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

e Most Charming Man In The World! Yes, come see come see: his photo has be
en taken by Eastman Kodak Limited! Come close and have no fear picture sin
gh is here!'… And other such garbage; but then the paan wallah spoke:
'I know of a better act. This fellow is not number one; oh, no, certainly not.
In Bombay there is a better man.'
That was how Picture Singh learned of the existence of his rival; and why,
abandoning all plans of giving a performance, he marched over to the blandl
y smiling paan wallah, reaching into his depths for his old voice of comman
d, and said, 'You will tell me the truth about this faker, captain, or I wi
ll send your teeth down your gullet until they bite up your stomach.' And t
he paan wallah, unafraid, aware of the three lurking policemen who would mo
ve in swiftly to protect their salaries if the need arose, whispered to us
the secrets of his omniscience, telling us who when where, until Picture Si
ngh said in a voice whose firmness concealed his fear: 'I will go and show
this Bombay fellow who is best. In one world, captains, there is no room fo
r two Most Charming Men.'
The vendor of betel nut delicacies, shrugging delicately, expectorated at our
feet.
Like a magic spell, the taunts of a paan wallah opened the door through whi
ch Saleem returned to the city of his birth, the abode of his deepest nosta
lgia. Yes, it was an open sesame, and when we returned to the ragged tents
beneath the railway bridge, Picture Singh scrabbled in the earth and dug up
the knotted handkerchief of his security, the dirt discoloured cloth in wh
ich he had hoarded pennies for his old age; and when Durga the washerwoman
refused to accompany him, saying, 'What do you think, Pictureji, I am a cro
repati rich woman that I can take holidays and what all?', he turned to me
with something very like supplication in his eyes and asked me to accompany
him, so that he did not have to go into his worst battle, the test of his
old age, without a friend… yes, and Aadam heard it too, with his flapping e
ars he heard the rhythm of the magic, I saw his eyes light up as I accepted
, and then we were in a third class railway carriage heading south south so
uth, and in the quinquesyl labic monotony of the wheels I heard the secret
word: abracadabra abracadabra abracadabra sang the wheels as they bore us b
ack to Bom.
Yes, I had left the colony of the magicians behind me for ever, I was head
ing abracadabra abracadabra into the heart of a nostalgia which would keep
me alive long enough to write these pages (and to create a corresponding
number of pickles); Aadam and Saleem and Picture Singh squeezed into a thi
rd class carriage, taking with us a number of baskets tied up with string,
baskets which alarmed the jam packed humanity in the carriage by hissing
continually, so that the crowds pushed back back back, away from the menac