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

'The Madam' was basking in the fullness of her glory. Today, perhaps, we ar
e already forgetting, sinking willingly into the insidious clouds of amnesi
a; but I remember, and will set down, how I how she how it happened that no
, I can't say it, I must tell it in the proper order, until there is no opt
ion but to reveal… On December 16th, 1971, I tumbled out of a basket into a
n India in which Mrs. Gandhi's New Congress Party held a more than two thir
ds majority in the National Assembly.
In the basket of invisibility, a sense of unfairness turned into anger; and
something else besides transformed by rage, I had also been overwhelmed by a
n agonizing feeling of sympathy for the country which was not only my twin i
n birth but also joined to me (so to speak) at the hip, so that what happene
d to either of us, happened to us both. If I, snot nosed stain faced etceter
a, had had a hard time of it, then so had she, my subcontinental twin sister
; and now that I had given myself the right to choose a better future, I was
resolved that the nation should share it, too. I think that when I tumbled
out into dust, shadow and amused cheers, I had already decided to save the country.
(But there are cracks and gaps… had I, by then, begun to see that my love f
or Jamila Singer had been, in a sense, a mistake? Had I already understood
how I had simply transferred on to her shoulders the adoration which I now
perceived to be a vaulting, all encompassing love of country? When was it t
hat I realized that my truly incestuous feelings were for my true birth sis
ter, India herself, and not for that trollop of a crooner who had so callou
sly shed me, like a used snake skin, and dropped me into the metaphorical w
aste basket of Army life? When when when?… Admitting defeat, I am forced to
record that I cannot remember for sure.)
… Saleem sat blinking in the dust in the shadow of the mosque. A giant was
standing over him, grinning hugely, asking, 'Achha, captain, have a good tr
ip?' And Parvati, with huge excited eyes, pouring water from a lotah into h
is cracked, salty mouth… Feeling! The icy touch of water kept cool in earth
enware surahis, the cracked soreness of parched raw lips, silver and lapis
clenched in a fist… 'I can feel!' Saleem cried to the good natured crowd.
It was the time of afternoon called the chaya, when the shadow of the tall re
d brick and marble Friday Mosque fell across the higgledy shacks of the slum
clustered at its feet, that slum whose ramshackle tin roofs created such a sw
elter of heat that it was insupportable to be inside the fragile shacks excep
t during the chaya and at night… but now conjurers and contortionists and jug
glers and fakirs had gathered in the shade around the solitary stand pipe to
greet the new arrival. 'I can feel!' I cried, and then Picture Singh, 'Okay,
captain tell us, how it feels? to be born again, falling like baby out of Par
vati's basket?' I could smell amazement on Picture Singh; he was clearly asto
unded by Parvati's trick, but, like a true professional, would not dream of a
sking her how she had achieved it. In this way Parvati the witch, who had use