He was born with ears which flapped so high and wide that they must have heard the shootings in Bihar and the screams of lathi charged dock workers in Bombay… a child who heard too much, and as a result never spoke, rendered dumb by a surfeit of sound, so that between then and now, from slum to pickle factory, I have never heard him utter a single word;
And I married Parvati the witch.
Mrs Indira Gandhi was born in November 1917 to Kamala and Jawaharlal Nehru. Her middle name was Priyadarshini. She was not related to Mahatma M. K. Gandhi; her surname was the legacy of. her marriage, in 1952, to one Feroze Gandhi, who became known as the nations son in law. They had two sons, Rajiv and Sanjay, but in 1949 she moved back into her fathers home and became his official hostess. Feroze made one attempt to live there, too, but it was not a success. He became a ferocious critic of the Nehru Government, exposing the Mundhra scandal and forcing the resignation of the then Finance Minister, T. T. Krishnamachari T.T.K. himself. Mr Feroze Gandhi died of a heart seizure in 1960, aged forty seven. Sanjay Gandhi, and his ex model wife Menaka, were prominent during the Emergency. The Sanjay Youth Movement was particularly effective in the sterilization campaign.
Maya, in its dynamic aspect, is called Shakti; perhaps it is no accident that, in the Hindu pantheon, the active power of a deity is contained within his queen! Maya Shakti mothers, but also muffles consciousness in its dream web. Too many women: are they all aspects of Devi, the goddess who is Shakti, who slew the buffalo demon, who defeated the ogre Mahisha, who is Kali Durga Chandi Chamunda Uma Sati and Parvati… and who, when active, is coloured red?
… I am obliged, perforce, to reply on the accounts of others; only Shiva could tell what had befallen him; it was Resham Bibi who described Parvatis departure to me on my return, saying, Poor girl, let her go, so sad she has been for so long, what is to blame?; and only Parvati could recount to me what befell her while she was away.
Then the tear gas came and we had to flee, coughing spluttering blind, from riot police, like criminals, crying falsely as we ran. (Just as once, in Jallianwalabagh but at least there were no bullets on this occasion.) But although the tears were the tears of gas, Picture Singh was indeed cast down into an awesome gloom by the hecklers gibe, which had questioned the hold on reality which was his greatest pride; and in the aftermath of gas and sticks, I, too, was dejected, having suddenly identified a moth of unease in my stomach, and realized that something in me objected to Pictures portrayal in snake dance of the unrelieved vilenesses of the rich; I found myself thinking, There is good and bad in all and they brought me up, they looked after me, Pictureji! After which I began to see that the crime of Mary Pereira had detached me from two worlds, not one; that having been expelled from my uncles house I could never fully enter the world according to Picture Singh; that, in fact, my dream of saving the country was a thing of mirrors and smoke; insubstantial, the maunderings of a fool.
I married Parvati the witch on February 23rd, 1975, the second anniversary of my outcasts return to the magicians ghetto.
A child who heard a song as he rocked in arms, a song sung in the historical accents of a disgraced ayah: Anything you want to be, you kin be; you kin be just what all you want.
There were women he told Parvati wherever he went: their curving bird soft bodies quaking beneath the weight of their jewellery and lust, their eyes misted over by his legend; it would have been difficult to refuse them even had he wanted to. But Major Shiva had no intention of refusing. He listened sympathetically to their little tragedies impotent husbands, beatings, lack of attention to whatever excuses the lovely creatures wished to offer. Like my grandmother at her petrol pump (but with more sinister motives) he gave patient audience to their woes; sipping whisky in the chandeliered splendour of ballrooms, he watched them batting their eyelids and breathing suggestively while they moaned; and always, at last, they contrived to drop a handbag, or spill a drink, or knock his swagger stick from his grasp, so that he would have to stoop to the floor to retrieve whatever had fallen, and then he would see the notes tucked into their sandals, sticking daintily out from under painted toes. In those days (if the Major is to be believed) the lovely scandalous begums of India became awfully clumsy, and their chap pals spoke of rendezvous at midnight, of trellises of bougainvillaea outside bedroom windows, of husbands conveniently away launching ships or exporting tea or buying ball bearings from Swedes. While these unfortunates were away, the Major visited their homes to steal their most prized possessions: their women fell into his arms. It is possible (I have divided by half the Majors own figures) that at the height of his philanderings there were no less than ten thousand women in love with him.
Parvati just as she had planned, Im sure accepted me at once, said yes as easily and as often as she had said no in the past; and after that the Republic Day celebrations acquired the air of having been staged especially for our benefit, but what was in my mind was that once again destiny, inevitability, the antithesis of choice had come to rule my life, once again a child was to be born to a father who was not his father, although by a terrible irony the child would be the true grandchild of his fathers parents; trapped in the web of these interweaving genealogies, it may even have occurred to me to wonder what was beginning, what was ending, and whether another secret countdown was in progress, and what would be born with my child.
But now that Ive given birth to my flap eared, silent son there are questions to be answered about that other, synchronous birth. Unpalatable, awkward queries: did Saleems dream of saving the nation leak, through the osmotic tissues of history, into the thoughts of the Prime Minister herself? Was my lifelong belief in the equation between the State and myself transmuted, in the Madams mind, into that in those days famous phrase: India is Indira and Indira is India? Were we competitors for centrality was she gripped by a lust for meaning as profound as my own and was that, was that why… ?
He grew a luxuriant moustache to which his personal batman applied a daily pomade of linseed oil spiced with coriander; always elegantly turned out in the drawing rooms of the mighty, he engaged in political chit chat, and declared himself a firm admirer of Mrs Gandhi, largely because of his hatred for her opponent Morarji Desai, who was intolerably ancient, drank his own urine, had skin which rustled like rice paper, and, as Chief Minister of Bombay, had once been responsible for the banning of alcohol and the persecution of young goondas, that is to say hooligans or apaches, or, in other words, of the child Shiva himself… but such idle chatter occupied a mere fraction of his thoughts, the rest of which were entirely taken up with the ladies. Shiva, too, was besotted by too much women, and in those heady days after the military victory acquired a secret reputation which (he boasted to Parvati) rapidly grew to rival his official, public fame a black legend to set beside the white one. What was whispered at the hen parties and canasta evenings of the land? What was hissed through giggles wherever two or three glittering ladies got together? This: Major Shiva was becoming a notorious seducer; a ladies man; a cuckolder of the rich; in short, a stud.
Pictureji! and I九_九_藏_书_网 had gone into the tapering tenement streets behind the General Post Office, where memories of fortune tellers peepshow men healers hung in the breeze; and here Picture Singh had performed an act which was growing more political by the day. His legendary artistry drew large good natured crowds; and he made his snakes enact his message under the influence of his weaving flute music. While I, in my role of apprentice, read out a prepared harangue, serpents dramatized my speech. I spoke of the gross inequities of wealth distribution; two cobras performed, in dumbshow, the mime of a rich man refusing to give alms to a beggar. Police harassment, hunger disease illiteracy, were spoken of and also danced by serpents; and then Picture Singh, concluding his act, began to talk about the nature of red revolution, and promises began to fill the air, so that even before the police materialized out of the back doors of the post office to break up the meeting with lathi charges and tear gas, certain wags in our audience had begun to heckle the Most Charming Man In The World. Unconvinced, perhaps, by the ambiguous mimes of the snakes, whose dramatic content was admittedly a little obscure, a youth shouted out: Ohe, Pictureji, you should be in the Government, man, not even Indiramata makes promises as nice as yours!
Women and women and women: Toxy Catrack, nudging open the door which would later let in the children of midnight; the terrors of her nurse Bi Appah; the competitive love of Amina and Mary, and what my mother showed me while I lay concealed in a washing chest: yes, the Black Mango, which forced me to sniff, and unleashed what were not Archangels!… And Evelyn Lilith Burns, cause of a bicycle accident, who pushed me down a two storey hillock into the midst of history.
Beginning again, as the buddha, I lay with a latrine cleaner and was subjected to electrified urinals as a result; in the East, a farmers wife tempted me, and Time was assassinated in consequence; and there were houris in a temple, and we only just escaped in time.
The liaison of Shiva and Parvati now became a tempestuous business, filled with blows and broken plates: an earthly echo of that eternal marital battle of the gods which their namesakes are said to perform atop Mount Kailasa in the great Himalayas… Major Shiva, at this time, began to drink; also to whore. The whoring trails of the war hero around the capital of India bore a strong resemblance to the Lambretta travels of Saleem Sinai along the spoors of Karachi streets; Major Shiva, unmanned in the company of the rich by the revelations of Roshanara Shetty, had taken to paving for his pleasures. And such was his phenomenal fecundity (he assured Parvati while beating her) that he ruined thecareers of many a loose woman by giving them babies whom they would love too much to expose; he sired around the capital an army of street urchins to mirror the regiment of bastards he had fathered on the begums of the chandeliered salons.
And at last, Parvati released him from her spell. (No other explanation will do; if he was not bewitched, why did he not cast her off the instant he heard of her pregnancy? And if the spell had not been lifted, how could he have done it at all?) Shaking his head as though awaking from a dream, Major Shiva found himself in the company of a balloon fronted slum girl, who now seemed to him to represent everything he most feared she became the personification of the slums of his childhood, from which he had escaped, and which now, through her, through her damnable child, were trying to drag him down down down again… dragging her by the hair, he hurled her on to his motorcycle, and in a very short time she stood, abandoned, on the fringes of the magicians ghetto, having been returned whence she came, bringing with her only one thing which she had not owned when she left: the thing hidden inside her like an invisible man in a wicker basket, the thing which was growing growing growing, just as she had planned.
But also, also, there was Masha Miovic, goading me into finger loss, and my aunty Pia, filling my heart with revenge lust, and Lila Sabarmati, whose indiscretions made possible my terrible, manipulating, newspaper cut out revenge;
He was the possessor of a navel which chose to stick out instead of in, so that Picture Singh, aghast, cried, His bimbi, captain! His bimbi, look!, and he became, from the first days, the gracious recipient of our awe;
He was the child of a father who was not his father; but also the child of a time which damaged reality so badly that nobody ever managed to put it together again;
I was absent when Parvati went away; I was not present when she returned; and there was one more curious fact… unless I have forgotten, unless it was on another day… it seems to me, at any rate, that on the day of Parvatis return, an Indian Cabinet Minister was in his railway carriage, at Samastipur, when an explosion blew him into the history books; that Parvati, who had departed amid the explosions of atom bombs, returned to us when Mr L. N. Mishra, minister for railways and bribery, departed this world for good. Omens and more omens… perhaps, in Bombay, dead pomfrets were floating belly side up to shore.
Stiffening of Padma: taut as a washing line, my dung lotus inquires: Married? But last night only you said you wouldnt and why you havent told me all these days, weeks, months… ? I look at her sadly, and remind her that I have already mentioned the death of my poor Parvati, which was not a natural death… slowly Padma uncoils, as I continue: Women have made me; and also unmade. From Reverend Mother to the Widow, and even beyond, I have been at the mercy of the so called (erroneously, in my opinion!) gentler sex. It is, perhaps, a matter of connection: is not Mother India, Bharat Mata, commonly thought of as female? And, as you know, theres no escape from her.
There are ironies here, which must not pass unnoticed; for had not Shiva risen as Saleem fell? Who was the slum dweller now, and who looked down from commanding heights? There is nothing like a war for the re invention of lives… On what may well have been May 18th, at any rate, Major Shiva came to the magicians ghetto, and strode through the cruel streets of the slum with a strange expression on his face, which combined the infinite disdain for poverty of the recently exalted with something more mysterious: because Major Shiva, drawn to our humble abode by the incantations of Parvati the witch, cannot have known what force impelled him to come.
But when all the excitement had died down, I heard (with one good and one bad ear) the inexorable sound of the future stealing up upon us: tick, tock, louder and louder, until the birth of Saleem Sinai and also of the babys father found a mirror in the events of the night of the 25th of June.
He was the true great grandson of his great grandfather, but elephantiasis attacked him in the ears instead of the nose because he was also the true son of Shiva and Parvati; he was elephant headed Ganesh;
He was born in Old Delhi… once upon a time. No, that wont do, theres no getting away from the date: Aadam Sinai arrived at a night shadowed slum on June 25th, 1975. And the time? The time matters, too. As I said: at night. No, its important to be more… On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock hands joined palms. Oh, spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of Indias arrival at Emergency, he emerged. There were gasps; and, across the country, silences and fears. And owing to the occult tyrannies of that benighted hour, he was mysteriously handcuffed to history, his destinies indissolubly chained to t九-九-藏-书-网hose of his country. Unprophesied, uncelebrated, he came; no prime ministers wrote him letters; but, just the same, as my time of connection neared its end, his began. He, of course, was left entirely without a say in the matter; after all, he couldnt even wipe his own nose at the time.
Descending from my flight of fancy, I am reminded of the importance of speed; driven on by the imperatives of rip tear crack, I abandon reflections; and begin.
History books newspapers radio programmes tell us that at two p.m. on June I2th, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was found guilty, by Judge Jag Mohan Lal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court, of two counts of campaign malpractice during the election campaign of 1971; what has never previously been revealed is that it was at precisely two p.m. that Parvati the witch (now Laylah Sinai) became sure she had entered labour.
In a blind landowners house on the shores of a Kashmir! lake, Naseem Aziz doomed me to the inevitability of perforated sheets; and in the waters of that same lake, Ilse Lubin leaked into history, and I have not forgotten her deathwish;
Indias arrival, without prior warning, at the nuclear age? he came to the magicians slum. Uniformed, gonged and pipped, and a Major now, Shiva alighted from an Army motorcycle; and even through the modest khaki of his Army pants it was easy to make out the phenomenal twin bulges of his lethal knees… Indias most decorated war hero, but once he led a gang of apaches in the back streets of Bombay; once, before he discovered the legitimized violence of war, prostitutes were found throttled in gutters (I know, I know no proof); Major Shiva now, but also Wee Willie Winkies boy, who still remembered the words of long silenced songs: Good Night, Ladies still echoed on occasion in his ears.
In Pakistan, the land of submission, the home of purity, I watched the transformation of Monkey into Singer, and fetched bread, and fell in love; it was a woman, Tai Bibi, who told me the truth about myself. And in the heart of my inner darkness, I turned to the Puffias, and was only narrowly saved from the threat of a golden dentured bride.
And then it was the twelfth of June.
Why do I say that? Because it must be true; because what followed, followed; because it is my belief that Parvati the witch became pregnant in order to invalidate my only defence against marrying her. But I shall only describe, and leave analysis to posterity.
And certainly there were children. The spawn of illicit midnights. Beautiful bouncing infants secure in the cradles of the rich. Strewing bastards across the map of India, the war hero went his way; but (and this, too, is what he told Parvati) he suffered from the curious fault of losing interest in anyone who became pregnant; no matter how beautiful sensuous loving they were, he deserted the bedrooms of all who bore his children; and lovely ladies with red rimmed eyes were obliged to persuade their cuckolded husbands that yes, of course its your baby, darling, life of mine, doesnt it look just like you, and of course Im not sad, why should I be, these are tears of joy..
And Mary, seeing a ghost.
And Mrs Dubash, who found my gift of a Superman comic and built it, with the help of her son, into Lord Khusro Khusrovand;
And Alia, with the bitterness of ages, who clothed me in the baby things impregnated with her old maid fury; and Emerald, who laid a table on which I made pepperpots march;
This is how it came about: how Parvati took her destiny into her own hands; how a lie, issuing from my lips, brought her to the desperate condition in which, one night, she extracted from her shabby garments a lock of heros hair, and began to speak sonorous words.
What follows is a reconstruction of the recent career of Major Shiva; I pieced the story together from Parvatis accounts, which I got out of her after our marriage. It seems my arch rival was fond of boasting to her about his exploits, so you may wish to make allowances for the distortions of truth which such chest beating creates; however, there seems no reason to believe that what he told Parvati and she repeated to me was very far removed from what was the case.
I dont know about that, Padma brings me down to earth, They are just women, thats all.
While the Janata Morcha grew in all kinds of bizarre directions, until it embraced Maoist Communists (such as our very own contortionists, including the rubber limbed triplets with whom Parvati had lived before our marriage since the nuptials, we had moved into a hut of our own, which the ghetto had built for us as a wedding present on the site of Reshams hovel) and extreme right wing members of the Ananda Marg; until Left Socialists and conservative Swatantra members joined its ranks… while the peoples front expanded in this grotesque manner, I, Saleem, wondered incessantly about what might be growing behind the expanding frontage of my wife.
There have been thirty two years, in this story, during which I remained unborn; soon, I may complete thirty one years of my own. For sixty three years, before and after midnight, women have done their best; and also, Im bound to say, their worst.
One such deserted mother was Roshanara, the child wife of the steel magnate S. P. Shetty; and at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse in Bombay, she punctured the mighty balloon of his pride. He had been promenading about the paddock, stooping every few yards to return ladies shawls and parasols, which seemed to acquire a life of their own and spring out of their owners hands as he passed; Roshanara Shetty confronted him here, standing squarely in his path and refusing to budge, her seventeen year old eyes filled with the ferocious pique of childhood. He greeted her coolly, touching his Army cap, and attempted to pass; but she dug her needle sharp nails into his arm, smiling dangerously as ice, and strolled along beside him. As they walked she poured her infantile poison into his ear, and her hatred and resentment of her former lover gave her the skill to make him believe her. Callously she whispered that it was so funny, my God, the way he strutted around in high society like some kind of rooster, while all the time the ladies were laughing at him behind his back, O yes, Major Sahib, dont fool yourself, high class women have always enjoyed sleeping with animals peasants brutes, but thats how we think of you, my God its disgusting just to watch you eat, gravy down your chin, dont you think we see how you never hold teacups by their handles, do you imagine we cant hear your belches and breakings of wind, youre just our pet ape, Major Sahib, very useful, but basically a clown.
It was or am I wrong? I must rush on; things are slipping from me all the time a day of horrors. It was then unless it was another day that we found old Resham Bibi dead of cold, lying in her hut which she had built out of Dalda Vanaspati packing cases. She had turned bright blue, Krishna blue, blue as Jesus, the blue of Kashmiri sky, which sometimes leaks into eyes; we burned her on the banks of the Jamuna amongst mud flats and buffalo, and she missed my wedding as a result, which was sad, because like all old women she loved weddings, and had in the past joined in the preliminary henna ceremonies with energetic glee, leading the formal singing in which the brides friends insulted the groom and his family. On one occasion her insults had been so brilliant and finely calculated that the groom took umbrage and cancelled the wedding; but Resham had been undaunted, saying that it wasnt her fault if young men nowadays were as faint hearted and inconstant as chickens.
On May 15th, 1974, Major Shiva returned to his regiment in Delhi; he cl九九藏书网aimed that, three days later, he was suddenly seized by a desire to see once more the saucer eyed beauty whom he had first encountered long ago in the conference of the Midnight Children; the pony tailed temptress who had asked him, in Dacca, for a single lock of his hair. Major Shiva declared to Parvati that his arrival at the magicians ghetto had been motivated by a desire to be done with the rich bitches of Indian high society; that he had been besotted by her pouting lips the moment he laid eyes on them; and that these were the only reasons for asking her to go away with him. But I have already been overgenerous to Major Shiva in this, my own personal version of history, I have allowed his account too much space; so I insist that, whatever the knock kneed Major might have thought, the thing that drew him into the ghetto was quite simply and straightforwardly the magic of Parvati the witch.
I do not disagree; because I have not even included her, whose dreams of marriage and Kashmir have inevitably been leaking into me, making me wish, if only, if only, so that, having once resigned myself to the cracks, I am now assailed by pangs of discontent, anger, fear and regret.
How are we to understand my too many women? As the multiple faces of Bharat Mata? Or as even more… as the dynamic aspect of maya, as cosmic energy, which is represented as the female organ?
There was the Rani of Cooch Naheen, whose money, placed at the disposal of a humming man, gave birth to the optimism disease, which has recurred, at intervals, ever since; and, in the Muslim quarter of Old Delhi, a distant relative called Zohra whose flirtations gave birth, in my father, to that later weakness for Fernandas and Florys; So to Bombay. Where Winkies Vanita could not resist the centre parting of William Methwold, and Nussie the duck lost a baby race; while Mary Pereira, in the name of love, changed the baby tags of history and became a second mother to me…
Yes, Padma: Mother Indira really had it in for me.
In the shadow of a mosque, Resham Bibi issued a warning.
I swear! Padma slaps her knee, Too much, mister; too much.
From the beginning there were knees and a nose, a nose and knees; but throughout this narrative Ive been pushing him, the other, into the background (just as once, I banned him from the councils of the Children). He can be concealed no longer, however; because one morning in May 1974 is it just my cracking memory, or am I right in thinking it was the 18th, perhaps at the very moment at which the deserts of Rajasthan were being shaken by Indias first nuclear explosion? Was Shivas explosion into my life truly synchronous with
And the Monkey. I musnt forget the Monkey.
The labour of Parvati Laylah lasted for thirteen days. On the first day, while the Prime Minister was refusing to resign, although her convictions carried with them a mandatory penalty barring her from public office for six years, the cervix of Parvati the witch, despite contractions as painful as mule kicks, obstinately refused to dilate; Saleem Sinai and Picture Singh, barred from the hut of her torment by the contortionist triplets who had taken on the dudes of mid wives, were obliged to listen to her useless shrieks until a steady stream of fire eaters card sharpers coal walkers came up and slapped them on the back and made dirty jokes; and it was only in my ears that the ticking could be heard… a countdown to God knows what, until I became possessed by fear, and told Picture Singh, I dont know whats going to come out of her, but it isnt going to be good… And Pictureji, reassuringly: Dont you worry, captain! Everything will be fine! A ten chip whopper, I swear! And Parvati, screaming screaming, and night fading into day, and on the second day, when in Gujarat Mrs Gandhis electoral candidates were routed by the Janata Morcha, my Parvati was in the grip of pains so intense that they made her as stiff as steel, and I refused to eat until the baby was born or whatever happened happened, I sat cross legged outside the hovel of her agony, shaking with terror in the heat, begging dont let her die dont let her die, although I had never made love to her during all the months of our marriage; in spite of my fear of the spectre of Jamila Singer, I prayed and fasted, although Picture Singh, For pitys sake, captain, I refused, and by the ninth day the ghetto had fallen into a terrible hush, a silence so absolute that not even the calls of the muezzin of the mosque could penetrate it, a soundlessness of such immense powers that it shut out the roars of the Janata Morcha demonstrations outside Rashtrapati Bhavan, the Presidents house, a horror struck muteness of the same awful enveloping magic as the great silence which had once hung over my grandparents house in Agra, so that on the ninth day we could not hear Morarji Desai calling on President Ahmad to sack the disgraced Prime Minister, and the only sounds in the entire world were the ruined whimperings of Parvati Laylah, as the contractions piled upon her like mountains, and she sounded as though she were calling to us down a long hollow tunnel of pain, while I sat cross legged being dismembered by her agony with the soundless sound of ticktock in my brain, and inside the hut there were the contortionist triplets pouring water over Parvatis body to replenish the moisture which was pouring out of her in fountains, forcing a stick between her teeth to prevent her from biting out her tongue, and trying to force down her eyelids over eyes which were bulging so frighteningly that the triplets were afraid they would fall out and get dirty on the floor, and then it was the twelfth day and I was half dead of starvation while elsewhere in the city the Supreme Court was informing Mrs Gandhi that she need not resign until her appeal, but must neither vote in the Lok Sabha nor draw a salary, and while the Prime Minister in her exultation at this partial victory began to abuse her opponents in language of which a Koli fishwife would have been proud, my Parvatis labour entered a phase in which despite her utter exhaustion she found the energy to issue a string of foul smelling oaths from her colour drained lips, so that the cesspit stink of her obscenities filled our nostrils and made us retch, and the three contortionists fled from the hut crying that she had become so stretched, so colourless that you could almost see through her, and she would surely die if the baby did not come now, and in my ears tick tock the pounding tick tock until I was sure, yes, soon soon soon, and when the triplets returned to her bedside in the evening of the thirteenth day they screamed Yes yes she has begun to push, come on Parvati, push push push, and while Parvati pushed in the ghetto, J. P. Narayan and Morarji Desai were also goading Indira Gandhi, while triplets yelled push push push the leaders of the Janata Morcha urged the police and Army to disobey the illegal orders of the disqualified Prime Minister, so in a sense they were forcing Mrs Gandhi to push, and as the night darkened towards the midnight hour, because nothing ever happens at any other time, triplets began to screech its coming coming coming, and elsewhere the Prime Minister was giving birth to a child of her own… in the ghetto, in the hut beside which I sat cross legged and starving to death, my son was coming coming coming, the head is out, the triplets screeched, while members of the Central Reserve Police arrested the heads of the Janata Morcha, including the impossibly ancient and almost mythological figures of Morarji Desai and J. P. Narayan, push push push, and in the heart of that terrible midnight while ticktock pounded in my ears九九藏书网 a child was born, a ten chip whopper all right, popping out so easily in the end that it was impossible to understand what all the trouble had been. Parvati gave a final pitiable little yelp and out he popped, while all over India policemen were arresting people, all opposition leaders except members of the pro Moscow Communists, and also schoolteachers lawyers poets newspapermen trade unionists, in fact anyone who had ever made the mistake of sneezing during the Madams speeches, and when the three contortionists had washed the baby and wrapped it in an old sari and brought it out for its father to see, at exactly the same moment, the word Emergency was being heard for the first time, and suspension of civil rights, and censorship of the press, and armoured units on special alert, and arrest of subversive elements; something was ending, something was being born, and at the precise instant of the birth of the new India and the beginning of a continuous midnight which would not end for two long years, my son, the child of the renewed ticktock, came out into the world.
Oof, mister, Padma exclaims, thats too much women!
At the henna ceremony, half the magicians adopted me, performing the functions of my family; the other half took Parvatis side, and happy insults were sung late into the night while intricate traceries of henna dried into the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet; and if the absence of Resham Bibi deprived the insults of a certain cutting edge, we were not overly sorry about the fact. During the nikah, the wedding proper, the happy couple were seated on a dais hastily constructed out of the Dalda boxes of Reshams demolished shack, and the magicians filed solemnly past us, dropping coins of small denominations into our laps; and when the new Laylah Sinai fainted everyone smiled contentedly, because every good bride should faint at her wedding, and nobody mentioned the embarrassing possibility that she might have passed out because of the nausea or perhaps the kicking pains caused by the child inside her basket. That evening the magicians put on a show so wonderful that rumours of it spread throughout the Old City, and crowds gathered to watch, Muslim businessmen from a nearby muhalla in which once a public announcement had been made and silversmiths and milk shake vendors from Chandni Chowk, evening strollers and Japanese tourists who all (on this occasion) wore surgical face masks out of politeness, so as not to infect us with their exhaled germs; and there were pink Europeans discussing camera lenses with the Japanese, there were shutters clicking and flash bulbs popping, and I was told by one of the tourists that India was indeed a truly wonderful country with many remarkable traditions, and would be just fine and perfect if one did not constantly have to eat Indian food. And at the valima, the consummation ceremony (at which, on this occasion, no bloodstained sheets were held up, with or without perforations, since I had spent our nuptial night with my eyes shut tight and my body averted from my wifes, lest the unbearable features of Jamila Singer come to haunt me. in the bewilderment of the dark), the magicians surpassed their efforts of the wedding night.
Before Nadir Khan hid in his underworld, my grandmother had, by becoming Reverend Mother, begun a sequence of women who changed their names, a sequence which continues even today– and which even leaked into Nadir, who became Qasim, and sat with dancing hands in the Pioneer Cafe; and after Nadirs departure, my mother Mumtaz Aziz became Amina Sinai;
… Captain, Saleem captain, Picture Singh was begging, be nice now! Ears are not anything to go crazy for!
Influence of hair styles on the course of history: theres another ticklish business. If William Methwold had lacked a centre parting, I might not have been here today; and if the Mother of the Nation had had a coiffure of uniform pigment, the Emergency she spawned might easily have lacked a darker side. But she had white hair on one side and black on the other; the Emergency, too, had a white part public, visible, documented, a matter for historians and a black part which, being secret macabre untold, must be a matter for us.
In the days after Parvatis return, the old women of the ghetto formed the habit of holding their ears for shame whenever they passed her; she, who bore her illegitimate child without any appearance of guilt, would smile innocently and walk on. But on the morning of Republic Day, she awoke to find a rope hung with tattered shoes strung up above her door, and began to weep inconsolably, her poise disintegrating under the force of this greatest of insults. Picture Singh and I, leaving our shack laden with baskets of snakes, came across her in her (calculated? genuine?) misery, and Picture Singh set his jaw in an attitude of determination. Come back to the hut, captain, the Most Charming Man instructed me, We must talk.
And in the hut, Forgive me, captain, but I must speak. I am thinking it is a terrible thing for a man to go through life without children. To have no son, captain: how sad for you, is it not? And I, trapped by the lie of impotence, remained silent while Pictureji suggested the marriage which would preserve Parvatis honour and simultaneously solve the problem of my self confessed sterility; and despite my fears of the face of Jamila Singer, which, superimposed on Parvatis, had the power of driving me to distraction, I could not find it in myself to refuse.
Spurned by Saleem, Parvati remembered who had once been his arch enemy; and, taking a bamboo stick with seven knots in it, and an improvized metal hook attached to one end, she squatted in her shack and recited; with the Hook of Indra in her right hand, and a lock of hair in her left, she summoned him to her. Parvati called to Shiva; believe dont believe, but Shiva came.
While public discontent with the Indira Congress threatened to crush the government like a fly, the brand new Laylah Sinai, whose eyes had grown wider than ever, sat as still as a stone while the weight of the baby increased until it threatened to crush her bones to powder; and Picture Singh, in an innocent echo of an ancient remark, said, Hey, captain! Its going to be big big: a real ten chip whopper for sure!
I have included this somewhat elementary summary just in case you had failed to realize that the Prime Minister of India was, in 1975, fifteen years a widow. Or (because the capital letter may be of use): a Widow.
A child of such grave good nature that his absolute refusal to cry or whimper utterly won over his adoptive father, who gave up laughing hysterically at the grotesque ears and began to rock the silent infant gently in his arms;
On a cold day in January, when the muezzins cries from the highest minaret of the Friday Mosque froze as they left his lips and fell upon the city as sacred snow, Parvati returned. She had waited until there could be no possible doubt about her condition; her inner basket bulged through the clean new garments of Shivas now defunct infatuation. Her lips, sure of their coming triumph, had lost their fashionable pout; in her saucer eyes, as she stood on the steps of the Friday Mosque to ensure that as many people as possible saw her changed appearance, there lurked a silvered gleam of contentment. That was how I found her when I returned to the chaya of the mosque with Picture Singh. I was feeling disconsolate, and the sight of Parvati the witch on the steps, hands folded calmly over her swollen belly, long rope of hair blowing gently in the crystal air, did nothing to cheer me up.
After the onslaught of Roshanara Shetty, the young war hero began to see hwｗｗ•９9ｌiｂ•netis world differently. Now he seemed to see women giggling behind fans wherever he went; he noticed strange amused sidelong glances which hed never noticed before; and although he tried to improve his behaviour, it was no use, he seemed to become clumsier the harder he tried, so that food flew off his plate on to priceless Kelim rugs and belches broke from his throat with the roar of a train emerging from a tunnel and he broke wind with the rage of typhoons. His glittering new life became, for him, a daily humiliation; and now he reinterpreted the advances of the beautiful ladies, understanding that by placing their love notes beneath their toes they were obliging him to kneel demeaningly at their feet… as he learned that a man may possess every manly attribute and still be despised for not knowing how to hold a spoon, he felt an old violence being renewed in him, a hatred for these high ups and their power, which is why I am sure why I know that when the Emergency offered Shiva of the knees the chance of grabbing some power for himself, he did not wait to be asked a second time.
Because of the Majors national status as a war hero, he was permitted to take certain liberties with military regulations; so nobody took him to task for importing a woman into what were not, after all, married mens quarters; and he, not knowing what had brought about this remarkable alteration in his life, sat down as requested in a cane chair, while she took off his boots, pressed his feet, brought him water flavoured with freshly squeezed limes, dismissed his batman, oiled his moustache, caressed his knees and after all that produced a dinner of biriani so exquisite that he stopped wondering what was happening to him and began to enjoy it instead. Parvati the witch turned those simple Army quarters into a palace, a Kailasa fit for Shiva the god; and Major Shiva, lost in the haunted pools of her eyes, aroused beyond endurance by the erotic protrusion of her lips, devoted his undivided attentions to her for four whole months: or, to be precise, for one hundred and seventeen nights. On September 12th, however, things changed: because Parvati, kneeling at his feet, fully aware of his views on the subject, told him that she was going to have his child.
And there is more: because when, in the murky half light of that endlessly prolonged midnight, Saleem Sinai saw his son for the first time, he began to laugh helplessly, his brain ravaged by hunger, yes, but also by the knowledge that his relentless destiny had played yet another of its grotesque little jokes, and although Picture Singh, scandalized by my laughter which in my weakness was like the giggling of a schoolgirl, cried repeatedly, Come on, captain! Dont behave mad now! It is a son, captain, be happy!, Saleem Sinai continued to acknowledge the birth by tittering hysterically at fate, because the boy, the baby boy, the boy my son Aadam, Aadam Sinai was perfectly formed except, that is, for his ears. On either side of his head flapped audient protuberances like sails, ears so colossally huge that the triplets afterwards revealed that when his head popped out they had thought, for one bad moment, that it was the head of a tiny elephant.
And then there was Parvati, with her altered profile, in the harsh clarity of the winter day.
Despite the absence of Resham Bibi, the wedding went off well enough. Parvatis formal conversion to Islam (which irritated Picture Singh, but on which I found myself insisting, in another throwback to an earlier life) was performed by a red bearded Haji who looked ill at ease in the presence of so many teasing, provocative members of the ungodly; under the shifting gaze of this fellow who resembled a large and bearded onion she intoned her belief that there was no God but God and that Muhammad was his prophet; she took a name which I chose for her out of the repository of my dreams, becoming Laylah, night, so that she too was caught up in the repetitive cycles of my history, becoming an echo of all the other people who have been obliged to change their names… like my own mother Amina Sinai, Parvati the witch became a new person in order to have a child.
While mysterious assassins killed government officials, and narrowly failed to get rid of Mrs Gandhis personally chosen Chief Justice, A. N. Ray, the magicians ghetto concentrated on another mystery: the ballooning basket of Parvati the witch.
But above all, the Widow.
At the end of the war in the East, the legends of Shivas awful exploits buzzed through the streets of the cities, leaped on to newspaper and into magazines, and thus insinuated themselves into the salons of the well to do, settling in clouds as thick as flies upon the eardrums of the countrys hostesses, so that Shiva found himself elevated in social status as well as military rank, and was invited to a thousand and one different gatherings banquets, musical soirees, bridge parties, diplomatic receptions, party political conferences, great melas and also smaller, local fetes, school sports days and fashionable balls to be applauded and monopolized by the noblest and fairest in the land, to all of whom the legends of his exploits clung like flies, walking over their eyeballs so that they saw the young man through the mist of his legend, coating their fingertips so that they touched him through the magical film of his myth, settling on their tongues so that they could not speak to him as they would to an ordinary human being. The Indian Army, which was at that time fighting a political battle against proposed expenditure cuts, understood the value of so charismatic an ambassador, and permitted the hero to circulate amongst his influential admirers; Shiva espoused his new life with a will.
Saleem was not in the ghetto when Major Shiva arrived by motorcycle; while nuclear explosions rocked the Rajasthani wastes, out of sight, beneath the deserts surface, the explosion which changed my life also took place out of my sight. When Shiva grasped Parvati by the wrist, I was with Picture Singh at an emergency conference of the citys many red cells, discussing the ins and outs of the national railway strike; when Parvati, without demurring, took her place on the pillion of a heros Honda, I was busily denouncing the governments arrests of union leaders. In short, while I was preoccupied with politics and my dream of national salvation, the powers of Parvatis witchcraft had set in motion the scheme which would end with hennaed palms, and songs, and the signing of a contract.
January 26th, Republic Day, is a good time for illusionists. When the huge crowds gather to watch elephants and fireworks, the citys tricksters go out to earn their living. For me, however, the day holds another meaning; it was on Republic Day that my conjugal fate was sealed.
Dark clouds were gathering in political skies as well: in Bihar, where corruption inflation hunger illiteracy landlessness ruled the roost, Jaya Prakash Narayan led a coalition of students and workers against the governing Indira Congress; in Gujarat, there were riots, railway trains were burned, and Morarji Desai went on a fast unto death to bring down the corrupt government of the Congress (under Chimanbhai Patel) in that drought ridden state… it goes without) saying that he succeeded without being obliged to die; in short, while anger seethed in Shivas mind, the country was getting angry, too; and what was being born while something grew in Parvatis belly? You know the answer: in late 1974, J. P. Narayan and Morarji Desai formed the opposition party known as the Janata Morcha: the peoples front. While Major Shiva reeled from whore to whore, the Indira Congress was reeling too.
