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

there was a blue crackle playing around the end of his gargantuan nose; and
Shaheed who didn't have the courage to touch this impossible being who cou
ld absorb electricity through his hosepipe screamed, 'Disconnect, man, or h
e'll fry like an onion here!' The buddha emerged from the latrine, unconcer
ned, buttoning himself with his right hand while the left hand held his sil
ver spittoon; and the three child soldiers understood that it was really tr
ue, Allah, numb as ice, anaesthetized against feelings as well as memories…
For a week after the incident, the buddha could not be touched without giv
ing an electric shock, and not even the latrine girl could visit him in his stall.
Curiously, after the jump lead business, Ayooba Baloch stopped resenting the
buddha, and even began to treat him with respect; the canine unit was forge
d by that bizarre moment into a real team, and was ready to venture forth ag
ainst the evildoers of the earth.
Ayooba the tank failed to give the buddha a shock; but where the small ma
n fails, the mighty triumph. (When Yahya and Bhutto decided to make Sheik
h Mujib jump, there were no mistakes.)
On March 15th, 1971, twenty units of the CUTIa agency assembled in a hut wi
th a blackboard. The garlanded features of the President gazed down upon si
xty one men and nineteen dogs; Yahya Khan had just offered Mujib the olive
branch of immediate talks with himself and Bhutto, to resolve all irritatio
ns; but his portrait maintained an impeccable poker face, giving no clue to
his true, shocking intentions… while Brigadier Iskandar rubbed knuckles on
lapels, Sgt Mjr Najmuddin issued orders: sixty one men and nineteen dogs w
ere instructed to shed their uniforms. A tumultuous rustling in the hut: ob
eying without query, nineteen individuals remove identifying collars from c
anine necks. The dogs, excellently trained, cock eyebrows but refrain from
giving voice; and the buddha, dutifully, begins to undress. Five dozen fell
ow humans follow his lead; five dozen stand to attention in a trice, shiver
ing in the cold, beside neat piles of military berets pants shoes shirts an
d green pullovers with leather patches at the elbows. Sixty one men, naked
except for imperfect underwear, are issued (by Lala Moin the batman) with A
rmy approved mufti. Najmuddin barks a command; and then there they all are,
some in lungis and kurtas, some in Pathan turbans. There are men in cheap
rayon pants and men in striped clerks' shirts. The buddha is in dhoti and k
ameez; he is comfortable, but around him are soldiers squirming in ill fitt
ing plain clothes. This is, however, a military operation; no voice, human
or canine, is raised in complaint.
On March 15th, after obeying sartorial instructions, twenty cutia units wer
e flown to Dacca, via Ceylon; among them were Shaheed Dar, Farooq Rashid, A
yooba Baloch and their buddha. Also flying to the East Wing by this circuit
ous route were sixty thousand of the West Wing's toughest troops: sixty tho