Salman Rushdie - Midnight's children

Amid sleeping night-watchmen, Mr Kemal, my father and S. P. Butt watched cremated bicycles rise up into the sky in thick black clouds. Butt father Kemal stood alongside fire engines, as relief flooded through them, because it was the Arjuna Indiabike godown that was burning-the Arjuna brand-name, taken from a hero of Hindu mythology, had failed to disguise the fact that the company was Muslim-owned. Washed by relief, father Kemal Butt breathed air filled with incendiarized bicycles, coughing and spluttering as the fumes of incinerated wheels, the vaporized ghosts of chains bells saddlebags handlebars, the transubstantiated frames of Arjuna Indiabikes moved in and out of their lungs. A crude cardboard mask had been nailed to a telegraph pole in front of the flaming godown-a mask of many faces-a devil's mask of snarling faces with broad curling lips and bright red nostrils. The faces of the many-headed monster, Ravana the demon king, looking angrily down at the bodies of the night-watchmen who were sleeping so soundly that no one, neither the firemen, nor Kemal, nor Butt, nor my father, had the heart to disturb them; while the ashes of pedals and inner tubes fell upon them from the skies.

'Damn bad business,' Mr Kemal said. He was not being sympathetic. He was criticizing the owners of the Arjuna Indiabike Company.

Look: the cloud of the disaster (which is also a relief) rises and gathers like a ball in the discoloured morning sky. See how it thrusts itself westward into the heart of the old city; how it is pointing, good lord, like a finger, pointing down at the Muslim muhalla near Chandni Chowk!… Where, right now, Lifafa Das is crying his wares in the Sinais' very own gully.

'Come see everything, see the whole world, come see!'

It's almost time for the public announcement. I won't deny I'm excited: I've been hanging around in the background of my own story for too long, and although it's still a little while before I can take over, it's nice to get a look in. So, with a sense of high expectation, I follow the pointing finger in the sky and look down on my parents' neighbourhood, upon bicycles, upon street-vendors touting roasted gram in twists of paper, upon the hip-jutting, hand-holding street loafers, upon flying scraps of paper and little clustered whirlwinds of flies around the sweetmeat stalls… all of it foreshortened by my high-in-the-sky point of view. And there are children, swarms of them, too, attracted into the street by the magical rattle of Lifafa Das's dugdugee drum and his voice, 'Dunya dekho', see the whole world! Boys without shorts on, girls without vests, and other, smarter infants in school whites, their shorts held up by elasticated belts with S-shaped snake-buckles, fat little boys with podgy fingers; all flocking to the black box on wheels, including this one particular girl, a girl with one long hairy continuous eyebrow shading both eyes, the eight-year-old daughter of that same discourteous Sindhi who is even now raising the flag of the still-fictional country, of Pakistan on his roof, who is even now hurling abuse at his neighbour, while his daughter rushes into the street with her chavanni in her hand, her expression of a midget queen, and murder lurking just behind her lips. What's her name? I don't know; but I know those eyebrows.

Lifafa Das: who has by an unfortunate chance set up Ms black peepshow against a wall on which someone has daubed a swastika (in those days you saw them everywhere; the extremist R.S.S.S. party got them on every wall; not the Nazi swastika which was the wrong way round, but the ancient Hindu symbol of power. Svasti is Sanskrit for good)… this Lifafa Das whose arrival Pve been trumpeting was a young fellow who was invisible until he smiled, when he became beautiful, or rattled his drum, whereupon he became irresistible to children. Dugdugee-men: all over India, they shout, 'Dilli dekho', 'come see Delhi!' But this was Delhi, and Lifafa Das had altered his cry accordingly. 'See the whole world, come see everything!' The hyperbolic formula began, after a time, to, prey upon his mind; more and more picture postcards went into his peepshow as he tried, desperately, to deliver what he promised, to put everything into his box. (I am suddenly reminded of Nadir Khan's friend the painter: is this an Indian disease, this urge to encapsulate the whole of reality? Worse: am I infected, too?)

Inside the peepshow of Lifafa Das were pictures of the Taj Mahal, and MeenaksM Temple, and the holy Ganges; but as well as these famous sights the peepshow-man had felt the urge to include more contemporary images-Stafford Cripps leaving Nehru's residence; untouchables being touched; educated persons sleeping in large numbers on railway lines; a publicity still of a European actress with a mountain of fruit on her head-Lifafa called her Carmen Verandah; even a newspaper photograph, mounted on card, of a fire at the industrial estate. Lifafa Das did not believe in shielding his audiences from the not-always-pleasant features of the age… and often, when he came into these gullies, grown-ups as well as children came to see what was new inside his box on wheels, and among his most frequent customers was Begum Amina Sinai.

But today there is something hysterical in the air; something brittle and menacing has settled on the muhalla as the cloud of cremated Indiabikes hangs overhead… and now it slips its leash, as this girl with her one continuous eyebrow squeals, her voice lisping with an innocence it does not possess, 'Me firth t! Out of my way… let me thee! I can't thee!' Because there are already eyes at the holes in the box, there are already children absorbed in the progression of postcards, and Ldfafa Das says (without pausing in his work-he goes right on turning the knob which keeps the postcards moving inside the box), 'A few minutes, bibi; everyone will have his turn; wait only.' To which the one-eyebrowed midget queen replies, 'No! No! I want to be firtht!' Lifafa stops smiling-becomes invisible-shrugs. Unbridled fury appears on the face of the midget queen. And now an insult rises; a deadly barb trembles on her lips. 'You've got a nerve, coming into thith muhalla! I know you: my father knows you: everyone knows you're a Hindu!!'

Lifafa Das stands silently, turning the handles of his box; but now the ponytailed one-eyebrowed valkyrie is chanting, pointing with pudgy fingers, and the boys in their school whites and snake-buckles are joining in, 'Hindu! Hindu! Hindu!' And chick-blinds are flying up; and from his window the girl's father leans out and joins in, hurling abuse at a new target, and the Bengali joins in in Bengali… 'Mother raper! Violator of our daughters!'… and remember the papers have been talking of assaults on Muslim children, so suddenly a voice screams out-a woman's voice, maybe even silly Zohra's, 'Rapist! Arre my God they found the badmaash! There he u!' And now the insanity of the cloud like a pointing finger and the whole disjointed unreality of the times seizes the muhalla, and the screams are echoing from every window, and the schoolboys have begun to chant, 'Ra-pist! Ra-pist! Ray-ray-ray-pist!' without really knowing what they're saying; the children have edged away from Lifafa Das and he's moved, too, dragging his box on wheels, trying to get away, but now he is surrounded by voices filled with blood, and the street loafers are moving towards him, men are getting off bicycles, a pot flies through the air and shatters on a wall beside him; he has his back against a doorway as a fellow with a quiff of oily hair grins sweetly at him and says, 'So, mister: it is you? Mister Hindu, who denies our daughters? Mister idolater, who sleeps with his sister?' And Lifafa Das, 'No, for the love of…', smiling like a fool… and then the door behind him opens and he falls backwards, landing in a dark cool corridor beside my mother Amina Sinai.