Salman Rushdie - Midnight's children

All games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate. But it's more than that; no mere carrot-and-stick affair; because implicit in the game is the unchanging twoness of things, the duality of up against down, good against evil; the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuosities of the serpent; in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see, metaphorically, all conceivable oppositions, Alpha against Omega, father against mother; here is the war of Mary and Musa, and the polarities of knees and nose… but I found, very early in my life, that the game lacked one crucial dimension, that of ambiguity-beca use, as events are about to show, it is also possible to slither down a ladder and climb to triumph on the venom of a snake… Keeping things simple for the moment, however, I record that no sooner had my mother discovered the ladder to victory represented by her racecourse luck than she was reminded that the gutters of the country were still teeming with snakes.

Amina's brother Hanif had not gone to Pakistan. Following the childhood dream which he had whispered to Rashid the rickshaw-boy in an Agra cornfield, he had arrived in Bombay and sought employ, ment in the great film studios. Precociously confident, he had not only succeeded in becoming the youngest man ever to be given a film to direct in the history of the Indian cinema; he had also wooed and married one of the brightest stars of that celluloid heaven, the divine Pia, whose face was her fortune, and whose saris were made of fabrics whose designers had clearly set out to prove that it was possible to incorporate every colour known to man in a single pattern. Reverend Mother did not approve of the divine Pia, but Hanif of all my family was the one who was free of her confining influence; a jolly, burly man with the booming laugh of the boatman Tai and the explosive, innocent anger of his father Aadam Aziz, he took her to live simply in a small, un-filmi apartment on Marine Drive, telling her, 'Plenty of time to live like Emperors after I've made my name.' She acquiesced; she starred in his first feature, which was partly financed by Homi Catrack and partly by D. W. Rama Studios (Pvt.) Ltd-it was called The Lovers of Kashmir, and one evening in the midst of her racing days Amina Sinai went to the premiere. Her parents did not come, thanks to Reverend Mother's loathing of the cinema, against which Aadam Aziz no longer had the strength to struggle-just as he, who had fought with Mian Abdullah against Pakistan, no longer argued with her when she praised the country, retaining just enough strength to dig in his heels and refuse to emigrate; but Ahmed Sinai, revived by his mother-in-law's cookery, but resentful of her continued presence, got to his feet and accompanied his wife. They took their seats, next to Hanif and. Pia and the male star of the film, one of India's most successful 'lover-boys', I. S. Nayyar. And, although they didn't know it, a serpent waited in the wings… but in the meanwhile, let us permit Hanif Aziz to have his moment; because The Lovers of Kashmir contained a notion which was to provide my uncle with a spectacular, though brief, period of triumph. In those days it was not permitted for lover-boys and their leading ladies to touch one another on screen, for fear that their osculations might corrupt the nation's youth… but thirty-three minutes after the beginning of The Lovers the premiere audience began to give off a low buzz of shock, because Pia and Nayyar had begun to kiss-not one another-but things.

Pia kissed an apple, sensuously, with all the rich fullness of her painted lips; then passed it to Nayyar; who planted, upon its opposite face, a virilely passionate mouth. This was the birth of what came to be known as the indirect kiss-and how much more sophisticated a notion it was than anything in our current cinema; how pregnant with longing and eroticism! The cinema audience (which would, nowadays, cheer raucously at the sight of a young couple diving behind л bush, which would then begin to shake ridiculously-so low have we sunk in our ability to suggest) watched, riveted to the screen, as the love of Pia and Nayyar, against a background of Dal Lake and ice-blue Kashmiri sky, expressed itself in kisses applied to cups of pink Kashmiri tea; by the fountains of Shalimar they pressed their lips to a sword… but now, at the height of Hanif Aziz's triumph, the serpent refused to wait; under its influence, the house-lights came up. Against the larger-than-life figures of Pia and Nayyar, kissing mangoes as they mouthed to playback music, the figure of a timorous, inadequately bearded man was seen, marching on to the stage beneath the screen, microphone in hand. The Serpent can take most unexpected forms; now, in the guise of this ineffectual house-manager, it unleashed its venom. Pia and Nayyar faded and died; and the amplified voice of the bearded man said: 'Ladies and gents, your pardon; but there is terrible news.' His voice broke-a sob from the Serpent, to lend power to its teeth!-and then continued, 'This afternoon, at Birla House in Delhi, our beloved Mahatma was killed. Some madman shot him in the stomach, ladies and gentlemen-our Bapu is gone!'

The audience had begun to scream before he finished; the poison of his words entered their veins-there were grown men rolling in the aisles clutching their bellies, not laughing but crying, Hai Ram! Hai Ram!-and women tearing their hair: the city's finest coiffures tumbling around the ears of the poisoned ladies-there were film-stars yelling like fishwives and something terrible to smell in the air-and Hanif whispered, 'Get out of here, big sister-if a Muslim did this thing there will be hell to pay.'

For every ladder, there is a snake… and for forty-eight hours after the abortive end of The Lovers of Kashmir, our family remained within the walls of Buckingham Villa ('Put furniture against the doors, whatsitsname!' Reverend Mother ordered. 'If there are Hindu servants, let them go home!'); and Amina did not dare to visit the racetrack.

But for every snake, there is a ladder: and finally the radio gave us a name. Nathuram Godse. 'Thank God,' Amina burst out, 'It's not a Muslim name!'

And Aadam, upon whom the news of Gandhi's death had placed a new burden of age: 'This Godse is nothing to be grateful for!'

Amina, however, was full of the light-headedness of relief, she was rushing dizzily up the long ladder of relief… 'Why not, after all? By being Godse he has saved our lives!'

Ahmed Sinai, after rising from his supposed sickbed, continued to behave like an invalid. In a voice like cloudy glass he told Amina, 'So, you have told Ismail to go to court; very well, good; but we will lose. In these courts you have to buy judges…' And Amina, rushing to Ismail, 'Never-never under any circumstances-must you tell Ahmed about the money. A man must keep his pride.' And, later on, 'No, janum, I'm not going anywhere; no, the baby is not being tiring at all; you rest, I must just go to shop-maybe I will visit Hanif-we women, you know, must fill up our days!'

And coming home with envelopes brimming with rupee-notes… 'Take, Ismail, now that he's up we have to be quick and careful!' And sitting dutifully beside her mother in the evenings, 'Yes, of course you're right, and Ahmed will be getting so rich soon, you'll just see!'

And endless delays in court; and envelopes, emptying; and the growing baby, nearing the point at which Amina will not be able to insert herself behind the driving-wheel of the 1946 Rover; and can her luck hold?; and Musa and Mary, quarrelling like aged tigers.

What starts fights?

What remnants of guilt fear shame, pickled by time in Mary's intestines, led her willingly? unwillingly? to provoke the aged bearer in a dozen different ways-by a tilt of the nose to indicate her superior status; by aggressive counting of rosary beads under the nose of the devout Muslim; by acceptance of the title mausi, little mother, bestowed upon her by the other Estate servants, which Musa saw as a threat to his status; by excessive familiarity with the Begum Sahiba-little giggled whispers in corners, just loud enough for formal, stiff, correct Musa to hear and feel somehow cheated?