Midnights Children

of artillery, Amina Sinai planned my downfall, protected by a lie.
    Before I describe my entry into the desert of my later years, however, I must admit the possibility that I have grievously wronged my parents. Never once, to my knowledge, never once in all the time since Mary Pereira’s revelations, did they set out to look for the true son of their blood; and I have, at several points in this narrative, ascribed this failure to a certain lack of imagination—I have said, more or less, that I remained their son because they could not imagine me out of the role. And there are worse interpretations possible, too—such as their reluctance to accept into their bosom an urchin who had spent eleven years in the gutter; but I wish to suggest a nobler motive: maybe, despite everything, despite cucumber-nose stainface chinlessness horn-temples bandy-legs finger-loss monk’s-tonsure and my (admittedly unknown to them) bad left ear, despite even the midnight baby-swap of Mary Pereira … maybe, I say, in spite of all these provocations, my parents loved me. I withdrew from them into my secret world; fearing their hatred, I did not admit the possibility that their love was stronger than ugliness, stronger even than blood. It is certainly likely that what a telephone call arranged, what finally took place on November 21st, 1962, was done for the highest of reasons; that my parents ruined me for love.
    The day of November 20th was a terrible day; the night was a terrible night … six days earlier, on Nehru’s seventy-third birthday, the great confrontation with the Chinese forces had begun; the Indian army— JAWANS SWING INTO ACTION! —had attacked the Chinese at Walong. News of the disaster of Walong, and the rout of General Kaul and four battalions, reached Nehru on Saturday 18th; on Monday 20th, it flooded through radio and press and arrived at Methwold’s Estate. ULTIMATE PANIC IN NEW DELHI! INDIAN FORCES IN TATTERS! That day—the last day of my old life—I sat huddled with my sister and parents around our Telefunken radiogram, while telecommunications struck the fear of God and China into our hearts. And my father now said a fateful thing: “Wife,” he intoned gravely, while Jamila and I shook with fear, “Begum Sahiba, this country is finished. Bankrupt. Funtoosh.” The evening paper proclaimed the end of the optimism disease: PUBLIC MORALE DRAINS AWAY . And after that end, there were others to come; other things would also drain away.
    I went to bed with my head full of Chinese faces guns tanks … but at midnight, my head was empty and quiet, because the midnight Conference had drained away as well; the only one of the magic children who was willing to talk to me was Parvati-the-witch, and we, dejected utterly by what Nussie-the-duck would have called “the end of the world,” were unable to do more than simply commune in silence.
    And other, more mundane drainages: a crack appeared in the mighty Bhakra Nangal Hydro-Electric Dam, and the great reservoir behind it flooded through the fissure … and the Narlikar women’s reclamation consortium, impervious to optimism or defeat or anything except the lure of wealth, continued to draw land out of the depths of the seas … but the final evacuation, the one which truly gives this episode its title, took place the next morning, just when I had relaxed and thought that something, after all, might turn out all right … because in the morning we heard the improbably joyous news that the Chinese had suddenly, without needing to, stopped advancing; having gained control of the Himalayan heights, they were apparently content; CEASEFIRE ! the newspapers screamed, and my mother almost fainted in relief. (There was talk that General Kaul had been taken prisoner; the President of India, Dr. Radhakrishnan, commented, “Unfortunately, this report is completely untrue.”)
    Despite streaming eyes and puffed-up sinuses, I was happy; despite even the end of the Children’s Conference, I was basking in the new glow of happiness which permeated Buckingham Villa; so when my mother suggested, “Let’s go and celebrate! A picnic, children, you’d like that?” I naturally agreed with alacrity. It was the morning of November 21st; we helped make sandwiches and parathas; we stopped at a fizzy-drinks shop and loaded ice in a tin tub and Cokes in a crate into the boot of our Rover; parents in the front, children in the back, we set off. Jamila Singer sang for us as we