Re-readings
Imagining a lost summer of fury
Efadul Huq reads a tale of epic proportions
10 December 2010, 18:00 PM
Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie
Jonathan Cape
With a runny nose so grossly large and marred by birthmarks that people remember him years after having last met him, Saleem Sinai is the not-so-handsome hero of Midnight's Children, a story of epic proportion told by Rushdie, a teller of exaggerated tales. On opening the book, you'll end up sitting in front of Saleem writing about his fantastic past and reading the first-drafts of his memoir to a fussy woman named Padma who despite being illiterate criticizes Saleem's authorship from all angles.
The journey begins in Kashmir, the earthly paradise, when Saleem's grandfather, an Oxford graduate in medicine, is requested by a wealthy landowner to examine his daughter. Doctor Adam Aziz is not allowed to look at the patient and for months he treats her different body parts through a hole in a sheet held between them. Love ensues.
Naseem Ghani, the lady behind the hole, becomes Saleem's grandmother and the newly wed couple move to Amritsar on April 13, 1919, another historic allusion where Doctor Aziz avoids being killed in a massacre of Indian nationalists by British troops, only by bending over as he sneezes when the troops fire.
Saleem's narration, leaping to 1942, portrays the family of Adam and Naseem with all it's colour; the suspicious mother who guards her kitchen, the confused father, the jealous sister, Mian Abdullah, a social activist, Nadir Khan, an anti-British poet and Major Zulfikar, the son-in-law. Some relationships break and some are born. Saleem's parents, Amina and Ahmed, are married. Fortune smiles as Amina becomes pregnant. But when a suitcase full of money is stolen by a naughty monkey, Ahmed's warehouse burns down and the family moves to Bombay.
The baby is finally born, at the stroke of midnight on August 15, but the midwife, Mary Pereira, in authentic Bollywood fashion exchanges the Sinai child with the child of Vanita, the wife of a street musician named Wee Willie Winkie. The misplaced child is celebrated as the symbol of India's independence becoming the headline of the newspaper and receiving a letter from Prime Minister Nehru.
To cut a long story short, though I feel terribly sorry to do so, telepathic ability is discovered as a side-effect of a fatherly beating; an organization comprising of all the superhuman children born at midnight of August 15, 1947 is formed including a boy who can travel through mirrors and a girl who is so deadly beautiful that anybody who looks at her dies; a blood test reveals the truth and Shiva, the real Sinai son comes into focus though is not enthroned into his rightful status; the tale continues to twist; magical sense of smell replaces telepathic ability, Pakistan sees Saleem roaming around with amnesia and Parvati-the-witch and Picture Singh, the snake charmer jump into the novel. There are more babies to come and a nasty war is to be fought side by side with the war between India and Pakistan; the Sunderbans is to be visited and an old relative is to be rediscovered; not to forget the world-class pickles that are to be cooked.
Midnight's Children is, at its core, a rough allegory of the Indian subcontinent. Saleem's life closely follows the life of India before and after its birth and goes much ahead in showing the identity crisis that Saleem as well as his country feels on being suddenly released from chains of colonialism. Who knows the sheet with a hole might just be a symbol of the large empire which has been holed into three major dysfunctional divisions? But then, the novel also symbolizes the strength and promise of the new India and its broken parts in showering the children of Midnight with super-qualities among whom Saleem is the leader.
Midnight's Children has so many offshoots that varied interpretations by critiques and lay readers are inevitable. Maybe that is what is at the heart of making this great novel which has won the Booker of Bookers in its first 25 years of publishing and still continues to be studied at universities and has been made into a stage play.
Rushdie tackles the first person narration technique masterfully and uses Shiva to act as a reverse mirror for Saleem, that is to say, Shiva represents Saleem's weaknesses as well as his strengths. Rushdie craftily puts forward uncountable absurdities to portray his personal thoughts which otherwise would have been illogical. Say for an example, Morarji Desai is the man who drinks his own urine, Sanjay Gandhi is out on a mission to snap testicular-tubes and Indira Gandhi is the widow whose bicoloured hair represents the black and white sides of her controversial rule.
With an assortment of wordplay, abundant symbolism, humorous name callings, incisive sarcasm and thought provoking dialogues, Midnight's Children is a landmark in the Indianized-English literature. By its theme this novel is a forerunner of Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines and in style it is a precursor of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things.
Magic realism is blended with high-school history, Indian mythology, and the norms of diverse races, cultures and religions so well, that Midnight's Children is an unforgettable literary 'chutney' you can't refuse.
Efadul Huq is pursuing higher studies abroad.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments