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

g to force down her eyelids over eyes which were bulging so frighteningly th
at the triplets were afraid they would fall out and get dirty on the floor,
and then it was the twelfth day and I was half dead of starvation while else
where in the city the Supreme Court was informing Mrs Gandhi that she need n
ot resign until her appeal, but must neither vote in the Lok Sabha nor draw
a salary, and while the Prime Minister in her exultation at this partial vic
tory began to abuse her opponents in language of which a Koli fishwife would
have been proud, my Parvati's labour entered a phase in which despite her u
tter exhaustion she found the energy to issue a string of foul smelling oath
s from her colour drained lips, so that the cesspit stink of her obscenities
filled our nostrils and made us retch, and the three contortionists fled fr
om the hut crying that she had become so stretched, so colourless that you c
ould almost see through her, and she would surely die if the baby did not co
me now, and in my ears tick tock the pounding tick tock until I was sure, ye
s, soon soon soon, and when the triplets returned to her bedside in the even
ing of the thirteenth day they screamed Yes yes she has begun to push, come
on Parvati, push push push, and while Parvati pushed in the ghetto, J. P. Narayan and
s yelled push push push the leaders of the Janata Morcha urged the police a
nd Army to disobey the illegal orders of the disqualified Prime Minister, s
o in a sense they were forcing Mrs Gandhi to push, and as the night darkene
d towards the midnight hour, because nothing ever happens at any other time
, triplets began to screech it's coming coming coming, and elsewhere the Pr
ime Minister was giving birth to a child of her own… in the ghetto, in the
hut beside which I sat cross legged and starving to death, my son was comin
g coming coming, the head is out, the triplets screeched, while members of
the Central Reserve Police arrested the heads of the Janata Morcha, includi
ng the impossibly ancient and almost mythological figures of Morarji Desai
and J. P. Narayan, push push push, and in the heart of that terrible midnig
ht while ticktock pounded in my ears a child was born, a ten chip whopper a
ll right, popping out so easily in the end that it was impossible to unders
tand what all the trouble had been. Parvati gave a final pitiable little ye
lp and out he popped, while all over India policemen were arresting people,
all opposition leaders except members of the pro Moscow Communists, and al
so schoolteachers lawyers poets newspapermen trade unionists, in fact anyon
e who had ever made the mistake of sneezing during the Madam's speeches, an
d when the three contortionists had washed the baby and wrapped it in an ol
d sari and brought it out for its father to see, at exactly the same moment
, the word Emergency was being heard for the first time, and suspension of
civil rights, and censorship of the press, and armoured units on special al
ert, and arrest of subversive elements; something was ending, something was
being born, and at the precise instant of the birth of the new India and t