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

And then there was Parvati, with her altered profile, in the harsh clarity of t
he winter day.
It was or am I wrong? I must rush on; things are slipping from me all the t
ime a day of horrors. It was then unless it was another day that we found o
ld Resham Bibi dead of cold, lying in her hut which she had built out of Da
lda Vanaspati packing cases. She had turned bright blue, Krishna blue, blue
as Jesus, the blue of Kashmiri sky, which sometimes leaks into eyes; we bu
rned her on the banks of the Jamuna amongst mud flats and buffalo, and she
missed my wedding as a result, which was sad, because like all old women sh
e loved weddings, and had in the past joined in the preliminary henna cerem
onies with energetic glee, leading the formal singing in which the bride's
friends insulted the groom and his family. On one occasion her insults had
been so brilliant and finely calculated that the groom took umbrage and can
celled the wedding; but Resham had been undaunted, saying that it wasn't he
r fault if young men nowadays were as faint hearted and inconstant as chick
ens.
I was absent when Parvati went away; I was not present when she returned;
and there was one more curious fact… unless I have forgotten, unless it wa
s on another day… it seems to me, at any rate, that on the day of Parvati'
s return, an Indian Cabinet Minister was in his railway carriage, at Samas
tipur, when an explosion blew him into the history books; that Parvati, wh
o had departed amid the explosions of atom bombs, returned to us when Mr L
. N. Mishra, minister for railways and bribery, departed this world for go
od. Omens and more omens… perhaps, in Bombay, dead pomfrets were floating
belly side up to shore.
January 26th, Republic Day, is a good time for illusionists. When the huge
crowds gather to watch elephants and fireworks, the city's tricksters go ou
t to earn their living. For me, however, the day holds another meaning; it
was on Republic Day that my conjugal fate was sealed.
In the days after Parvati's return, the old women of the ghetto formed the
habit of holding their ears for shame whenever they passed her; she, who bo
re her illegitimate child without any appearance of guilt, would smile inno
cently and walk on. But on the morning of Republic Day, she awoke to find a
rope hung with tattered shoes strung up above her door, and began to weep
inconsolably, her poise disintegrating under the force of this greatest of
insults. Picture Singh and I, leaving our shack laden with baskets of snake
s, came across her in her (calculated? genuine?) misery, and Picture Singh
set his jaw in an attitude of determination. 'Come back to the hut, captain
,' the Most Charming Man instructed me, 'We must talk.'
And in the hut, 'Forgive me, captain, but I must speak. I am thinking it is a
terrible thing for a man to go through life without children. To have no son