Salman Rushdie - Midnight's children

I'm talking as if I never saw him again; which isn't true. But that, of course, must get into the queue like everything else; I'm not strong enough to tell that tale just now.

The disease of optimism, in those days, once again attained epidemic proportions; I, meanwhile, was afflicted by an inflammation of the sinuses. Curiously triggered off by the defeat of Thag La ridge, public optimism about the war grew as fat (and as dangerous) as an overfilled balloon; my long-suffering nasal passages, however, which had been overfilled all their days, finally gave up the struggle against congestion. While parliamentarians poured out speeches about 'Chinese aggression' and 'the blood of our martyred jawans', my eyes began to stream with tears; while the nation puffed itself up, convincing itself that the annihilation of the little yellow men was at hand, my sinuses, too, puffed up and distorted a face which was already so startling that Ayub Khan himself had stared at it in open amazement. In the clutches of the optimism disease, students burned Mao Tse-Tung and Chou En-Lai in effigy; with optimism-fever on their brows, mobs attacked Chinese shoemakers, curio dealers and restaurateurs. Burning with optimism, the Government even interned Indian citizens of Chinese descent-now 'enemy aliens'-in camps in Rajasthan. Birla Industries donated a miniature rifle range to the nation; schoolgirls began to go on military parade. But I, Saleem, felt as if I was about to die of asphyxiation. The air, thickened by optimism, refused to enter my lungs.

Ahmed and Amina Sinai were amongst the worst victims of the renewed disease of optimism; having already contracted it through the medium of their new-born love, they entered into the public enthusiasm with a will. When Morarji Desai, the urine-drinking Finance Minister, launched his 'Ornaments for Armaments' appeal, my mother handed over gold bangles and emerald ear-rings; when Morarji floated an issue of defence bonds, Ahmed Sinai bought them in bushels. War, it seemed, had brought a new dawn to India; in the Times of India, a cartoon captioned 'War with China' showed Nehru looking at graphs labelled 'Emotional Integration', 'Industrial Peace' and 'People's Faith in Government' and crying, 'We never had it so good!' Adrift in the sea of optimism, we-the nation, my parents, I-floated blindly towards the reefs.

As a people, we are obsessed with correspondences. Similarities between this and that, between apparently unconnected things, make us clap our hands delightedly when we find them out. It is a sort of national longing for form-or perhaps simply an expression of our deep belief that forms lie hidden within reality; that meaning reveals itself only in flashes. Hence our vulnerability to omens… when the Indian flag was first raised, for instance, a rainbow appeared above that Delhi field, a rainbow of saffron and green; and we felt blessed. Born amidst correspondence, I have found it continuing to hound me… while Indians headed blindly towards a military debacle, I, too, was nearing (and entirely without knowing it) a catastrophe of my own.

Times of India cartoons spoke of 'Emotional Integration'; in Buckingham Villa, last remnant of Methwold's Estate, emotions had never been so integrated. Ahmed and Amina spent their days like just-courting youngsters; and while the Peking People's Daily complained, 'The Nehru Government has finally shed its cloak of non-alignment', neither my sister nor I were complaining, because for the first time in years we did not have to pretend we were non-aligned in the war between our parents; what war had done for India, the cessation of hostilities had achieved on our two-storey hillock. Ahmed Sinai had even given up his nightly battle with the djinns.

By November 1st-indians attack under cover of artillery-my nasal passages were in a state of acute crisis. Although my mother subjected me to daily torture by Vick's Inhaler and steaming bowls of Vick's ointment dissolved in water, which, blanket over head, I was obliged to try and inhale, my sinuses refused to respond to treatment. This was the day on which my father held out his arms to me and said, 'Come, son-come here and let me love you.' In a frenzy of happiness (maybe the optimism disease had got to me, after all) I allowed myself to be smothered in his squashy belly; but when he let me go, nose-goo had stained his bush-shirt. I think that's what finally doomed me; because that afternoon, my mother went on to the attack. Pretending to me that she was telephoning a friend, she made a certain telephone call. While Indians attacked under cover of artillery, Amina Sinai planned my downfall, protected by a lie.

Before I describe my entry into the desert of my later years, however, I must admit the possibility that I have grievously wronged my parents. Never once, to my knowledge, never once in all the time since Mary Pereira's revelations, did they set out to look for the true son of their blood; and I have, at several points in this narrative, ascribed this failure to a certain lack of imagination-I have said, more or less, that I remained their son because they could not imagine me out of the role. And there are worse interpretations possible, too-such as their reluctance to accept into their bosom an-urchin who had spent eleven years in the gutter; but I wish to suggest a nobler motive: maybe, despite everything, despite cucumber-nose stainface chinlessness horn-temples bandy-legs finger-loss monk's-tonsure and my (admittedly unknown to them) bad left ear, despite even the midnight baby-swap of Mary Pereira… maybe, I say, in spite of all these provocations, my parents loved me. I withdrew from them into my secret world; fearing their hatred, I did not admit the possibility that their love was stronger than ugliness, stronger even then blood. It is certainly likely that what a telephone call arranged, what finally took place on November 21st, 1962, was done for the highest of reasons; that my parents ruined me for love.

The day of November 20th was a terrible day; the night was a terrible night… six days earlier, on Nehru's seventy-third birthday, the great confrontation with the Chinese forces had begun; the Indian army-jawans swing into action!-had attacked the Chinese at Walong. News of the disaster of Walong, and the rout of General Kaul and four battalions, reached Nehru on Saturday 18th; on Monday 20th, it flooded through radio and press and arrived at Methwold's Estate. ultimate panic in new delhi! indian forces in tatters! That day-the last day of my old life-I sat huddled with my sister and parents around our Telefunken radiogram, while telecommunications struck the fear of God and China into our hearts. And my father now said a fateful thing: 'Wife,' he intoned gravely, while Jamila and I shook with fear, 'Begum Sahiba, this country is finished. Bankrupt. Funtoosh.' The evening paper proclaimed the end of the optimism disease: public morale drains away. And after that end, there were others to come; other things would also drain away.

I went to bed with my head full of Chinese faces guns tanks… but at midnight, my head was empty and quiet, because the midnight Conference had drained away as well; the only one of the magic children who was willing to talk to me was Parvati-the-witch, and we, dejected utterly by what Nussie-the-duck would have called 'the end of the world', were unable to do more than simply commune in silence.

And other, more mundane drainages: a crack appeared in the mighty Bhakra Nangal Hydro-Electric Dam, and the great reservoir behind it flooded through the fissure… and the Narlikar women's reclamation consortium, impervious to optimism or defeat or anything except the lure of wealth, continued to draw land out of the depths of the seas… but the final evacuation, the one which truly gives this episode its title, took place the next morning, just when I had relaxed and thought that something, after all, might turn out all right… because in the morning we heard the improbably joyous news that the Chinese had suddenly, without needing to, stopped advancing; having gained control of the Himalayan heights, they were apparently content; ceasefire! the newspapers screamed, and my mother almost fainted in relief. (There was talk that General Kaul had been taken prisoner; the President of India, Dr Radhakrishan, commented, 'Unfortunately, this report is completely untrue.')