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

i, Hanif Aziz, Sharpsticker sahib, General Zulfikar have all been pressed in
to service in the absence of William Methwold; Picture Singh was the last of
this noble line. And perhaps, in my dual lust for fathers and saving the co
untry, I exaggerated Picture Singh; the horrifying possibility exists that I
distorted him (and have distorted him again in these pages) into a dream fi
gment of my own imagination… it is certainly true that whenever I inquired,
'When are you going to lead us, Pictureji when will the great day come?', he
, shuffling awkwardly, replied, 'Get such things out from your head, captain
; I am a poor man from Rajasthan, and also the Most Charming Man In The Worl
d; don't make me anything else.' But I, urging him on, 'There is a precedent
there was Mian Abdullah, the Hummingbird…' to which Picture, 'Captain, you
got some crazy notions.'
During the early months of the Emergency, Picture Singh remained in the clu
tches of a gloomy silence reminiscent (once again!) of the great Boundlessn
ess of Reverend Mother (which had also leaked into my son…), and neglected
to lecture his audiences in the highways and back streets of the Old and Ne
w cities as, in the past, he had insisted on doing; but although he, 'This
is a time for silence, captain', I remained convinced that one day, one mil
lennial dawn at midnight's end, somehow, at the head of a great jooloos or
procession of the dispossessed, perhaps playing his flute and wreathed in d
eadly snakes, it would be Picture Singh who led us towards the light… but m
aybe he was never more than a snake charmer; I do not deny the possibility.
I say only that to me my last father, tall gaunt bearded, his hair swept b
ack into a knot behind his neck, seemed the very avatar of Mian Abdullah; b
ut perhaps it was all an illusion, born of my attempt to bind him to the th
reads of my history by an effort of sheer will. There have been illusions i
n my life; don't think I'm unaware of the fact. We are coming, however, to
a time beyond illusions; having no option, I must at last set down, in blac
k and white, the climax I have avoided all evening.
Scraps of memory: this is not how a climax should be written. A climax shou
ld surge towards its Himalayan peak; but I am left with shreds, and must je
rk towards my crisis like a puppet with broken strings. This is not what I
had planned; but perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin. (
Once, in a blue room, Ahmed Sinai improvised endings for fairy tales whose
original conclusions he had long ago forgotten; the Brass Monkey and I hear
d, down the years, all kinds of different versions of the journey of Sinbad
, and of the adventures of Hatim Tai… if I began again, would I, too, end i
n a different place?) Well then: I must content myself with shreds and scra
ps: as I wrote centuries ago, the trick is to fill in the gaps, guided by t
he few clues one is given. Most of what matters in our lives takes place in
our absence; I must be guided by the memory of a once glimpsed file with t
ell tale initials; and by the other, remaining shards of the past, lingerin