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

million insects, including giant flies as transparent as the leeches. The fl
ies, too, reddened as they filled up with the milk of the fruit… all through
the night, it seemed, the Sundarbans had continued to grow. Tallest of all
were the sundri trees which had given their name to the jungle; trees high e
nough to block out even the faintest hope of sun. The four of us, them, clim
bed out of the boat; and only when they set foot on a hard bare soil crawlin
g with pale pink scorpions and a seething mass of dun coloured earthworms di
d they remember their hunger and thirst. Rainwater poured off leaves all aro
und them, and they turned their mouths up to the roof of the jungle and dran
k; but perhaps because the water came to them by way of sundri leaves and ma
ngrove branches and nipa fronds, it acquired on its journey something of the
insanity of the jungle, so that as they drank they fell deeper and deeper i
nto the thraldom of that livid green world where the birds had voices like c
reaking wood and all the snakes were blind. In the turbid, miasmic state of
mind which the jungle induced, they prepared their first meal, a combination
of nipa fruits and mashed earthworms, which inflicted on them all a diarrho
ea so violent that they forced themselves to examine the excrement in case t
heir intestines had fallen out in the mess.
Farooq said, 'We're going to die.' But Shaheed was possessed by a powerful
lust for survival; because, having recovered from the doubts of the night
, he had become convinced that this was not how he was supposed to go.
Lost in the rain forest, and aware that the lessening of the monsoon was onl
y a temporary respite, Shaheed decided that there was little point in attemp
ting to find a way out when, at any moment, the returning monsoon might sink
their inadequate craft; under his instructions, a shelter was constructed f
rom oilskins and palm fronds; Shaheed said, 'As long as we stick to fruit, w
e can survive.' They bad all long ago forgotten the purpose of their journey
; the chase, which had begun far away in the real world, acquired in the alt
ered light of the Sundarbans a quality of absurd fantasy which enabled them
to dismiss it once and for all.
So it was that Ayooba Shaheed Farooq and the buddha surrendered themselves t
o the terrible phantasms of the dream forest. The days passed, dissolving in
to each other under the force of the returning rain, and despite chills feve
rs diarrhoea they stayed alive, improving their shelter by pulling down the
lower branches of sundris and mangroves, drinking the red milk of nipa fruit
s, acquiring the skills of survival, such as the power of strangling snakes
and throwing sharpened sticks so accurately that they speared multicoloured
birds through their gizzards. But one night Ayooba awoke in the dark to find
the translucent figure of a peasant with a bullet hole in his heart and a s
cythe in his hand staring mournfully down at him, and as he struggled to get
out of the boat (which they had pulled in, under the cover of their primiti
ve shelter) the peasant leaked a colourless fluid which flowed out of the ho