Midnights Children

machine tools, diesel engines, power pumps and ceiling-fans. But I can’t help ending on a downbeat: illiteracy survived unscathed; the population continued to mushroom.)
    On my tenth birthday, we were visited by my uncle Hanif, who made himself excessively unpopular at Methwold’s Estate by booming cheerily, “Elections coming! Watch out for the Communists!”
    On my tenth birthday, when my uncle Hanif made his gaffe, my mother (who had begun disappearing on mysterious “shopping trips”) dramatically and unaccountably blushed.
    On my tenth birthday, I was given an Alsatian puppy with a false pedigree who would shortly die of syphilis.
    On my tenth birthday, everyone at Methwold’s Estate tried hard to be cheerful, but beneath this thin veneer everyone was possessed by the same thought: “Ten years, my God! Where have they gone? What have we done?”
    On my tenth birthday, old man Ibrahim announced his support for the Maha Gujarat Parishad; as far as possession of the city of Bombay was concerned, he nailed his colors to the losing side.
    On my tenth birthday, my suspicions aroused by a blush, I spied on my mother’s thoughts; and what I saw there led to my beginning to follow her, to my becoming a private eye as daring as Bombay’s legendary Dom Minto, and to important discoveries at and in the vicinity of the Pioneer Café.
    On my tenth birthday, I had a party, which was attended by my family, which had forgotten how to be gay, by classmates from the Cathedral School, who had been sent by their parents, and by a number of mildly bored girl swimmers from the Breach Candy Pools, who permitted the Brass Monkey to fool around with them and pinch their bulging musculatures; as for adults, there were Mary and Alice Pereira, and the Ibrahims and Homi Catrack and Uncle Hanif and Pia Aunty, and Lila Sabarmati to whom the eyes of every schoolboy (and also Homi Catrack) remained firmly glued, to the considerable irritation of Pia. But the only member of the hilltop gang to attend was loyal Sonny Ibrahim, who had defied an embargo placed upon the festivities by an embittered Evie Burns. He gave me a message: “Evie says to tell you you’re out of the gang.”
    On my tenth birthday, Evie, Eyeslice, Hairoil and even Cyrus-the-great stormed my private hiding-place; they occupied the clocktower, and deprived me of its shelter.
    On my tenth birthday, Sonny looked upset, and the Brass Monkey detached herself from her swimmers and became utterly furious with Evie Burns. “I’ll teach her,” she told me. “Don’t you worry, big brother; I’ll show that one, all right.”
    On my tenth birthday, abandoned by one set of children, I learned that five hundred and eighty-one others were celebrating their birthdays, too; which was how I understood the secret of my original hour of birth; and, having been expelled from one gang, I decided to form my own, a gang which was spread over the length and breadth of the country, and whose headquarters were behind my eyebrows.
    And on my tenth birthday, I stole the initials of the Metro Cub Club—which were also the initials of the touring English cricket team—and gave them to the new Midnight Children’s Conference, my very own M.C.C.
    That’s how it was when I was ten: nothing but trouble outside my head, nothing but miracles inside it.

At the Pioneer Café
    N O COLORS EXCEPT green and black the walls are green the sky is black (there is no roof) the stars are green the Widow is green but her hair is black as black. The Widow sits on a high high chair the chair is green the seat is black the Widow’s hair has a center-parting it is green on the left and on the right black. High as the sky the chair is green the seat is black the Widow’s arm is long as death its skin is green the fingernails are long and sharp and black. 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 the sky is black there are no stars the Widow laughs her tongue is green but her teeth are black. And children torn in