; thus the exigenci
es of international diplomacy, and the politically motivated manipulations
of arms suppliers, prevented the wholesale annihilation of my family. Some
of us survived, because nobody sold our would be assassins the bombs bullet
s aircraft necessary for the completion of our destruction. Six years later
, however, there was another war.
Book Three
The Buddha
Obviously enough (because otherwise I should have to introduce at this poi
nt some fantastic explanation of my continued presence in this 'mortal coi
l'), you may number me amongst those whom the war of '65 failed to obliter
ate. Spittoon brained, Saleem suffered a merely partial erasure, and was o
nly wiped clean whilst others, less fortunate, were wiped out; unconscious
in the night shadow of a mosque, I was saved by the exhaustion of ammunit
ion dumps.
Tears which, in the absence of the Kashmir! cold, have absolutely no chance
of hardening into diamonds slide down the bosomy contours of Padma's cheek
s. 'O, mister, this war tamasha, kills the best and leaves the rest!' Looki
ng as though hordes of snails have recently crawled down from her reddened
eyes, leaving their glutinous shiny trails upon her face, Padma mourns my b
omb flattened clan. I remain dry eyed as usual, graciously refusing to rise
to the unintentional insult implied by Padma's lachrymose exclamation.
'Mourn for the living,' I rebuke her gently, 'The dead have their camphor
gardens.' Grieve for Saleem! Who, barred from celestial lawns by the conti
nued beating of his heart, awoke once again amid the clammy metallic fragr
ances of a hospital ward; for whom there were no houris, untouched by man
or djinn, to provide the promised consolations of eternity I was lucky to
receive the grudging, bedpan clattering ministrations of a bulky male nurs
e who, while bandaging my head, muttered sourly that, war or no war, the d
octor sahibs liked going to their beach shacks on Sundays. 'Better you'd s
tayed knocked out one more day,' he mouthed, before moving further down th
e ward to spread more good cheer.
Grieve for Saleem who, orphaned and purified, deprived of the hundred dail
y pin pricks of family life, which alone could deflate the great balloonin
g fantasy of history and bring it down to a more manageably human scale, h
ad been pulled up by his roots to be flung unceremoniously across the year