Midnights Children

attained epidemic proportions; I, meanwhile, was afflicted by an inflammation of the sinuses. Curiously triggered off by the defeat of Thag La ridge, public optimism about the war grew as fat (and as dangerous) as an overfilled balloon; my long-suffering nasal passages, however, which had been overfilled all their days, finally gave up the struggle against congestion. While parliamentarians poured out speeches about “Chinese aggression” and “the blood of our martyred jawans,” my eyes began to stream with tears; while the nation puffed itself up, convincing itself that the annihilation of the little yellow men was at hand, my sinuses, too, puffed up and distorted a face which was already so startling that Ayub Khan himself had stared at it in open amazement. In the clutches of the optimism disease, students burned Mao Tse-Tung and Chou En-Lai in effigy; with optimism-fever on their brows, mobs attacked Chinese shoemakers, curio dealers and restauranteurs. Burning with optimism, the Government even interned Indian citizens of Chinese descent—now “enemy aliens”—in camps in Rajasthan. Birla Industries donated a miniature rifle range to the nation; schoolgirls began to go on military parade. But I, Saleem, felt as if I was about to die of asphyxiation. The air, thickened by optimism, refused to enter my lungs.
    Ahmed and Amina Sinai were amongst the worst victims of the renewed disease of optimism; having already contracted it through the medium of their new-born love, they entered into the public enthusiasm with a will. When Morarji Desai, the urine-drinking Finance Minister, launched his “Ornaments for Armaments” appeal, my mother handed over gold bangles and emerald ear-rings; when Morarji floated an issue of defense bonds, Ahmed Sinai bought them in bushels. War, it seemed, had brought a new dawn to India; in the
Times of India
, a cartoon captioned “War with China” showed Nehru looking at graphs labelled “Emotional Integration,” “Industrial Peace” and “People’s Faith in Government” and crying, “We never had it so good!” Adrift in the sea of optimism, we—the nation, my parents, I—floated blindly towards the reefs.
    As a people, we are obsessed with correspondences. Similarities between this and that, between apparently unconnected things, make us clap our hands delightedly when we find them out. It is a sort of national longing for form—or perhaps simply an expression of our deep belief that forms lie hidden within reality; that meaning reveals itself only in flashes. Hence our vulnerability to omens … when the Indian flag was first raised, for instance, a rainbow appeared above that Delhi field, a rainbow of saffron and green; and we felt blessed. Born amidst correspondence, I have found it continuing to hound me … while Indians headed blindly towards a military débâcle, I, too, was nearing (and entirely without knowing it) a catastrophe of my own.
    Times of India
cartoons spoke of “Emotional Integration”; in Buckingham Villa, last remnant of Methwold’s Estate, emotions had never been so integrated. Ahmed and Amina spent their days like just-courting youngsters; and while the Peking
People’s Daily
complained, “The Nehru Government has finally shed its cloak of non-alignment,” neither my sister nor I were complaining, because for the first time in years we did not have to pretend we were non-aligned in the war between our parents; what war had done for India, the cessation of hostilities had achieved on our two-storey hillock. Ahmed Sinai had even given up his nightly battle with the djinns.
    By November 1st —INDIANS ATTACK UNDER COVER OF ARTILLERY —my nasal passages were in a state of acute crisis. Although my mother subjected me to daily torture by Vick’s Inhaler and steaming bowls of Vick’s ointment dissolved in water, which, blanket over head, I was obliged to try and inhale, my sinuses refused to respond to treatment. This was the day on which my father held out his arms to me and said, “Come, son—come here and let me love you.” In a frenzy of happiness (maybe the optimism disease had got to me, after all) I allowed myself to be smothered in his squashy belly; but when he let me go, nose-goo had stained his bush-shirt. I think that’s what finally doomed me; because that afternoon, my mother went on to the attack. Pretending to me that she was telephoning a friend, she made a certain telephone call. While Indians attacked under cover