Midnight’s Children
Author: Salman Rushdie
Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. –Narrator
I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you’ll have to swallow a world. –Narrator
Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence. –Narrator
Description on book jacket:
Born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, at the precise moment of Indian’s independence, the infant Saleem Sinai is celebrated in the press and welcomed by Prime Minister Nehru himself. But this coincidence of birth has consequences Saleem is not prepared for: telepathic powers that connect him with 1,000 other “midnight’s children” –all born in the initial hour of India’s independence – and an uncanny sense of smell that allows him to sniff out dangers others can’t perceive. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem’s biography is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirror the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious.
Rushdie’s works hold the stigma of being hard to read. I got to about the second page when I began to understand why. Rushdie doesn’t use particularly difficult words, though he speaks of Indian and Pakistani names and places which were very foreign to me; he doesn’t speak particularly abstractly, though he does have his moments. The difficulty lies – at least for me, and at least in this novel – in his sentence structure, his unbelievable storyline and his tendency to jump between present and past. Several times, Rushdie chooses not to use conventional grammar, often listing a series of words with no commas where normally commas would exist: “And there are so many stories to tell, too many, such an excess of intertwined lives events miracles places rumors, so dense a commingling of the improbable and the mundane!” His sentences also run long, a few times eclipsing multiple paragraphs. I found that the best way for me to understand and keep straight what I was reading was to read it aloud, as if I were telling the story to an audience.
The storyline, too, was difficult to get behind. It was told first-person by Saleem Sinai, though to be honest the narrator would sometimes refer to himself in the third person: “Saleem could sink no lower: I could smell, on myself, the cesspit stink of my iniquities.” I tried to suspend my reality and believe everything that Saleem wrote about himself, though it got difficult at points. While I can accept that ordinary people have extraordinary gifts or powers – let’s face it, I was one of the two people who watched Heroes to its bitter end – and I can accept some of the various adventures Saleem takes, I found it hard to swallow the portions where jealousy was literally sewn into clothing or guilt cooked into food, where emotions were detected by smell and pheromones changed at will, where electrical current passed undetected through a body in a latrine.
The narrator jumps constantly and without warning between past and present, as he interjects asides to and comments from the woman to whom he is telling his story. And while he gives many dates and even times (mostly midnight) in his accounts of the past, there are time jumps even then.
The story begins about 30 years before Saleem was born. The narrator recounts the story of how his grandparents met, fell in love, got married and progressed to childbirth; and then of how his parents met, married and lived before his birth. He spoke of his mother’s encounter with a fortune-teller who prophesied her son’s birth:
A son… who will never be older than his motherland—neither older nor younger… There will be two heads—but you shall see only one—there will be knees and a nose, a nose and knees… Newspapers praise him, two mothers raise him! Bicyclists love him—but, crowds will shove him! Sisters will weep; cobra will creep…Washing will hide him—voices will guide him! Friends mutilate him—blood will betray him!...Spittoons will brain him—doctors will drain him—jungle will claim him—wizards reclaim him! Soldiers will try him—tyrants will fry him…He will have sons without having sons! He will be old before he is old! And he will die… before he is dead.
The narrator then details his life and how it paralleled the life of his land-twin, India, which gained independence at the very moment when he was born, forever bonding them. Saleem’s life is one of monetary privilege and physical disadvantage. As the story continues, we are taken to such places as Karachi in Pakistan, the Sundarbans in Bangladesh, Delhi and Bombay. Intertwined with the story of Saleem is the story of India – Rushdie includes politicians like Mian Abdullah and Indira Ghandi, real and fictitious military personnel like General Zulfikar and Tiger Niazi, gods like Krishna and Ganesh and events like Indira Gandhi’s Emergency and the “cleansing” of the slums.
There are some beautiful passages in the book that, when read aloud, have such poetic cadence and flow that I read them several times before moving on. One of the largest blocks of this poetry-language is found when Saleem is under the influence of a very high fever, dreaming restlessly (excerpt only; full passage is larger):
Between the walls the children green the walls are green the Widow’s arm comes snaking down the snake is green the children scream the fingernails are black they scratch the Widow’s arm is hunting see the children run and scream the Widow’s hand curls round them green and black. Now one by one the children mmff are stifled quiet the Widow’s hand is lifting one by one the children green their blood is black unloosed by cutting fingernails it splashes black on walls (of green) as one by one the curling hand lifts children high as sky…
I learned many things about India’s history, though I can’t promise anything will stick. What’s more is that since the narrator entwines the fictional with the nonfictional, it is sometimes hard to distinguish which parts are fabricated. It’s almost the Forest Gump concept in an Asian setting.
Despite the difficulties I had with the book – and the overwhelming feeling I had at the length of time it took me to complete it (there may have been tears) – I am surprised to say that I thoroughly enjoyed all the pieces that made up this award-winning and highly-praised book: the language, the structure, the characters and plot; the time-jumps, the places, the feelings evoked. I wouldn’t change any of it and would recommend it to anyone with patience, an open mind and lots of time.
My takeaway: My actions, my words, my very existence is a part of the broader picture of my city, country and world; my life’s labors do not end with me, and are never solely my own. And I will never hide in washing chests.
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