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

lips like women's labia, and the elegant ladies were all identical, too,
their features corresponding precisely to those of Sanjay's Menaka, whom n
ews scraps had described as a 'lanky beauty', and who had once modelled ni
ghties for a mattress company… standing in the chaos of the slum clearance
programme, I was shown once again that the ruling dynasty of India had le
arned how to replicate itself; but then there was no time to think, the nu
mberless labia lips and lanky beauties were seizing magicians and old begg
ars, people were being dragged towards the vans, and now a rumour spread t
hrough the colony of magicians: 'They are doing nasbandi sterilization is
being performed!' And a second cry: 'Save your women and children!' And a
riot is beginning, children who were just now playing seven tiles are hurl
ing stones at the elegant invaders, and here is Picture Singh rallying the
magicians to his side, waving a furious umbrella, which had once been a c
reator of harmony but was now transmuted into a weapon, a flapping quixoti
c lance, and the magicians have become a defending army, Molotov cocktails
are magically produced and hurled, bricks are drawn out of conjurers' bags, the air is
elegant labia lips and lanky beauties are retreating before the harsh fury
of the illusionists; and there goes Picture Singh, leading the assault again
st the tent of vasectomy… Parvati or Laylah, disobeying orders, is at my sid
e now, saying, 'My God, what are they ', and at this moment a new and more f
ormidable assault is unleashed upon the slum: troops are sent in against mag
icians, women and children.
Once, conjurers card tricksters puppeteers and mesmerists marched triumphan
tly beside a conquering army; but all that is forgotten now, and Russian gu
ns are trained on the inhabitants of the ghetto. What chance do Communist w
izards have against socialist rifles? They, we, are running now, every whic
h way, Parvati and I are separated as the soldiers charge, I lose sight of
Picture Singh, there are rifle butts beating pounding, I see one of the con
tortionist triplets fall beneath the fury of the guns, people are being pul
led by the hair towards the waiting yawning vans; and I, too, am running, t
oo late, looking over my shoulder, stumbling on Dalda cans empty crates and
the abandoned sacks of the terrified illusionists, and over my shoulder th
rough the murky night of the Emergency I see that all of this has been a sm
oke screen, a side issue, because hurtling through the confusion of the rio
t comes a mythical figure, an incarnation of destiny and destruction: Major
Shiva has joined the fray, and he is looking only for me. Behind me, as I
run, come the pumping knees of my doom…
… The picture of a hovel comes into my mind: my son! And not only my son: a
silver spittoon, inlaid with lapis lazuli! Somewhere in the confusion of t
he ghetto a child has been left alone… somewhere a talisman, guarded for so
long, has been abandoned. The Friday Mosque watches impassively as I swerv