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

hing was. Then Parvati whispered some other words, and, inside the basket
of invisibility, I, Saleem Sinai, complete with my loose anonymous garme
nt, vanished instantly into thin air.
'Vanished? How vanished, what vanished?' Padma's head jerks up; Padma's eye
s stare at me in bewilderment. I, shrugging, merely reiterate; Vanished, ju
st like that. Disappeared. Dematerialized. Like a djinn: poof, like so.
'So,' Padma presses me, 'she really truly was a witch?' Really truly. I was i
n the basket, but also not in the basket; Picture Singh lifted it one handed
and tossed it into the back of the Army truck taking him and Parvati and nine
ty nine others to the aircraft waiting at the military airfield; I was tossed
with the basket, but also not tossed. Afterwards, Picture Singh said, 'No, c
aptain, I couldn't feel your weight'; nor could I feel any bump thump bang. O
ne hundred and one artistes had arrived, by I.A.F. troop transport, from the
capital of India; one hundred and two persons returned, although one of them
was both there and not there. Yes, magic spells can occasionally succeed. But
also fail: my father, Ahmed Sinai, never succeeded in cursing Sherri, the mo
ngrel bitch.
Without passport or permit, I returned, cloaked in invisibility, to the land
of my birth; believe, don't believe, but even a sceptic will have to provid
e another explanation for my presence here. Did not the Caliph Haroun al Ras
hid (in an earlier set of fabulous tales) also wander, unseen invisible anon
ymous, cloaked through the streets of Baghdad? What Haroun achieved in Baghd
ad streets, Parvati the witch made possible for me, as we flew through the a
ir lanes of the subcontinent. She did it; I was invisible; bas. Enough.
Memories of invisibility: in the basket, I learned what it was like, will be l
ike, to be dead. I had acquired the characteristics of ghosts! Present, but in
substantial; actual, but without being or weight… I discovered, in the basket,
how ghosts see the world. Dimly hazily faintly… it was around me, but only ju
st; I hung in a sphere of absence at whose fringes, like faint reflections, co
uld be seen the spectres of wickerwork. The dead die, and are gradually forgot
ten; time does its healing, and they fade but in Parvati's basket I learned th
at the reverse is also true; that ghosts, too, begin to forget; that the dead
lose their memories of the living, and at last, when they are detached from th
eir lives, fade away that dying, in short, continues for a long time after dea
th. Afterwards, Parvati said, 'I didn't want to tell you but nobody should be
kept invisible that long it was dangerous, but what else was there to do?'
In the grip of Parvati's sorcery, I felt my hold on the world slip away and h
ow easy, how peaceful not to never to return! to float in this cloudy nowhere
, wafting further further further, like a seed spore blown on the breeze in s
hort, I was in mortal danger.
What I held on to in that ghostly time and space: a silver spittoon. Which,
transformed like myself by Parvati whispered words, was nevertheless a rem