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

s, fated to plunge memoryless into an adulthood whose every aspect grew da
ily more grotesque.
Fresh snail tracks on Padma's cheeks. Obliged to attempt some sort of 'Ther
e, there', I resort to movie trailers. (How I loved them at the old Metro C
ub Club! O smacking of lips at the sight of the title next attraction, supe
rimposed on undulating blue velvet! O anticipatory salivation before screen
s trumpeting coming soon! Because the promise of exotic futures has always
seemed, to my mind, the perfect antidote to the disappointments of the pres
ent.) 'Stop, stop,' I exhort my mournfully squatting audience, I'm not fini
shed yet! There is to be electrocution and a rain forest; a pyramid of head
s on a field impregnated by leaky marrowbones; narrow escapes are coming, a
nd a minaret that screamed! Padma, there is still plenty worth telling: my
further trials, in the basket of invisibility and in the shadow of another
mosque; wait for the premonitions of Resham Bibi and the pout of Parvati th
e witch! Fatherhood and treason also, and of course that unavoidable Widow,
who added to my history of drainage above the final ignominy of voiding be
low… in short, there are still next attractions and coming soons galore; a
chapter ends when one's parents die, but a new kind of chapter also begins.'
Somewhat consoled by my offers of novelty, my Padma sniffs; wipes away mol
lusc slime, dries eyes; breathes in deeply… and, for the spittoon brained
fellow we last met in his hospital bed, approximately five years pass befo
re my dung lotus exhales.
(While Padma, to calm herself, holds her breath, I permit myself to insert
a Bombay talkie style close up a calendar ruffled by a breeze, its pages fl
ying off in rapid succession to denote the passing of the years; I superimp
ose turbulent long shots of street riots, medium shots of burning buses and
blazing English language libraries owned by the British Council and the Un
ited States Information Service; through the accelerated flickering of the
calendar we glimpse the fall of Ayub Khan, the assumption of the presidency
by General Yahya, the promise of elections… but now Padma's lips are parti
ng, and there is no time to linger on the angrily opposed images of Mr Z. A
. Bhutto and Sheikh Mujib ur Rahman; exhaled air begins to issue invisibly
from her mouth, and the dream faces of the leaders of the Pakistan People's
Party and the Awami League shimmer and fade out; the gusting of her emptyi
ng lungs paradoxically stills the breeze blowing the pages of my calendar,
which conies to rest upon a date late in 1970, before the election which sp
lit the country in two, before the war of West Wing against East Wing, P.P.
P. against Awami League, Bhutto against Mujib… before the election of 1970,
and far away from the public stage, three young soldiers are arriving at a
mysterious camp in the Murree Hills.)
Padma has regained her self control. 'Okay, okay,' she expostulates, waving a
n arm in dismissal of her tears, 'Why you're waiting? Begin,' the lotus instr