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

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'You and your Christ. You can't get it into your head that that's the white people's religion? Leave white gods for white men. Just now our own people a re dying. We got to fight back; show the people who to fight instead of each other, you see?' And Mary, 'That's why I asked about colour, Father… and I told Joseph, I tol d and told, fighting is bad, leave off these wild ideas; but then he stops t alking with me, and starts hanging about with dangerous types, and there are rumours starting up about him, Father, how he's throwing bricks at big cars apparently, and burning bottles also, he's going crazy, Father, they say he helps to burn buses and blow up trams, and I don't know what. What to do, F ather, I tell my sister about it all. My sister Alice, a good girl really, F ather. I said: 'That Joe, he lives near a slaughterhouse, maybe that's the s mell that got into his nose and muddled him all up.' So Alice went to find h im, 'I will talk for you,' she says; but then, ? God what is happening to th e world… I tell you truly, Father… ? baba…' And the floods are drowning her words, her secrets are leaking saltily out of her eyes, because Alice came b ack to say that in her opinion Mary was the one to blame, for haranguing Jos eph until he wanted no more of her, instead of giving him support in his pat riotic cause of awakening the people. Alice was younger than Mary; and prett ier; and after that there were more rumours, Alice and Joseph stories, and M ary came to her wits' end. That one,' Mary said, 'What does she know about this politics politics? Only to get her nails into my Joseph she will repeat any rubbish he talks, like one stupid mynah bird. I swear, Father…' 'Careful, daughter. You are close to blasphemy…' 'No, Father, I swear to God, I don't know what I won't do to get me back th at man. Yes: in spite of… never mind what he… ai o ai ooo!' Salt water washes the confessional floor.,. and now, is there a new dilemma for the young father? Is he, despite the agonies of an unsettled stomach, weighing in invisible scales the sanctity of the confessional against the d anger to civilized society of a man like Joseph D'Costa? Will he, in fact, ask Mary for her Joseph's address, and then reveal … In short, would this b ishop ridden, stomach churned young father have behaved like, or unlike, Mo ntgomery Clift in I Confess? (Watching it some years ago at the New Empire cinema, I couldn't decide.) But no; once again, I must stifle my baseless s uspicions. What happened to Joseph would probably have happened anyway And in all like lihood the young father's only relevance to my history is that he was the f irst outsider to hear about Joseph D'Costa's virulent hatred of the rich, a nd of Mary Pereira's desperate grief. Tomorrow I'll have a bath and shave; I am going to put on a brand new kurta
, shining and starched, and pajamas to match. I'll wear mirrorworked slippe rs curling up at the toes, my hair will be neatly brushed (though not parte d in the centre), my teeth gleaming… in a phrase, I'll look my best. ('Than k God' from pouting Padma.) Tomorrow, at last, there will be an end to stories which I (not having been present at their birth) have to drag out of the whirling recesses of my mi nd; because the metronome musk of Mountbatten's countdown calendar can be i gnored no longer. At Methwold's Estate, old Musa is still ticking like a ti me bomb; but he can't be heard, because another sound is swelling now, deaf ening, insistent; the sound of seconds passing, of an approaching, inevitab le midnight. Tick, tock Padma can hear it: there's nothing like a countdown for building suspense. I watched my dung flower at work today, stirring vats like a whirlwind, as if that would make the time go faster. (And perhaps it did; time, in my experi ence, has been as variable and inconstant as Bombay's electric power supply. Just telephone the speaking clock if you don't believe me tied to electrici ty, it's usually a few hours wrong. Unless we're the ones who are wrong… no people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for' tomorrow' c an be said to have a firm grip on the time.) But today, Padma heard Mountbatten's ticktock… English made, it beats with r elentless accuracy. And now the factory is empty; fumes linger, but the vats are still; and I've kept my word. Dressed up to the nines, I greet Padma as she rushes to my desk, flounces down on the floor beside me, commands: 'Beg in.' I give a little satisfied smile; feel the <strong>children</strong> of midnight queueing up in my head, pushing and jostling like Koli fishwives; I tell them to wai t, it won't be long now; I clear my throat, give my pen a little shake; and start. Thirty two years before the transfer of power, my grandfather bumped his n ose against Kashmir! earth. There were rubies and diamonds. There was the ice of the future, waiting beneath the water's skin There was an oath: not to bow down before god or man. The oath created a hole, which would tempo rarily be filled by a woman behind a perforated sheet. A boatman who had o nce prophesied dynasties lurking in my grandfather's nose ferried him angr ily across a lake. There were blind landowners and lady wrestlers. And the re was a sheet in a gloomy room. On that day, my inheritance began to form the blue of Kashmiri sky which dripped into my grandfather's eyes; the lo ng sufferings of my great grandmother which would become the forebearance of my own mother and the late steeliness of Naseem Aziz; my great grandfat
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Salman Rushdie Midnight's children
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s presence was as it crouched under
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ghost, just beneath the surface of
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thesis of Oskar Ilse Ingrid's belie
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are you, honestly? From Tai, Aadam
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tters angrily, 'A fine business. A
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onnected with a glint of light in G
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ma demands, her right hand slicing
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that, after three years, the landow
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him even more disturbing. Aziz foun
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I make no comment; these events, wh
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cy sweet fumes rose from a street s
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ing mobs are breaking them up. Doct
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e of standing between the opposing
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n at the paan shop at the top of Co
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s a very heavy pot; and if just onc
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men, my grandmother sat in triumph,
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ittoon. 'What nonsense,' our Padma
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mbers made tents under their robes.
Page 39 and 40: and there was a beautiful nautch gi
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Page 45 and 46: ing of crescent knives and howling
Page 47 and 48: ce, 'We would have had children in
Page 49 and 50: shelter for three years, what did y
Page 51 and 52: he car parked outside my grandfathe
Page 53 and 54: d getting irritated whenever my nar
Page 55 and 56: lt ill at ease; but also excited by
Page 57 and 58: sacred here. Bicycle bells rang con
Page 59 and 60: y Mr Kemal, rice tea lentfls he hoa
Page 61 and 62: n in his moments of triumph, there
Page 63 and 64: e into these gullies, grown ups as
Page 65 and 66: g more for you.' 'Thank you,' my mo
Page 67 and 68: key was also dancing, but with disa
Page 69 and 70: shes now! into the distant meanness
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Page 75 and 76: Padma shouts, furiously. 'How dare
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Page 81 and 82: ng crueller, some sweet murderous s
Page 83 and 84: These were the people amongst whom
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Page 87 and 88: nine colleagues) beside and beneath
Page 89: ely put you straight; but one does
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Page 95 and 96: t, of course; but Mughal, certainly
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Page 99 and 100: ds, also conforming to the colours
Page 101 and 102: . And now we come to it: the noise
Page 103 and 104: of the moment, pressed a little too
Page 105 and 106: gnarled, net mending sailor did he
Page 107 and 108: Intriguing features of my early lif
Page 109 and 110: tain Indians 'the better sort' to s
Page 111 and 112: ' he insisted stubbornly. Before he
Page 113 and 114: ngs; but she gave a door in my mind
Page 115 and 116: give the girls a collective name. '
Page 117 and 118: a chair drawn up to a desk topped w
Page 119 and 120: constantly in and out between his p
Page 121 and 122: d Mother filled Amina with a kind o
Page 123 and 124: All games have morals; and the game
Page 125 and 126: d Mother ordered. 'If there are Hin
Page 127 and 128: es the room; and Amina, aghast, ask
Page 129 and 130: s stuffed into their necks? 'Damn l
Page 131 and 132: e, and I miss her. Yes, that's it.
Page 133 and 134: Already, at the age of nearlynine,
Page 135 and 136: he fisherman's finger pointed, misl
Page 137 and 138: agging down the floods of tears lur
Page 139 and 140: s tight; and by the time the roof f
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ping from a thick black cloud. And
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sealed by maternal command, I was u
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ches above the ground, his eye sock
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In 1956, then, languages marched mi
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ad learned that secrets were not al
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Let me sum up: at a crucial point i
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pied, briefly, the mind of a Congre
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d to stroll down to Chowpatty Beach
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d all of Narlikar's business deals;
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Ibrahim who is sitting next to and
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ing with old man Ibrahim Ibrahim; s
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'Yeah, but you didn't even help…'
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Interruptions, nothing but interrup
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es vanish from the mind as if they
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nstration; S.M.S. voices chanted 'S
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1947 but in another version, that i
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on the Mahanadi river in Orissa, th
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ves; but inevitably our problems, w
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oss? Rest now, rest some while, tha
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'Yes, sahib, I know; you will look
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lord?' but she only succeeded in aw
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to the new Midnight Children's Conf
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ins clatter south towards Churchgat
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on, or class origins; Mary Pereira
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ied together, wings clipped, flutte
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The skin on his face hung in folds
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mpathetic; and in my own way, I beg
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w many millions of damn fools livin
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me from the page, demanding to be e
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eyes; and then like a blur the Monk
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any features he chose, and Harilal
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The first mutilation of Saleem Sina
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the grasping thumb and forefinger,
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e giggling: '??? hee.' Masha Miovic
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Ahmed Sinai, his face ravaged by wh
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er's assets, and also the explosion
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formation into the Kolynos Kid); ay
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'Respect she can have,' Pia flounce
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hansi; rakshasas have been seen man
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fa, his words penetrate my one good
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oy has suffered; he is suffering no
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erfidious mother, a lust which had
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lly fell apart on the day the Chine
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all; because children are the vesse
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ose woman,' the demon within me whi
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WHY DOES YOUR WIFE GO TO COLABA CAU
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filled his cell, and although he as
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wold's Estate of curious flowers, m
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ad and believe! Know that in true e
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the great charged a fee. In exchang
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arriers which permit families to su
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e, but his back was bent. Shuffling
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'But I saw Him,' my grandfather say
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I am watching Padma; her muscles ha
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innocent; who called down upon hims
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lled, briefly, with the illusory op
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er's namesake ship, proving once ag
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his bed?' and it was my sense of th
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Heads nod; murmurs of assent. 'Gent
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d than I even I had dreamed. 'Reall
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I listened to her faultless voice,
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too, to strange fears. When the Chi
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nce with me at last. 'O, Saleem,' s
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aligned in the war between our pare
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… We halted in front of an unfami
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e of the place of revelation, of pu
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to feign innocence when someone bro
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Capable of smelling sadness and joy
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tly after Jamila's fifteenth birthd
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my aunt Alia's school, which she co
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is sibling? Once the Mubarak, the B
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Sacred: purdah veils, halal meat, m
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Once upon a time, in the far northe
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at the scene of great historical ev
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on and the lust drenched breeze, ab
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akistan, however, the clocks ticked
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ve birth, instead, to an unspeakabl
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Tick, tock… In January 1965, my m
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adly. (No: I do not exempt myself.)
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nd then on the last night their wor
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ageing of pregnant Amina Sinai… a
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short of funds on account of one ma
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ere coming to an end, the story of
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s, fated to plunge memoryless into
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capture. How will you work? In cani
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I) had been cleansed of the whole b
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g units in camouflaged jeeps, he de
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usand, like sixty one, were all in
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eap gutter newsprint, and the offic
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A nameless morning. Ayooba Shaheed
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ing,' proving that they were alread
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le in his heart and on to Ayooba's
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ame clear that they would have to m
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them at any moment; and then, in a
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k with your blue eyes of a foreigne
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arrow into the soil while he, 'No s
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Niazi have been in the city that De
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le urge to look up… afterwards, i
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ld because of his unsurpassable ski
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hing was. Then Parvati whispered so
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inging: @@@Anything you want to be,
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'The Madam' was basking in the full
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eceived a constant stream of visito
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ied the war hero? Was it high minde
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e day during my stay my aunt Sonia
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I lived in the home of Mr Mustapha
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had been cheated for so long by the
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sket on the step beside the Congres
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on which forbade women to climb man
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The magicians devoted much of their
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I made pepperpots march; There was
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choed on occasion in his ears. Ther
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S. P. Shetty; and at the Mahalaxmi
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whore. The whoring trails of the wa
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And then there was Parvati, with he
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so wonderful that rumours of it spr
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g to force down her eyelids over ey
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He was the possessor of a navel whi
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t, in those midnight months when th
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and its consequences) of our birth;
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g in my ransacked memory vaults lik
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lips like women's labia, and the el
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ere captured; not all of them were
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is no chutney or pickle capable of
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Pass it on: some of us have escaped
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k of then. Now does not bear thinki
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When four hundred and twenty suffer
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eyes, and you were obliged to bang
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I cannot; instead, meekly and with
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tore my strength by letting me suck
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oon be adrift and incompetent in a
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e of the snakes, and allowed us a m
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of us knocked on its doors. Movemen
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und the Maharaja's neck. What Pictu
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, who called herself Mrs Braganza,
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pirits emanating from the god Abrax
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ering. And now there is rip tear cr
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