Midnights Children

above the factory doors; we switch her off to save power. But electric trains are using power: yellow-and-brown local trains clatter south towards Churchgate Station from Dadar and Borivli, from Kurla and Bassein Road. Human flies hang in thick white-trousered clusters from the trains; I do not deny that, within the factory walls, you may also see some flies. But there are also compensating lizards, hanging stilly upside-down on the ceiling, their jowls reminiscent of the Kathiawar peninsula … sounds, too have been waiting to be heard: bubbling of vats, loud singing, coarse imprecations, bawdy humor of fuzz-armed women; the sharp-nosed, thin-lipped admonitions of overseers; the all-pervasive clank of pickle-jars from the adjacent bottling-works; and rush of trains, and the buzzing (infrequent, but inevitable) of flies … while grasshopper-green chutney is being extracted from its vat, to be brought on a wiped-clean plate with saffron and green stripes around the rim, along with another plate piled high with snacks from the local Irani shop; while what-has-now-been-shown goes on as usual, and what-can-now-be-heard fills the air (to say nothing of what can be smelled), I, alone in bed in my office, realize with a start of alarm that outings are being suggested.
    “… When you are stronger,” someone who cannot be named is saying, “a day at Elephanta, why not, a nice ride in a motor-launch, and all those caves with so-beautiful carvings; or Juhu Beach, for swimming and coconut-milk and camel-races; or Aarey Milk Colony, even! …” And Padma: “Fresh air, yes, and the little one will like to be with his father.” And someone, patting my son on his head: “There, of course, we will all go. Nice picnic; nice day out. Baba, it will do you good …”
    As chutney arrives, bearer-borne, in my room, I hasten to put a stop to these suggestions. “No,” I refuse. “I have work to do.” And I see a look pass between Padma and someone; and I see that I’ve been right to be suspicious. Because I’ve been tricked by offers of picnics once before! Once before, false smiles and offers of Aarey Milk Colony have fooled me into going out of doors and into a motor-car; and then before I knew it there were hands seizing me, there were hospital corridors and doctors and nurses holding me in place while over my nose a mask poured anesthetic over me and a voice said, Count now, count to ten … I know what they are planning. “Listen,” I tell them, “I don’t need doctors.”
    And Padma, “Doctors? Who is talking about …” But she is fooling nobody; and with a little smile I say, “Here: everybody: take some chutney. I must tell you some important things.”
    And while chutney—the same chutney which, back in 1957, my ayah Mary Pereira had made so perfectly; the grasshopper-green chutney which is forever associated with those days—carried them back into the world of my past, while chutney mellowed them and made them receptive, I spoke to them, gently, persuasively, and by a mixture of condiment and oratory kept myself out of the hands of the pernicious green-medicine men. I said: “My son will understand. As much as for any living being, I’m telling my story for him, so that afterwards, when I’ve lost my struggle against cracks, he will know. Morality, judgment, character … it all starts with memory … and I am keeping carbons.”
    Green chutney on chilli-pakoras, disappearing down someone’s gullet; grasshopper-green on tepid chapatis, vanishing behind Padma’s lips. I see them begin to weaken, and press on. “I told you the truth,” I say yet again, “Memory’s truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own.”
    Yes: I said “sane.” I knew what they were thinking: “Plenty of children invent imaginary friends; but one thousand and one! That’s just crazy!” The midnight children shook even Padma’s faith in my narrative; but I brought her round, and now there’s no more talk of outings.
    How I persuaded them: by talking about my son, who needed to know my story; by shedding light on the workings of memory; and by other devices, some naively honest, others wily as foxes. “Even Muhammad,” I said, “at first believed