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

The magicians devoted much of their energies to the problem of making Parva
ti smile again. Taking time off from their work, and also from the more mun
dane chores of reconstructing tin and cardboard huts which had fallen down
in a high wind, or killing rats, they performed their most difficult tricks
for her pleasure; but the pout remained in place. Resham Bibi made a green
tea which smelted of camphor and forced it down Parvati's gullet. The tea
had the effect of constipating her so thoroughly that she was not seen defe
cating behind her hovel for nine weeks. Two young jugglers conceived the no
tion that she might have begun grieving for her deceased father all over ag
ain, and applied themselves to the task of drawing his portrait on a shred
of old tarpaulin, which they hung above her sackcloth mat. Triplets made jo
kes, and Picture Singh, greatly distressed, made cobras tie themselves in k
nots; but none of it worked, because if Parvati's thwarted love was beyond
her own powers to cure, what hope could the others have had? The power of P
arvati's pout created, in the ghetto, a nameless sense of unease, which all
the magicians' animosity towards the unknown could not entirely dispel.
And then Resham Bibi hit upon an idea. 'Fools that we are,' she told Picture
Singh, 'we don't see what is under our noses. The poor girl is twenty five,
baba almost an old woman! She is pining for a husband!' Picture Singh was i
mpressed. 'Resham Bibi,' he told her approvingly, 'your brain is not yet dea
d.'
After that, Picture Singh applied himself to the task of finding Parvati a
suitable young man; many of the younger men in the ghetto were coaxed bulli
ed threatened. A number of candidates were produced; but Parvati rejected t
hem all. On the night when she told Bismillah Khan, the most promising fire
eater in the colony, to go somewhere else with his breath of hot chillies,
even Picture Singh despaired. That night, he said to me, 'Captain, that gi
rl is a trial and a grief to me; she is your good friend, you got any ideas
?' Then an idea occurred to him, an idea which had had to wait until he bec
ame desperate because even Picture Singh was affected by considerations of
class automatically thinking of me as 'too good' for Parvati, because of my
supposedly 'higher' birth, the ageing Communist had not thought until now
that I might be… 'Tell me one thing, captain,' Picture Singh asked shyly, '
you are planning to be married some day?'
Saleem Sinai felt panic rising up inside himself.
'Hey, listen, captain, you like the girl, hey?' And I, unable to deny it, 'Of
course.' And now Picture Singh, grinning from ear to ear, while snakes hisse
d in baskets: 'Lake her a lot, captain? A lot lot?' But I was thinking of Jam
ila's face in the night; and made a desperate decision: 'Pictureji, I can't m
arry her.' And now he, frowning: 'Are you maybe married already, captain? Got
wife children waiting somewhere?' Nothing for it now; I, quietly, shamefully
, said: 'I can't marry anyone, Pictureji. I can't have children.'