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

, 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 children 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