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

ere captured; not all of them were carted off to the barbed wire camp called
Khichripur, hotch potch town, on the far side of the Jamuna River; they nev
er caught Picture Singh, and it is said that the day after the bulldozing of
the magicians' ghetto, a new slum was reported in the heart of the city, ha
rd by the New Delhi railway station. Bulldozers were rushed to the scene of
the reported hovels; they found nothing. After that the existence of the mov
ing slum of the escaped illusionists became a fact known to all the inhabita
nts of the city, but the wreckers never found it. It was reported at Mehraul
i; but when vasectomists and troops went there, they found the Qutb Minar un
besmirched by the hovels of poverty.. Informers said it had appeared in the
gardens of the Jantar Mantar, Jai Singh's Mughal observatory; but the machin
es of destruction, rushing to the scene, found only parrots and sun dials. O
nly after the end of the Emergency did the moving slum come to a standstill;
but that must wait for later, because it is time to talk, at long last, and
without losing control, about my captivity in the Widows' Hostel in Benares.
Once Resham Bibi had wailed, 'Ai o ai o!' and she was right: I brought destr
uction down upon the ghetto of my saviours; Major Shiva, acting no doubt upo
n the explicit instructions of the Widow, came to the colony to seize me; wh
ile the Widow's son arranged for his civic beautification and vasectomy prog
rammes to carry out a diversionary manoeuvre. Yes, of course it was all plan
ned that way; and (if I may say so) most efficiently. What was achieved duri
ng the riot of the magicians: no less a feat than the unnoticed capture of t
he one person on earth who held the key to the location of every single one
of the children of midnight for had I not, night after night, tuned in to ea
ch and every one of them? Did I not carry, for all time, their names address
es faces in my mind? I will answer that question: I did. And I was captured.
Yes, of course it was all planned that way. Parvati the witch had told me al
l about my rival; is it likely that she would not have mentioned me to him?
I will answer that question, too: it is not likely at all. So our war hero k
new where, in the capital, lurked the one person his masters wanted most (no
t even my uncle Mustapha knew where I went after I left him; but Shiva knew!
) and, once he had turned traitor, bribed, I have no doubt, by everything fr
om promises of preferment to guarantees of personal safety, it was easy for
him to deliver me into the hands of his mistress, the Madam, the Widow with
the particoloured hair.
Shiva and Saleem, victor and victim; understand our rivalry, and you will gai
n an understanding of the age in which you live. (The reverse of this stateme
nt is also true.)
I lost something else that day, besides my freedom: bulldozers swallowed a s
ilver spittoon. Deprived of the last object connecting me to my more tangibl
e, historically verifiable past, I was taken to Benares to face the conseque