Midnights Children

that, while I stayed in the Marine Drive apartment, my testicles, forsaking the protection of pelvic bone, decided prematurely and without warning to drop into their little sacs. This event, too, played its part in what followed.)
    My mumani—my aunty—the divine Pia Aziz: to live with her was to exist in the hot sticky heart of a Bombay talkie. In those days, my uncle’s career in the cinema had entered a dizzy decline, and, for such is the way of the world, Pia’s star had gone into decline along with his. In her presence, however, thoughts of failure were impossible. Deprived of film roles, Pia had turned her life into a feature picture, in which I was cast in an increasing number of bit-parts. I was the Faithful Body-Servant: Pia in petticoats, soft hips rounding towards my desperately-averted eyes, giggling while her eyes, bright with antimony, flashed imperiously—“Come on, boy, what are you shy for, hold these pleats in my sari while I fold.” I was her Trusted Confidant, too. While my uncle sat on chlorophyll-striped sofa pounding out scripts which nobody would ever film, I listened to the nostalgic soliloquy of my aunt, trying to keep my eyes away from two impossible orbs, spherical as melons, golden as mangoes: I refer, you will have guessed, to the adorable breasts of Pia mumani. While she, sitting on her bed, one arm flung across her brow, declaimed: “Boy, you know, I am great actress: I have interpreted several major roles! But look, what fate will do! Once, boy, goodness knows who would beg absolutely to come to this flat; once the reporters of
Filmfare
and
Screen Goddess
would pay black-money to get inside! Yes, and dancing, and I was well-known at Venice restaurant—all of those great jazzmen came to sit at my feet, yes, even that Braz. Boy, after
Lovers of Kashmir
, who was a bigger star? Not Poppy; not Vyjayantimala; not one person!” And I, nodding emphatically, no-naturally-nobody, while her wondrous skin-wrapped melons heaved and … With a dramatic cry, she went on: “But even then, in the time of our world-beating fame, every picture a golden jubilee movie, this uncle of yours wants to live in a two-room flat like a clerk! So I make no fuss; I am not like some of your cheap-type actresses; I live simply and ask for no Cadillacs or air-conditioners or Dunlopillo beds from England; no swimming pools shaped like bikinis like that Roxy Vishwanatham’s! Here, like a wife of the masses, I have stayed; here, now, I am rotting! Rotting, absolutely. But I know this: my face is my fortune; after that, what riches do I need?” And I, anxiously agreeing: “Mumani, none; none at all.” She shrieked wildly; even my slap-deafened ear was penetrated. “Yes, of course, you also want me to be poor! All the world wants Pia to be in rags! Even that one, your uncle, writing his boring-boring scripts! O my God, I tell him, put in dances, or exotic locations! Make your villains villainous, why not, make heroes like men! But he says, no, all that is rubbish, he sees that now—although once he was not so proud! Now he must write about ordinary people and social problems! And I say, yes, Hanif, do that, that is good; but put in a little comedy routine, a little dance for your Pia to do, and tragedy and drama also; that is what the Public is wanting!” Her eyes were brimming with tears. “So you know what he is writing now? About …” she looked as if her heart would break “… the Ordinary Life of a Pickle-Factory!”
    “Shh, mumani, shh,” I beg, “Hanif mamu will hear!”
    “Let him hear!” she stormed, weeping copiously now; “Let his mother hear also, in Agra; they will make me die for shame!”
    Reverend Mother had never liked her actress daughter-in-law. I overheard her once telling my mother: “To marry an actress, whatsitsname, my son has made his bed in the gutter, soon, whatsitsname, she will be making him drink alcohol and also eat some pig.” Eventually, she accepted the inevitability of the match with bad grace; but she took to writing improving epistles to Pia. “Listen, daughter,” she wrote, “don’t do this actressy thing. Why to do such shameless behavior? Work, yes, you girls have modern ideas, but to dance naked on the screen! When for a small sum only you could acquire the concession on a good petrol pump. From my own pocket I would get it for you in two minutes. Sit in an office, hire attendants; that is proper work.” None of us ever knew whence Reverend