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

und the Maharaja's neck.
What Picture said: 'Give me best, captain, or I'll tell it to bite.'
That was the end of the contest. The humiliated princeling left the Club and
was later reported to have shot himself in a taxi. And on the floor of his
last great battle, Picture Singh collapsed like a falling banyan tree… blind
attendants (to one of whom I entrusted Aadam) helped me carry him from the
field.
But the Midnight Confidential had one trick left up its sleeve. Once a nigh
t just to add a little spice a roving spotlight searched out one of the ill
icit couples, and revealed them to the hidden eyes of their fellows: a touc
h of luminary Russian roulette which, no doubt, made life more thrilling fo
r the city's young cosmopolitans… and who was the chosen victim that night?
Who, horn templed stain faced cucumber nosed, was drowned in scandalous li
ght? Who, made as blind as female attendants by the voyeurism of light bulb
s, almost dropped the legs of his unconscious friend?
Saleem returned to the city of his birth to stand illuminated in a cellar whil
e Bombayites tittered at him from the dark.
Quickly now, because we have come to the end of incidents, I record that, in
a back room in which light was permitted, Picture Singh recovered from his
fainting fit; and while Aadam slept soundly, one of the blind waitresses bro
ught us a congratulatory, reviving meal. On the thali of victory: samosas, p
akoras, rice, dal, puris; and green chutney. Yes, a little aluminium bowl of
chutney, green, my God, green as grasshoppers… and before long a puri was i
n my hand; and chutney was on the puri; and then I had tasted it, and almost
imitated the fainting act of Picture Singh, because it carried me back to a
day when I emerged nine fingered from a hospital and went into exile at the
home of Hanif Aziz, and was given the best chutney in the world… the taste
of the chutney was more than just an echo of that long ago taste it was the
old taste itself, the very same, with the power of bringing back the past as
if it had never been away… in frenzy of excitement, I grabbed the blind wai
tress by the arm; scarcely able to contain myself, I blurted out: 'The chutn
ey! Who made it?' I must have shouted, because Picture, 'Quiet, captain, you
'll wake the boy… and what's the matter? You look like you saw your worst en
emy's ghost!' And the blind waitress, a little coldly: 'You don't like the c
hutney?' I had to hold back an almighty bellow. 'I like it,' I said in a voi
ce caged in bars of steel, 'I like it now will you tell me where it's from?'
And she, alarmed, anxious to get away: 'It's Braganza Pickle; best in Bomba
y, everyone knows.'
I made her bring me the jar; and there, on the label, was the address: of a
building with a winking, saffron and green neon goddess over the gate, a f
actory watched over by neon Mumbadevi, while local trains went yellow and b