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

How are we to understand my too many women? As the multiple faces of Bh
arat Mata? Or as even more… as the dynamic aspect of maya, as cosmic en
ergy, which is represented as the female organ?
Maya, in its dynamic aspect, is called Shakti; perhaps it is no accident t
hat, in the Hindu pantheon, the active power of a deity is contained withi
n his queen! Maya Shakti mothers, but also 'muffles consciousness in its d
ream web'. Too many women: are they all aspects of Devi, the goddess who i
s Shakti, who slew the buffalo demon, who defeated the ogre Mahisha, who i
s Kali Durga Chandi Chamunda Uma Sati and Parvati… and who, when active, i
s coloured red?
'I don't know about that,' Padma brings me down to earth, 'They are just wome
n, that's all.'
Descending from my flight of fancy, I am reminded of the importance of spee
d; driven on by the imperatives of rip tear crack, I abandon reflections; a
nd begin.
This is how it came about: how Parvati took her destiny into her own hands;
how a lie, issuing from my lips, brought her to the desperate condition in
which, one night, she extracted from her shabby garments a lock of hero's
hair, and began to speak sonorous words.
Spurned by Saleem, Parvati remembered who had once been his arch enemy; and
, taking a bamboo stick with seven knots in it, and an improvized metal hoo
k attached to one end, she squatted in her shack and recited; with the Hook
of Indra in her right hand, and a lock of hair in her left, she summoned h
im to her. Parvati called to Shiva; believe don't believe, but Shiva came.
From the beginning there were knees and a nose, a nose and knees; but throu
ghout this narrative I've been pushing him, the other, into the background
(just as once, I banned him from the councils of the Children). He can be c
oncealed no longer, however; because one morning in May 1974 is it just my
cracking memory, or am I right in thinking it was the 18th, perhaps at the
very moment at which the deserts of Rajasthan were being shaken by India's
first nuclear explosion? Was Shiva's explosion into my life truly synchrono
us with
India's arrival, without prior warning, at the nuclear age? he came to the
magicians' slum. Uniformed, gonged and pipped, and a Major now, Shiva ali
ghted from an Army motorcycle; and even through the modest khaki of his Ar
my pants it was easy to make out the phenomenal twin bulges of his lethal
knees… India's most decorated war hero, but once he led a gang of apaches
in the back streets of Bombay; once, before he discovered the legitimized
violence of war, prostitutes were found throttled in gutters (I know, I kn
ow no proof); Major Shiva now, but also Wee Willie Winkie's boy, who still
remembered the words of long silenced songs: 'Good Night, Ladies' still e