Salman Rushdie - Midnight's children

Threading its way through the many-headed monster of the crowd is a police car, the yellow and blue of its occupants' uniforms transformed by the unearthly lamplight into saffron and green. (We are on Colaba Causeway now, just for a moment, to reveal that at twenty-seven minutes to midnight, the police are hunting for a dangerous criminal. His name: Joseph D'Costa. The orderly is absent, has been absent for several days, from his work at the Nursing Home, from his room near the slaughterhouse, and from the life of a distraught virginal Mary.)

Twenty minutes pass, with aaahs from Amina Sinai, coming harder and faster by the minute, and weak tiring aaahs from Vanita in the next room. The monster in the streets has already begun to celebrate; the new myth courses through its veins, replacing its blood with corpuscles of saffron and green. And in Delhi, a wiry serious man sits in the Assembly Hall and prepares to make a speech. At Methwold's Estate goldfish hang stilly in ponds while the residents go from house to house bearing pistachio sweetmeats, embracing and kissing one another-green pistachio is eaten, and saffron laddoo-balls. Two children move down secret passages while in Agra an ageing doctor sits with his wife, who has two moles on her face like witchnipples, and in the midst of sleeping geese and moth-eaten memories they are somehow struck silent, and can find nothing to say. And in all the cities all the towns all the villages the little dia-lamps burn on window-sills porches verandahs, while trains burn in the Punjab, with the green flames of blistering paint and the glaring saffron of fired fuel, like the biggest dias in the world.

And the city of Lahore, too, is burning.

The wiry serious man is getting to his feet. Anointed with holy water from the Tanjore River, he rises; his forehead smeared with sanctified ash, he clears his throat. Without written speech in hand, without having memorized any prepared words, Jawaharlal Nehru begins:'… Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny; and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge-not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially…'

It is two minutes to twelve. At Dr Narlikar's Nursing Home, the dark glowing doctor, accompanied by a midwife called Flory, a thin kind lady of no importance, encourages Amina Sinai: 'Push! Harder!… I can see the head!…' while in the neighbouring room one Dr Bose-with Miss Mary Pereira by his side-presides over the terminal stages of Vanita's twenty-four-hour labour… 'Yes; now; just one last try, come on; at last, and then it will be over!…' Women wail and shriek while in another room men are silent. Wee Willie Winkie-incapable of song-squats in a corner, rocking back and forth, back and forth… and Ahmed Sinai is looking for a chair. But there are no chairs in this room; it is a room designated for pacing; so Ahmed Sinai opens a door, finds a chair at a deserted receptionist's desk, lifts it, carries it back into the pacing room, where Wee Willie Winkie rocks, rocks, his eyes as empty as a blind man's… will she live? won't she?… and.now, at last, it is midnight.

The monster in the streets has begun to roar, while in Delhi a wiry man is saying,'… At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India awakens to life and freedom…' And beneath the roar of the monster there are two more yells, cries, bellows, the howls of children arriving in the world, their unavailing protests mingling with the din of independence which hangs saffron-and-green in the night sky-'A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new; when an age ends; and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance…' while in a room with saffron-and-green carpet Ahmed Sinai is still clutching a chair when Dr Narlikar enters to inform him: 'On the stroke of midnight, Sinai brother, your Begum Sahiba gave birth to a large, healthy child: a son!' Now my father began to think about me (not knowing…); with the image of my face filling his thoughts he forgot about the chair; possessed by the love of me (even though…), filled with it from top of head to fingertips, he let the chair fall.

Yes, it was my fault (despite everything)… it was the power of my face, mine and nobody else's, which caused Ahmed Sinai's hands to release the chair; which caused the chair to drop, accelerating at thirty-two feet per second, and as Jawaharlal Nehru told the Assembly Hall, 'We end today a period of ill-fortune,' as conch-sheik blared out the news of freedom, it was on my account that my father cried out too, because the falling chair shattered his toe.

And now we come to it: the noise brought everyone running; my father and his injury grabbed a brief moment of limelight from the two aching mothers, the two, synchronous midnight births-because Vanita had finally been delivered of a baby of remarkable size: 'You wouldn't have believed it,' Dr Bose said, 'It just kept on coming, more and more of the boy forcing its way out, it's a real ten-chip whopper all right!' And Narlikar, washing himself: 'Mine, too.' But that was a little later-just now Narlikar and Bose were tending to Ahmed Sinai's toe; midwives had been instructed to wash and swaddle the new-born pair; and now Miss Mary Pereira made her contribution.

'Go, go,' she said to poor Flory, 'see if you can help. I can do all right here.'

And when she was alone-two babies in her hands-two lives in her power-she did it for Joseph, her own private revolutionary act, thinking He will certainly love me for this, as she changed name-tags on the two huge infants, giving the poor baby a life of privilege and condemning the rich-born child to accordions and poverty… 'Love me, Joseph!' was in Mary Pereira's mind, and then it was done. On the ankle of a ten-chip whopper with eyes as blue as Kashmiri sky-which were also eyes as blue as Methwold's-and a nose as dramatic as a Kashmiri grandfather's-which was also the nose of a grandmother from France-she placed this name: Sinai.

Saffron swaddled me as, thanks to the crime of Mary Pereira, I became the chosen child of midnight, whose parents were not his parents, whose son would not be his own… Mary took the child of my mother's womb, who was not to be her son, another ten-chip pomfret, but with eyes which were already turning brown, and knees as knobbly as Ahmed Sinai's, wrapped it in green, and brought it to Wee Willie Winkie-who was staring at her blind-eyed, who hardly saw his new son, who never knew about centre-partings… Wee Willie Winkie, who had just learned that Vanita had not managed to survive her childbearing. At three minutes past midnight, while doctors fussed over broken toe, Vanita had haemorrhaged and died.

So I was brought to my mother; and she never doubted my authenticity for an instant. Ahmed Sinai, toe in splint, sat on her bed as she said: 'Look, janum, the poor fellow, he's got his grandfather's nose.' He watched mystified as she made sure there was only one head; and then she relaxed completely, understanding that even fortune-tellers have only limited gifts.

'Janum,' my mother said excitedly, 'you must call the papers. Call them at the Times of India. What did I tell you? I won.'

'… This is no time for petty or destructive criticism,' Jawaharlal Nehru told the Assembly. 'No time for ill-will. We have to build the noble mansion of free India, where all her children may dwell.' A flag unfurls: it is saffron, white and green.

'An Anglo?' Padma exclaims in horror. 'What are you telling me? You are an Anglo-Indian? Your name is not your own?'

'I am Saleem Sinai,' I told her, 'Snotnose, Stainface, Sniffer, Baldy, Piece-of-the-Moon. Whatever do you mean-not my own?'

'All the time,' Padma wails angrily, 'you tricked me. Your mother, you called her; your father, your grandfather, your aunts. What thing are you that you don't even care to tell the truth about who your parents were? You don't care that your mother died giving you life? That your father is maybe still alive somewhere, penniless, poor? You are a monster or what?'