Midnights Children

drove.
    Through inflamed sinuses, I asked: “Where are we going? Juhu? Elephanta? Marvé? Where?” And my mother, smiling awkwardly: “Surprise; wait and see.” Through streets filled with relieved, rejoicing crowds we drove … “This is the wrong way,” I exclaimed; “This isn’t the way to a beach?” My parents both spoke at once, reassuringly, brightly: “Just one stop first, and then we’re off; promise.”
    Telegrams recalled me; radiograms frightened me; but it was a telephone which booked the date time place of my undoing … and my parents lied to me.
    … We halted in front of an unfamiliar building in Carnac Road. Exterior: crumbling. All its windows: blind. “You coming with me, son?” Ahmed Sinai got out of the car; I, happy to be accompanying my father on his business, walked jauntily beside him. A brass plate on the doorway:
Ear Nose Throat Clinic
. And I, suddenly alarmed: “What’s this, Abba? Why have we come …” And my father’s hand, tightening on my shoulder—and then a man in a white coat—and nurses—and “Ah yes Mr. Sinai so this is young Saleem—right on time—fine, fine”; while I, “Abba, no—what about the picnic—”; but doctors are steering me along now, my father is dropping back, the man in the coat calls to him, “Shan’t be long—damn good news about the war, no?” And the nurse, “Please accompany me for dressing and anesthesia.”
    Tricked! Tricked, Padma! I told you: once, picnics tricked me; and then there was a hospital and a room with a hard bed and bright hanging lamps and me crying, “No no no,” and the nurse, “Don’t be stupid now, you’re almost a grown man, lie down,” and I, remembering how nasal passages had started everything in my head, how nasal fluid had been sniffed upupup into somewhere-that-nosefluid-shouldn’t-go, how the connection had been made which released my voices, was kicking yelling so that they had to hold me down, “Honestly,” the nurse said, “such a baby, I never saw.”
    And so what began in a washing-chest ended on an operating table, because I was held down hand-and-foot and a man saying “You won’t feel a thing, easier than having your tonsils out, get those sinuses fixed in no time, complete clear-out,” and me “No please no,” but the voice continued, “I’ll put this mask on you now, just count to ten.”
    Count. The numbers marching one two three.
    Hiss of released gas. The numbers crushing me four five six.
    Faces swimming in fog. And still the tumultuous numbers, I was crying, I think, the numbers pounding seven eight nine.
    Ten.
    “Good God, the boy’s still conscious. Extraordinary. We’d better try another—can you hear me? Saleem, isn’t it? Good chap, just give me another ten!” Can’t catch me. Multitudes have teemed inside my head. The master of the numbers, me. Here they go again ’leven twelve.
    But they’ll never let me up until … thirteen fourteen fifteen … O God O God the fog dizzy and falling back back back, sixteen, beyond war and pepperpots, back back, seventeen eighteen nineteen.
    Twen
    There was a washing-chest and a boy who sniffed too hard. His mother undressed and revealed a Black Mango. Voices came, which were not the voices of Archangels. A hand, deafening the left ear. And what grew best in the heat: fantasy, irrationality, lust. There was a clocktower refuge, and cheatery-in-class. And love in Bombay caused a bicycle-accident; horn-temples entered forcep-hollows, and five hundred and eighty-one children visited my head. Midnight’s children: who may have been the embodiment of the hope of freedom, who may also have been freaks-who-ought-to-be-finished-off. Parvati-the-witch, most loyal of all, and Shiva, who became a principle of life. There was the question of purpose, and the debate between ideas and things. There were knees and nose and nose and knees.
    Quarrels began, and the adult world infiltrated the children’s; there was selfishness and snobbishness and hate. And the impossibility of a third principle; the fear of coming-to-nothing-after-all began to grow. And what nobody said: that the purpose of the five hundred and eighty-one lay in their destruction; that they had come, in order to come to nothing. Prophecies were ignored when they spoke to this effect.
    And revelations, and the closing of a mind; and exile, and four-years-after return; suspicions growing, dissension breeding, departures in twenties and tens. And, at the end, just