Salman Rushdie - Midnight's children

'Passive-metaphorical', 'passive-literal', 'active-metaphorical': the Midnight Children's Conference was all three; but it never became what I most wanted it to be; we never operated in the first, most significant of the 'modes of connection'. The 'active-literal' passed us by.

Transformation without end: nine-fingered Saleem has been brought to the doorway of the Breach Candy Hospital by a squat blonde nurse whose face is frozen into a smile of terrifying insincerity. He is blinking in the hot glare of the outside world, trying to focus on two swimming shadow-shapes coming towards him out of the sun; 'See?' the nurse coos, 'See who's come to get you, then?' And Saleem realizes that something terrible has gone wrong with the world, because his mother and father, who should have come to collect him, have apparently been transformed en route into his ayah Mary Pereira and his Uncle Hanif.

Hanif Aziz boomed like the horns of ships in the harbour and smelted like an old tobacco factory. I loved him dearly, for his laughter, his unshaven chin, his air of having been put together rather loosely, his lack of co-ordination which made his every movement fraught with risk. (When he visited Buckingham Villa my mother hid the cut-glass vases.) Adults never trusted him to behave with proper decorum ('Watch out for the Communists!' he bellowed, and they blushed), which was a bond between himself and all children-other people's children, since he and Pia were childless. Uncle Hanif who would one day, without warning, take a walk off the roof of his home.

… He wallops me in the back, toppling me forwards into Mary's arms. 'Hey, little wrestler! You look fine!' But Mary, hastily, 'But so thin, Jesus! They haven't been feeding you properly? You want cornflour pudding? Banana mashed with milk? Did they give you chips?'… while Saleem is looking round at this new world in which everything seems to be going too fast; his voice, when it comes, sounds high-pitched, as though somebody had speeded it up: 'Amma-Abba?' he asks. The Monkey?' And Hanif booms, 'Yes, tickety-boo! The boy is really ship-shape! Come on phaelwan: a ride in my Packard, okay?' And talking at the same time is Mary Pereira, 'Chocolate cake,' she is promising, 'laddoos, pista-ki-lauz, meat samosas, kulfi. So thin you got, baba, the wind will blow you away.' The Packard is driving away; it is failing to turn off Warden Road, up the two-storey hillock; and Saleem, 'Hanif mamu, where are we…' No time to get it out; Hanif roars, 'Your Pia aunty is waiting! My God, you see if we don't have a number one good time!' His voice drops conspiratorially: 'Lots,' he says darkly, 'of fun.' And Mary: 'Arre baba yes! Such steak! And green chutney!'… 'Not the dark one,' I say, captured at last; relief appears on the cheeks of my captors. 'No no no,' Mary babbles, 'light green, baba. Just like you like.' And, 'Pale green!' Hanif is bellowing, 'My God, green like grasshoppers!'

All too fast… we are at Kemp's Corner now, cars rushing around like bullets… but one thing is unchanged. On Ids billboard, the Kolynos Kid is grinning, the eternal pixie grin of the boy in the green chlorophyll cap, the lunatic grin of the timeless Kid, who endlessly squeezes an inexhaustible tube of toothpaste on to a bright green brush: Keep Teeth Kleen And Keep Teeth Brite, Keep Teeth Kolynos Super White!… and you may wish to think of me, too, as an involuntary Kolynos Kid, squeezing crises and transformations out of a bottomless tube, extruding time on to my metaphorical toothbrush; clean, white time with green chlorophyll in the stripes.

This, then, was the beginning of my first exile. (There will be a second, and a third.) I bore it uncomplainingly. I had guessed, of course, that there was one question I must never ask; that I had been loaned out, like a comic-book from the Scandal Point Second Hand Library, for some indefinite period; and that when my parents wanted me back, they would send for me. When, or even if: because I blamed myself not a little for my banishment. Had I not inflicted upon myself one more deformity to add to bandylegs cucumbernose horn-temples staincheeks? Was it not possible that my mutilated finger had been (as my announcement of my voices had nearly been), for my long-suffering parents, the last straw? That I was no longer a good business risk, no longer worth the investment of their love and protection?… I decided to reward my uncle and aunt for their kindness in taking in so wretched a creature as myself, to play the model nephew and await events. There were times when I wished that the Monkey would come and see me, or even call me on the phone; but dwelling on such matters only punctured the balloon of my equanimity, so I did my best to put them out of my mind. Besides, living with Hanif and Pia Aziz turned out to be exactly what my uncle had promised: lots of fun.

They made all the fuss of me that children expect, and accept graciously, from childless adults. Their flat overlooking Marine Drive wasn't large, but there was a balcony from which I could drop monkey-nut shells on to the heads of passing pedestrians; there was no spare bedroom, but I was offered a deliciously soft white sofa with green stripes (an early proof of my transformation into the Kolynos Kid); ayah Mary, who had apparently followed me into exile, slept on the floor by my side. By day, she filled my stomach with the promised cakes and sweetmeats (paid for, I now believe, by my mother); I should have grown immensely fat, except that I had begun once again to grow in other directions, and at the end of the year of accelerated history (when I was only eleven and a half) I had actually attained my full adult height, as if someone had grasped me by the folds of my puppy-fat and squeezed them harder than any toothpaste-tube, so that inches shot out of me under the pressure. Saved from obesity by the Kolynos effect, I basked in my uncle and aunt's delight at having a child around the house. When I spilt 7-Up on the carpet or sneezed into my dinner, the worst my uncle would say was 'Hai-yo! Black man!' in his booming steamship's voice, spoiling the effect by grinning hugely. Meanwhile, my aunty Pia was becoming the next in the long series of women who have bewitched and finally undone me good and proper.

(I should mention that, while I stayed in the Marine Drive apartment, my testicles, forsaking the protection of pelvic bone, decided prematurely and without warning to drop into their little sacs. This event, too, played its part in what followed.)

My mumani-my aunty-the divine Pia Aziz: to live with her was to exist in the hot sticky heart of a Bombay talkie. In those days, my uncle's career in the cinema had entered a dizzy decline, and, for such is the way of the world, Pia's star had gone into decline along with his. In her presence, however, thoughts of failure were impossible. Deprived of film roles, Pia had turned her life into a feature picture, in which I was cast in an increasing number of bit-parts. I was the Faithful Body-Servant: Pia in petticoats, soft hips rounding towards my desperately-averted eyes, giggling while her eyes, bright with antimony, flashed imperiously-'Come on, boy, what are you shy for, holds these pleats in my sari while I fold.' I was her Trusted Confidant, too. While my uncle sat on chlorophyll-striped sofa pounding out scripts which nobody would ever film, I listened to the nostalgic soliloquy of my aunt, trying to keep my eyes away from two impossible orbs, spherical as melons, golden as mangoes: I refer, you will have guessed, to the adorable breasts of Pia mumani. While she, sitting on her bed, one arm flung across her brow, declaimed: 'Boy, you know, I am great actress; I have interpreted several major roles! But look, what fate will do! Once, boy, goodness knows who would beg absolutely to come to this flat; once the reporters of Filmfare and Screen Goddess would pay black-money to get inside! Yes, and dancing, and I was well-known at Venice restaurant-all of those great jazzmen came to sit at my feet, yes, even that Braz. Boy, after Lovers of Kashmir, who was a bigger star? Not Poppy; not Vyjayantimala; not one person!' And I, nodding emphatically, no-naturally-nobody, while her wondrous skin-wrapped melons heaved and… With a dramatic cry, she went on: 'But even then, in the time of our world-beating fame, every picture a golden jubilee movie, this uncle of yours wants to live in a two-room flat like a clerk! So I make no fuss; I am not like some of your cheap-type actresses; I live simply and ask for no Cadillacs or air-conditioners or Dunlopillo beds from England; no swimming pools shaped like bikinis like that Roxy Vishwanatham's! Here, like a wife of the masses, I have stayed; here, now, I am rotting! Rotting, absolutely. But I know this: my face is my fortune; after that, what riches do I need?' And I, anxiously agreeing: 'Mumani, none; none at all.' She shrieked wildly; even my slap-deafened ear was penetrated. 'Yes, of course, you also want me to be poor! All the world wants Pia to be in rags! Even that one, your uncle, writing his boring-boring scripts! О my God, I tell him, put in dances, or exotic locations! Make your villains villainous, why not, make heroes like men! But he says, no, all that is rubbish, he sees that now-although once he was not so proud! Now he must write about ordinary people and social problems! And I say, yes, Hanif, do that, that is good; but put in a little comedy routine, a little dance for your Pia to do, and tragedy and drama also; that is what the Public is wanting!' Her eyes were brimming with tears. 'So you know what he is writing now? About…' she looked as if her heart would break '… the Ordinary Life of a Pickle Factory!'