Midnights Children

Entering True Oneness in a Supreme Yogic Trance (whose powers are now ACCEPTED in WHOLE WORLD !) they transformed their Noble Spirits into a Flashing
Beam
of KUNDALINI LIFE FORCE ENERGY LIGHT , of which today’s wellknown LASER is a common imitation &
Copy
. Along this BEAM , Soul of unborn Khusro flew, traversing the BOTTOMLESS DEEPS of Celestial Space-Eternity, until by OUR LUCK! it came to our own Duniya (World) & lodged in Womb of a humble Parsee matron of Good Family.
    So the Child was born & was of true Goodness & Unparalleled BRAIN (giving the LIE to that LIE , that we are all Born Equal! Is a Crook the equal of Saint? OF COURSE NOT !!) But for some Time his true nature lay Hidden, until while portraying an Earth-Saint in a DRAMA production (of which LEADING CRITICS have said, The Purity of His Performance Defied The Blief), he CAME AWAKE & knew WHO he WAS . Now has he taken up his True Name,
    LORD
KHUSRO
KHUSROVANI
* BHAGWAN *
    & is Set Forth humbly with Ash on his Ascetic’s Brow to heal Disease and End Droughts & FIGHT the Legions of
Bhimutha
wherever they may Come. For BE AFRAID !
Bimutha’s RAIN OF STONE
will come to us ALSO! Do not heed LIES of politicos poets Reds & cetera. PUT YOUR TRUST in Only True Lord
    KHUSROKHUSROKHUSRO
KHUSROKHUSROKHUSRO
    & send Donations to POBox 555, Head Post Office, Bombay—1.
    BLESSINGS! BEAUTY!! TRUTH!!!
    Om Hare Khusro Hare Khusrovand Om
    Cyrus-the-great had a nuclear physicist for a father and, for a mother, a religious fanatic whose faith had gone sour inside her as a result of so many years of being suppressed by the domineering rationality of her Dubash; and when Cyrus’s father choked on an orange from which his mother had forgotten to remove the pips, Mrs. Dubash applied herself to the task of erasing her late husband from the personality of her son—of remaking Cyrus in her own strange image.
Cyrus-the-great, Born on a plate, In nineteen hundred and forty-eight
—Cyrus the school prodigy—Cyrus as St. Joan in Shaw’s play—all these Cyruses, to whom we had grown accustomed, with whom we had grown up, now disappeared; in their place there emerged the overblown, almost bovinely placid figure of Lord Khusro Khusrovand. At the age of ten, Cyrus vanished from the Cathedral School, and the meteoric rise of India’s richest guru began. (There are as many versions of India as Indians; and, when set beside Cyrus’s India, my own version seems almost mundane.)
    Why did he let it happen? Why did posters cover the city, and advertisements fill the newspapers, without a peep out of the child genius? … Because Cyrus (although he used to lecture us, not unmischievously, on the Parts of a Wooman’s Body) was simply the most malleable of boys, and would not have dreamed of crossing his mother. For his mother, he put on a sort of brocade skirt and a turban; for the sake of filial duty, he permitted millions of devotees to kiss his little finger. In the name of maternal love, he truly became Lord Khusro, the most successful holy child in history; in no time at all he was being hailed by crowds half a million strong, and credited with miracles; American guitarists came to sit at his feet, and they all brought their check-books along. Lord Khusrovand acquired accountants, and tax havens, and a luxury liner called the
Khusrovand Starship
, and an aircraft—
Lord Khusro’s Astral Plane
. And somewhere inside the faintly-smiling, benediction-scattering boy … in a place which was forever hidden by his mother’s frighteningly efficient shadow (she had, after all, lived in the same house as the Narlikar women; how well did she know them? How much of their awesome competence leaked into her?), there lurked the ghost of a boy who had been my friend.
    “That Lord Khusro?” Padma asks, amazed. “You mean that same mahaguru who drowned at sea last year?” Yes, Padma; he could not walk on water; and very few people who have come into contact with me have been vouchsafed a natural death … let me confess that I was somewhat resentful of Cyrus’s apotheosis. “It should have been me,” I even thought, “I am the magic child; not only my primacy at home, but even my true innermost nature, has now been purloined.”
    Padma: I never became a “mahaguru”; millions have never seated themselves at my feet; and it was my own fault, because one day, many years ago, I had gone to hear Cyrus’s lecture on the Parts of a Wooman’s Body.
    “What?” Padma shakes her head,