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

om a first floor tower room with glass tulips dancing in the windows, a pi
ercing yell, a cocktail containing equal proportions of panic, excitement a
nd triumph… 'Arre Ahmed!' Amina Sinai yelled, 'Janum, the baby! It's coming
bang on time!'
Ripples of electricity through Methwold's Estate… and here comes Homi Catra
ck, at a brisk emaciated sunken eyed trot, offering: 'My Studebaker is at y
our disposal, Sinai Sahib; take it now go at once!'… and when there are sti
ll five hours and thirty minutes left, the Sinais, husband and wife, drive
away down the two storey hillock in the borrowed car; there is my father's
big toe pressing down on the accelerator; there are my mother's hands press
ing down on her moon belly; and they are out of sight now, around the bend,
past Band Box Laundry and Reader's Paradise, past Fatbhoy jewels and Chima
lker toys, past One Yard of Chocolates and Breach Candy gates, driving towa
rds Dr Narlikar's Nursing Home where, in a charity ward, Wee Willie's Vanit
a still heaves and strains, spine curving, eyes popping, and a midwife call
ed Mary Pereira is waiting for her time, too… so that neither Ahmed of the
jutting lip and squashy belly and fictional ancestors, nor dark skinned pro
phecy ridden Amina were present when the sun finally set over Methwold's Es
tate, and at the precise instant of its last disappearance five hours and t
wo minutes to go William Methwold raised a long white arm above his head. W
hite hand dangled above brilliantined black hair; long tapering white finge
rs twitched towards centre parting, and the second and final secret was rev
ealed, because fingers curled, and seized hair; drawing away from his head,
they failed to release their prey; and in the moment after the disappearan
ce of the sun Mr Methwold stood in the afterglow of his Estate with his hai
rpiece in his hand.
'A baldie!' Padma exclaims. 'That slicked up hair of his… I knew it; too good
to be true!'
Bald, bald; shiny pated! Revealed: the deception which had tricked an accor
dionist's wife. Samson like, William Methwold's power had resided in his ha
ir; but now, bald patch glowing in the dusk, he flings his thatch through t
he window of his motor car; distributes, with what looks like carelessness,
the signed title deeds to his palaces; and drives away. Nobody at Methwold
's Estate ever saw him again; but I, who never saw him once, find him impos
sible to forget.
Suddenly everything is saffron and green. Amina Sinai in a room with saffron
walls and green woodwork. In a neighbouring room, Wee Willie Winkie's Vanit
a, green skinned, the whites of her eyes shot with saffron, the baby finally
beginning its descent through inner passages that are also, no doubt, simil
arly colourful. Saffron minutes and green seconds tick away on the clocks on
the walls. Outside Dr Narlikar's Nursing Home, there are fireworks and crow