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

eceived a constant stream of visitors, the servants of the rich, requesting
the professional services of one or more of the colony at this or that gala
evening's entertainment… it seemed, in fact, as though Resham Bibi had got t
hings the wrong way round, and I rapidly became very popular in the ghetto.
I was dubbed Saleem Kismeti, Lucky Saleem; Parvati was congratulated on havi
ng brought me to the slum. And finally Picture Singh brought Resham Bibi to
apologize.
'Pol'gize,' Resham said toothlessly and fled; Picture Singh added, 'It is h
ard for the old ones; their brains go raw and remember upside down. Captain
, here everyone is saying you are our luck; but will you go from us soon?'
And Parvati, staring dumbly with saucer eyes which begged no no no; but I w
as obliged to answer in the affirmative.
Saleem, today, is certain that he answered, 'Yes'; that on the selfsame mor
ning, still dressed in shapeless robe, still inseparable from a silver spit
toon, he walked away, without looking back at a girl who followed him with
eyes moistened with accusations; that, strolling hastily past practising ju
gglers and sweetmeat stalls which filled his nostrils with the temptations
of rasgullas, past barbers offering shaves for ten paisa, past the derelict
maunderings of crones and the American accented caterwauls of shoe shine b
oys who importuned bus loads of Japanese tourists in identical blue suits a
nd incongruous saffron turbans which had been tied around their heads by ob
sequiously mischievous guides, past the towering flight of stairs to the Fr
iday Mosque, past vendors of notions and itr essences and plaster of Paris
replicas of the Qutb Minar and painted toy horses and fluttering unslaughte
red chickens, past invitations to cockfights and empty eyed games of cards,
he emerged from the ghetto of the illusionists and found himself on Faiz B
azar, facing the infinitely extending walls of a Red Fort from whose rampar
ts a prime minister had once announced independence, and in whose shadow a
woman had been met by a peepshow merchant, a Dilli dekho man who had taken
her into narrowing lanes to hear her son's future foretold amongst mongeese
and vultures and broken men with leaves bandaged around their arms; that,
to be brief, he turned to his right and walked away from the Old City towar
ds the roseate palaces built by pink skinned conquerors long ago: abandonin
g my saviours, I went into New Delhi on foot.
Why? Why, ungratefully spurning the nostalgic grief of Parvati the witch, d
id I set my face against the old and journey into newness? Why, when for so
many years I had found her my staunchest ally in the nocturnal congresses
of my mind, did I leave her so lightly in the morning? Fighting past fissur
ed blanks, I am able to remember two reasons; but am unable to say which wa
s paramount, or if a third… firstly, at any rate, I had been taking stock.
Saleem, analysing his prospects, had had no option but to admit to himself
that they were not good. I was passport less; in law an illegal immigrant (