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

ied the war hero? Was it high mindedness or guilt? I can no longer say; I
set down only what I remember, namely that Parvati the witch whispered, 'M
aybe he will come when he has time; and then we will be three!' And anothe
r, repeated phrase: 'Midnight's children, yaar… that's something, no?' Par
vati the witch reminded me of things I had tried to put out of my mind; an
d I walked away from her, to the home of Mustapha Aziz.
Of my last miserable contact with the brutal intimacies of family life, on
ly fragments remain; however, since it must all be set down and subsequent
ly pickled, I shall attempt to piece together an account… to begin with, t
hen, let me report that my Uncle Mustapha lived in a commodiously anonymou
s Civil Service bungalow set in a tidy Civil Service garden just off Rajpa
th in the heart of Lutyens's city; I walked along what had once been Kings
way, breathing in the numberless perfumes of the street, which blew out of
State Handicraft Emporia arid the exhaust pipes of auto rickshaws; the ar
omas of banyan and deodar mingled with the ghostly scents of long gone vic
eroys and mem sahibs in gloves, and also with the rather more strident bod
ily odours of gaudy rich begums and tramps. Here was the giant election sc
oreboard around which (during the first battle for power between Indira an
d Morarji Desai) crowds had thronged, awaiting the results, asking eagerly
: 'Is it a boy or a girl?'… amid ancient and modern, between India Gate an
d the Secretariat buildings, my thoughts teeming with vanished (Mughal and
British) empires and also with my own history because this was the city o
f the public announcement, of many headed monsters and a hand, falling fro
m the sky I marched resolutely onwards, smelling, like everything else in
sight, to high heaven. And at last, having turned left towards Dupleix Roa
d, I arrived at an anonymous garden with a low wall and a hedge; in a corn
er of which I saw a signboard waving in the breeze, just as once signboard
s had flowered in the gardens of Methwold's Estate; but this echo of the p
ast told a different story. Not for sale, with its three ominous vowels an
d four fateful consonants; the wooden flower of my uncle's garden proclaim
ed strangely: Mr Mustapha Aziz and Fly.
Not knowing that the last word was my uncle's habitual, desiccated abbreviat
ion of the throbbingly emotional noun 'family', I was thrown into confusion
by the nodding signboard; after I had stayed in his household for a very sho
rt time, however, it began to seem entirely fitting, because the family of M
ustapha Aziz was indeed as crushed, as insect like, as insignificant as that
mythically truncated Fly.
With what words was I greeted when, a little nervously, I rang a doorbell,
filled with hopes of beginning a new career? What face appeared behind th
e wire netted outer door and scowled in angry surprise? Padma: I was greet
ed by Uncle Mustapha's wife, by my mad aunt Sonia, with the exclamation; '