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

e duck run between the tilting shacks, my feet leading me towards flap eare
d son and spittoon… but what chance did I have against those knees? The kne
es of the war hero are coming closer closer as I flee, the joints of my nem
esis thundering towards me, and he leaps, the legs of the war hero fly thro
ugh the air, closing like jaws around my neck, knees squeezing the breath o
ut of my throat, I am falling twisting but the knees hold tight, and now a
voice the voice of treachery betrayal hate! is saying, as knees rest on my
chest and pin me down in the thick dust of the slum: 'So, little rich boy:
we meet again. Salaam.' I spluttered; Shiva smiled.
O shiny buttons on a traitor's uniform! Winking blinking like silver… why
did he do it? Why did he, who had once led anarchistic apaches through the
slums of Bombay, become the warlord of tyranny? Why did midnight's child
betray the children of midnight, and take me to my fate? For love of viole
nce, and the legitimizing glitter of buttons on uniforms? For the sake of
his ancient antipathy towards me? Or I find this most plausible in exchang
e for immunity from the penalties imposed on the rest of us… yes, that mus
t be it; O birthright denying war hero! O mess of pottage corrupted rival…
But no, I must stop all this, and tell the story as simply as possible: w
hile troops chased arrested dragged magicians from their ghetto, Major Shi
va concentrated on me. I, too, was pulled roughly towards a van; while bul
ldozers moved forwards into the slum, a door was slammed shut… in the dark
ness I screamed, 'But my son! And Parvati, where is she, my Laylah? Pictur
e Singh! Save me, Pictureji!' But there were bulldozers now, and nobody he
ard me yelling.
Parvati the witch, by marrying me, fell victim to the curse of violent death
that hangs over all my people… I do not know whether Shiva, having locked m
e in a blind dark van, went in search of her, or whether he left her to the
bulldozers… because now the machines of destruction were in their element, a
nd the little hovels of the shanty town were slipping sliding crazily beneat
h the force of the irresistible creatures, huts snapping like twigs, the lit
tle paper parcels of the puppeteers and the magic baskets of the illusionist
s were being crushed into a pulp; the city was being beautified, and if ther
e were a few deaths, if a girl with eyes like saucers and a pout of grief up
on her lips fell beneath the advancing juggernauts, well, what of it, an eye
sore was being removed from the face of the ancient capital… and rumour has
it that, during the death throes of the ghetto of the magicians, a bearded g
iant wreathed in snakes (but this may be an exaggeration) ran full tilt! thr
ough the wreckage, ran wildly before the advancing bulldozers, clutching in
his hand the handle of an irreparably shattered umbrella, searching searchin
g, as though his life depended on the search.
By the end of that day, the slum which clustered in the shadow of the Friday
Mosque had vanished from the face of the earth; but not all the magicians w