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

sent, our ancient national gift for fissiparousness had found new outlets.
Picture Singh told me, sorrowfully, that during the 1971 general election
a bizarre murder had resulted from the quarrel between a Naxalite fire ea
ter and a Moscow line conjurer who, incensed by the former's views, had at
tempted to draw a pistol from his magic hat; but no sooner had the weapon
been produced than the supporter of Ho Chi Minh had scorched his opponent
to death in a burst of terrifying flame.
Under his umbrella, Picture Singh spoke of a socialism which owed nothing t
o foreign influences. 'Listen, captains,' he told warring ventriloquists an
d puppeteers, 'will you go to your villages and talk about Stalins and Maos
? Will Bihari or Tamil peasants care about the killing of Trotsky?' The cha
ya of his magical umbrella cooled the most intemperate of the wizards; and
had the effect, on me, of convincing me that one day soon the snake charmer
Picture Singh would follow in the footsteps of Mian Abdullah so many years
ago; that, like the legendary Hummingbird, he would leave the ghetto to sh
ape the future by the sheer force of his will; and that, unlike my grandfat
her's hero, he would not be stopped until he, and his cause, had won the da
y… but, but. Always a but but. What happened, happened. We all know that.
Before I return to telling the story of my private life, I should like it t
o be known that it was Picture Singh who revealed to me that the country's
corrupt, 'black' economy had grown as large as the official, 'white' variet
y, which he did by showing me a newspaper photograph of Mrs Gandhi. Her hai
r, parted in the centre, was snow white on one side and blackasnight on the
other, so that, depending on which profile she presented, she resembled ei
ther a stoat or an ermine. Recurrence of the centre parting in history; and
also, economy as an analogue of a Prime Ministerial hair style… I owe thes
e important perceptions to the Most Charming Man In The World. Picture Sing
h it was who told me that Mishra, the railway minister, was also the offici
ally appointed minister for bribery, through whom the biggest deals in the
black economy were cleared, and who arranged for pay offs to appropriate mi
nisters and officials; without Picture Singh, I might never have known abou
t the poll fixing in the state elections in Kashmir. He was no lover of dem
ocracy, however: 'God damn this election business, captain,' he told me, 'W
henever they come, something bad happens; and our countrymen behave like cl
owns.' I, in the grip of my fever for revolution, failed to take issue with
my mentor.
There were, of course, a few exceptions to the ghetto's rules: one or two
conjurers retained their Hindu faith and, in politics, espoused the Hindus
ectarian Jana Sangh party or the notorious Ananda Marg extremists; there w
ere even Swatantra voters amongst the jugglers. Non politically speaking,
the old lady Resham Bibi was one of the few members of the community who r
emained an incurable fantasist, believing (for instance) in the superstiti