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

while Ayooba Shaheed Farooq were unable to distinguish between chasing afte
r and running from, the buddha knew what he was doing. Although I'm well aw
are that I am providing any future commentators or venom quilled critics (t
o whom I say: twice before, I've been subjected to snake poison; on both oc
casions, I proved stronger than venenes) with yet more ammunition through a
dmission of guilt, revelation of moral turpitude, proof of coward ice I'm b
ound to say that he, the buddha, finally incapable of continuing in the sub
missive performance of his duty, took to his heels and fled. Infected by th
e soul chewing maggots of pessimism futility shame, he deserted, into the h
istoryless anonymity of rain forests, dragging three children in his wake.
What I hope to immortalize in pickles as well as words: that condition of t
he spirit in which the consequences of acceptance could not be denied, in w
hich an overdose of reality gave birth to a miasmic longing for flight into
the safety of dreams… But the jungle, like all refuges, was entirely other
was both less and more than he had expected.
'I am glad,' my Padma says, 'I am happy you ran away.' But I insist: not I. H
e. He, the buddha. Who, until the snake, would remain not Saleem; who, in spi
te of running from, was still separated from his past; although he clutched,
in his limpet fist, a certain silver spittoon.
The jungle closed behind them like a tomb, and after hours of increasingly
weary but also frenzied rowing through incomprehensibly labyrinthine salt w
ater channels overtowered by the cathedral arching trees, Ayooba Shaheed Fa
rooq were hopelessly lost; they turned time and again to the buddha, who po
inted, 'That way', and then, 'Down there', but although they rowed feverish
ly, ignoring fatigue, it seems as if the possibility of ever leaving this p
lace receded before them like the lantern of a ghost; until at length they
rounded on their supposedly infallible tracker, and perhaps saw some small
light of shame or relief glowing in his habitually milky blue eyes; and now
Farooq whispered in the sepulchral greenness of the forest: 'You don't kno
w. You're just saying anything.' The buddha remained silent, but in his sil
ence they read their fate, and now that he was convinced that the jungle ha
d swallowed them the way a toad gulps down a mosquito, now that he was sure
he would never see the sun again, Ayooba Baloch, Ayooba the tank himself,
broke down utterly and wept like a monsoon. The incongruous spectacle of th
is huge figure with a crew cut blubbering like a baby served to detach Faro
oq and Shaheed from their senses; so that Farooq almost upset the boat by a
ttacking the buddha, who mildly bore all the fist blows which rained down o
n his chest shoulders arms, until Shaheed pulled Farooq down for the sake o
f safety. Ayooba Baloch cried without stopping for three entire hours or da
ys or weeks, until the rain began and made his tears unnecessary; and Shahe
ed Dar heard himself saying, 'Now look what you started, man, with your cry