Midnights Children

always a bad thing.
    But imagine the confusion inside my head! Where, behind the hideous face, above the tongue tasting of soap, hard by the perforated eardrum, lurked a not-very-tidy mind, as full of bric-a-brac as nine-year-old pockets … imagine yourself inside me somehow, looking out through my eyes, hearing the noise, the voices, and now the obligation of not letting people know, the hardest part was acting surprised, such as when my mother said Hey Saleem guess what we’re going for a picnic to the Aarey Milk Colony and I had to go Ooo, exciting! when I had known all along because I had heard her unspoken inner voice And on my birthday seeing all the presents in the donors’ minds before they were even unwrapped And the treasure hunt ruined because there in my father’s head was the location of each clue every prize And much harder things such as going to see my father in his ground-floor office, here we are, and the moment I’m in there my head is full of godknowswhat rot because he’s thinking about his secretary, Alice or Fernanda, his latest Coca-Cola girl, he’s undressing her slowly in his head and it’s in my head too, she’s sitting stark naked on a cane-bottomed chair and now getting up, crisscross marks all across her rump, that’s my father thinking, MY FATHER , now he’s looking at me all funny What’s the matter son don’t you feel well Yes fine Abba fine, must go now GOT TO GET AWAY homework to do, Abba, and out, run away before he sees the clue on your face (my father always said that when I was lying there was a red light flashing on my forehead) … You see how hard it is, my uncle Hanif comes to take me to the wrestling, and even before we’ve arrived at Vallabhbhai Patel Stadium on Hornby Vellard I’m feeling sad We’re walking with the crowds past giant cardboard cut-outs of Dara Singh and Tagra Baba and the rest and his sadness, my favorite uncle’s sadness is pouring into me, it lives like a lizard just beneath the hedge of his jollity, concealed by his booming laugh which was once the laugh of the boatman Tai, we’re sitting in excellent seats as floodlights dance on the backs of the interlocked wrestlers and I am caught in the unbreakable grip of my uncle’s grief, the grief of his failing film career, flop after flop, he’ll probably never get a film again But I mustn’t let the sadness leak out of my eyes He’s butting into my thoughts, hey phaelwan, hey little wrestler, what’s dragging your face down, it looks longer than a bad movie, you want channa? pakoras? what? And me shaking my head, No, nothing, Hanif mamu, so that he relaxes, turns away, starts yelling Ohé come on Dara, that’s the ticket, give him hell, Dara
yara!
And back home my mother squatting in the corridor with the ice-cream tub, saying with her real outside-voice, You want to help me make it, son, your favorite pistachio flavor and I’m turning the handle, but her inside-voice is bouncing against the inside of my head, I can see how she’s trying to fill up every nook and cranny of her thoughts with everyday things, the price of pomfret, the roster of household chores, must call in the electrician to mend the ceiling-fan in the dining-room, how she’s desperately concentrating on parts of her husband to love, but the unmentionable word keeps finding room, the two syllables which leaked out of her in the bathroom that day, Na Dir Na Dir Na, she’s finding it harder and harder to put down the telephone when the wrong numbers come MY MOTHER I tell you when a boy gets inside grown-up thoughts they can really mess him up completely And even at night, no respite, I wake up at the stroke of midnight with Mary Pereira’s dreams inside my head Night after night Always at my personal witching-hour, which also has meaning for her Her dreams are plagued by the image of a man who has been dead for years, Joseph D’Costa, the dream tells me the name, it is coated with a guilt I cannot understand, the same guilt which seeps into us all every time we eat her chutneys, there is a mystery here but because the secret is not in the front of her mind I can’t find it out, and meanwhile Joseph is there, each night, sometimes in human form, but not always, sometimes he’s a wolf, or a snail, once a broomstick, but we (she-dreaming, I-looking in) know it’s him, baleful implacable accusative, cursing her in the language of his incarnations, howling at her when he’s wolf-Joseph, covering her in the