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

nd then Hornby Vellard was on our right where promenaders watched as Sher
ri the mongrel bitch was left to spill her guts! Where cardboard effigies
of wrestlers still towered above the entrances to Vallabhbhai Patel Stad
ium! and we were rattling and 'banging past traffic cops with sun umbrell
as, past Mahalaxmi temple and then Warden Road! The Breach Candy Swimming
Baths! And there, look, the shops… but the names had changed: where was
Reader's Paradise with its stacks of Superman comics? Where, the Band Box
Laundry and Bombelli's, with their One Yard Of Chocolates? And, my God,
look, atop a two storey hillock where once the palaces of William Methwol
d stood wreathed in bougainvillaea and stared proudly out to sea… look at
it, a great pink monster of a building, the roseate skyscraper obelisk o
f the Narlikar women, standing over and obliterating the circus ring of c
hildhood… yes, it was my Bombay, but also not mine, because we reached Ke
mp's Corner to find the hoardings of Air India's little rajah and of the
Kolynos Kid gone, gone for good, and Thomas Kemp and Co. itself had vanis
hed into thin air… flyovers crisscrossed where, once upon a time, medicin
es were dispensed and a pixie in a chlorophyll cap beamed down upon the t
raffic. Elegiacally, I murmured under my breath: 'Keep Teeth Kleen and Ke
ep Teeth Brite! Keep Teeth Kolynos Super White!' But despite my incantati
on, the past failed to reappear; we rattled on down Gibbs Road and dismou
nted near Chowpatty Beach.
Chowpatty, at least, was much the same: a dirty strip of sand aswarm with
pickpockets, and strollers, and vendors of hot channa channa hot, of kulfi
and bhel puri and chutter mutter; but further down Marine Drive I saw wha
t tetrapods had achieved. On land reclaimed by the Narlikar consortium fro
m the sea, vast monsters soared upwards to the sky, bearing strange alien
names: oberoi sheraton screamed at me from afar. And where was the neon Je
ep sign?… 'Come on, Pictureji,' I said at length, hugging Aadam to my ches
t, 'Let's go where we're going and be done with it; the city has been changed.'
What can I say about the Midnite Confidential Club? That its location is un
derground, secret (although known to omniscient paan wallahs); its door, un
marked; its clientele, the cream of Bombay society. What else? Ah, yes: man
aged by one Anand 'Andy' Shroff, businessman playboy, who is to be found on
most days tanning himself at the Sun 'n' Sand Hotel on Juhu Beach, amid fi
lm stars and disenfranchised princesses. I ask you: an Indian, sun bathing?
But apparently it's quite normal, the international rules of playboydom mu
st be obeyed to the letter, including, I suppose, the one stipulating daily
worshipping of the sun.
How innocent I am (and I used to think that Sonny, forcep dented, was the si
mple one!) I never suspected that places like the Midnite Confidential exist
ed! But of course they do; and clutching flutes and snake baskets, the three