Salman Rushdie - Midnight's children

'That's it,' the buddha says. 'Saleem: that was it.'

'O God, too much excitement!' she cries. 'Arre baap, Saleem, you remember-the Children, yaar, O this is too good! So why are you looking so serious when I feel like to hug you to pieces? So many years I only saw you inside here,' she taps her forehead, 'and now you're here with a face like a fish. Hey, Saleem! Come on, say one hullo at least.'

On December 15th, 1971, Tiger Niazi surrendered to Sam Manek-shaw; the Tiger and ninety-three thousand Pakistani troops became prisoners of war. I, meanwhile, became the willing captive of the Indian magicians, because Parvati dragged me into the procession with, 'Now that I've found you I'm not letting you go.'

That night, Sam and the Tiger drank chota pegs and reminisced about the old days in the British Army. 'I say, Tiger,' Sam Manekshaw said, 'You behaved jolly decently by surrendering.' And the Tiger, 'Sam, you fought one hell of a war.' A tiny cloud passes across the face of General Sam, 'Listen, old sport: one hears such damn awful lies. Slaughters, old boy, mass graves, special units called cutia or some damn thing, developed for purposes of rooting out opposition… no truth in it, I suppose?' And the Tiger, 'Canine Unit for Tracking and Intelligence Activities? Never heard of it. Must've been misled, old man. Some damn bad intelligence-wallahs on both sides. No, ridiculous, damn ridiculous, if you don't mind me saying.' 'Thought as much,' says General Sam, 'I say, bloody fine to see you, Tiger, you old devil!' And the Tiger, 'Been years, eh, Sam? Too damn long.'

… While old friends sang 'Auld Lang Syne' in officers' messes, I made my escape from Bangladesh, from my Pakistani years. 'I'll get you out,' Parvati said, after I explained. 'You want it secret secret?'

I nodded. 'Secret secret.'

Elsewhere in the city, ninety-three thousand soldiers were preparing to be carted off to P.O.W. camps; but Parvati-the-witch made me climb into a wicker basket with a close-fitting lid. Sam Manekshaw was obliged to place his old friend the Tiger under protective custody; but Parvati-the-witch assured me, 'This way they'll never catch.'

Behind an army barracks where the magicians were awaiting their transport back to Delhi, Picture Singh, the Most Charming Man In The World, stood guard when, that evening, I climbed into the basket of invisibility. We loitered casually, smoking bins, waiting until there were no soldiers in sight, while Picture Singh told me about his name. Twenty years ago, an Eastman-Kodak photographer had taken his portrait-which, wreathed in smiles and snakes, afterwards appeared on half the Kodak advertisements and in-store displays in India; ever since when the snake-charmer had adopted his present cognomen. 'What do you think, captain?' he bellowed amiably. 'A fine name, isn't it so? Captain, what to do, I can't even remember what name I used to have, from before, the name my mother-father gave me! Pretty stupid, hey, captain?' But Picture Singh was not stupid; and there was much more to him than charm. Suddenly his voice lost its casual, sleepy good-nature; he whispered, 'Now! Now, captain, ek dum, double-quick time!' Parvati whipped lid away from wicker; I dived head first into her cryptic basket. The lid, returning, blocked out the day's last light.

Picture Singh whispered, 'Okay, captain-damn good!' And Parvati bent down close to me; her lips must have been against the outside of the basket. What Parvati-the-witch whispered through wickerwork:

'Hey, you Saleem: just to think! You and me, mister-midnight's children, yaar! That's something, no?'

That's something… Saleem, shrouded in wickerwork darkness, was reminded of years-ago midnights, of childhood wrestling bouts with purpose and meaning; overwhelmed by nostalgia, I still did not understand what that something was. Then Parvati whispered some other words, and, inside the basket of invisibility, I, Saleem Sinai, complete with my loose anonymous garment, vanished instantly into thin air.

'Vanished? How vanished, what vanished?' Padma's head jerks up; Padma's eyes stare at me in bewilderment. I, shrugging, merely reiterate; Vanished, just like that. Disappeared. Dematerialized. Like a djinn: poof, like so.

'So,' Padma presses me, 'she really-truly was a witch?' Really-truly. I was in the basket, but also not in the basket; Picture Singh lifted it one-handed and tossed it into the back of the Army truck taking him and Parvati and ninety-nine others to the aircraft waiting at the military airfield; I was tossed with the basket, but also not tossed. Afterwards, Picture Singh said, 'No, captain, I couldn't feel your weight'; nor could I feel any bump thump bang. One hundred and one artistes had arrived, by I.A.F. troop transport, from the capital of India; one hundred and two persons returned, although one of them was both there and not there. Yes, magic spells can occasionally succeed. But also fail: my father, Ahmed Sinai, never succeeded in cursing Sherri, the mongrel bitch.

Without passport or permit, I returned, cloaked in invisibility, to the land of my birth; believe, don't believe, but even a sceptic will have to provide another explanation for my presence here. Did not the Caliph Haroun al-Rashid (in an earlier set of fabulous tales) also wander, unseen invisible anonymous, cloaked through the streets of Baghdad? What Haroun achieved in Baghdad streets, Parvati-the-witch made possible for me, as we flew through the air-lanes of the subcontinent. She did it; I was invisible; bas. Enough.

Memories of invisibility: in the basket, I learned what it was like, will be like, to be dead. I had acquired the characteristics of ghosts! Present, but insubstantial; actual, but without being or weight… I discovered, in the basket, how ghosts see the world. Dimly hazily faintly… it was around me, but only just; I hung in a sphere of absence at whose fringes, like faint reflections, could be seen the spectres of wickerwork. The dead die, and are gradually forgotten; time does its healing, and they fade-but in Parvati's basket I learned that the reverse is also true; that ghosts, too, begin to forget; that the dead lose their memories of the living, and at last, when they are detached from their lives, fade away-that dying, in short, continues for a long time after death. Afterwards, Parvati said, 'I didn't want to tell you-but nobody should be kept invisible that long-it was dangerous, but what else was there to do?'

In the grip of Parvati's sorcery, I felt my hold on the world slip away-and how easy, how peaceful not to never to return!-to float in this cloudy nowhere, wafting further further further, like a seed-spore blown on the breeze-in short, I was in mortal danger.

What I held on to in that ghostly time-and-space: a silver spittoon. Which, transformed like myself by Parvati-whispered words, was nevertheless a reminder of the outside… clutching finely-wrought silver, which glittered even in that nameless dark, I survived. Despite head-to-toe numbness, I was saved, perhaps, by the glints of my precious souvenir.

No-there was more to it than spittoons: for, as we all know by now, our hero is greatly affected by being shut up in confined spaces. Transformations spring upon him in the enclosed dark. As a mere embryo in the secrecy of a womb (not his mother's), did he not grow into the incarnation of the new myth of August 15th, the child of ticktock-did he not emerge as the Mubarak, the Blessed Child? In a cramped wash-room, were name-tags not switched around? Alone in a washing-chest with a drawstring up one nostril, did he not glimpse a Black Mango and sniff too hard, turning himself and his upper cucumber into a kind of supernatural ham radio? Hemmed in by doctors, nurses and anaesthetic masks, did he not succumb to numbers and, having suffered drainage-above, move into a second phase, that of nasal philosopher and (later) tracker supreme? Squashed, in a small abandoned hut, beneath the body of Ayooba Baloch, did he not learn the meaning of fair-and-unfair? Well, then-trapped in the occult peril of the basket of invisibility, I was saved, not only by the glints of a spittoon, but also by another transformation: in the grip of that awful disembodied loneliness, whose smell was the smell of graveyards, I discovered anger.