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

I lived in the home of Mr Mustapha Aziz for four hundred and twenty days…
Saleem was in belated mourning for his dead; but do not think for one mome
nt that my ears were closed! Don't assume I didn't hear what was being sai
d around me, the repeated quarrels between uncle and aunt (which may have
helped him decide to consign her to the insane asylum): Sonia Aziz yelling
, 'That bhangi that dirty filthy fellow, not even your nephew, I don't kno
w what's got into you, we should throw him out on his ear!' And Mustapha,
quietly, replying: 'Poor chap is stricken with grief, so how can we, you j
ust have to look to see, he is not quite right in the head, has suffered m
any bad things.' Not quite right in the head! That was tremendous, coming
from them from that family beside which a tribe of gibbering cannibals wou
ld have seemed calm and civilized! Why did I put up with it? Because I was
a man with a dream. But for four hundred and twenty days, it was a dream
which failed to come true.
Droopy moustachioed, tall but stooped, an eternal number two: my Uncle Must
apha was not my Uncle Hanif. He was the head of the family now, the only on
e of his generation to survive the holocaust of 1965; but he gave me no hel
p at all… I bearded him in his genealogy filled study one bitter evening an
d explained with proper solemnity and humble but resolute gestures my histo
ric mission to rescue the nation from her fate; but he sighed deeply and sa
id, 'Listen, Saleem, what would you have me do? I keep you in my house; you
eat my bread and do nothing but that is all right, you are from my dead si
ster's house, and I must look after so stay, rest, get well in yourself; th
en let us see. You want a clerkship or so, maybe it can be fixed; but leave
these dreams of God knows what. Our country is in safe hands. Already Indi
raji is making radical reforms land reforms, tax structures, education, bir
th control you can leave it to her and her sarkar.' Patronizing me, Padma!
As if I were a foolish child! O the shame of it, the humiliating shame of b
eing condescended to by dolts!
At every turn I am thwarted; a prophet in the wilderness, like Maslama, like
ibn Sinan! No matter how I try, the desert is my lot. O vile unhelpfulness
of lickspittle uncles! O fettering of ambitions by second best toadying rela
tives! My uncle's rejection of my pleas for preferment had one grave effect:
the more he praised his Indira, the more deeply I detested her. He was, in
fact, preparing me for my return to the magicians' ghetto, and for… for her…
the Widow.
Jealousy: that was it. The great jealousy of my mad aunt Sonia, dripping li
ke poison into my uncle's ears, prevented him from doing a single thing to
get me started on my chosen career. The great are eternally at the mercy of
tiny men. And also: tiny madwomen.
On the four hundred and eighteenth day of my stay, there was a change in th