Midnights Children

my dung-lotus exhales.
    (While Padma, to calm herself, holds her breath, I permit myself to insert a Bombay-talkie-style close-up—a calendar ruffled by a breeze, its pages flying off in rapid succession to denote the passing of the years; I superimpose turbulent long-shots of street riots, medium shots of burning buses and blazing English-language libraries owned by the British Council and the United States Information Service; through the accelerated flickering of the calendar we glimpse the fall of Ayub Khan, the assumption of the presidency by General Yahya, the promise of elections … but now Padma’s lips are parting, and there is no time to linger on the angrily-opposed images of Mr. Z. A. Bhutto and Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman; exhaled air begins to issue invisibly from her mouth, and the dream-faces of the leaders of the Pakistan People’s Party and the Awami League shimmer and fade out; the gusting of her emptying lungs paradoxically stills the breeze blowing the pages of my calendar, which comes to rest upon a date late in 1970, before the election which split the country in two, before the war of West Wing against East Wing, P.P.P. against Awami League, Bhutto against Mujib … before the election of 1970, and far away from the public stage, three young soldiers are arriving at a mysterious camp in the Murree Hills.)
    Padma has regained her self-control. “Okay, okay,” she expostulates, waving an arm in dismissal of her tears, “Why you’re waiting? Begin,” the lotus instructs me loftily, “Begin all over again.”
    The camp in the hills will be found on no maps; it is too far from the Murree road for the barking of its dogs to be heard, even by the sharpest-eared of motorists. Its wire perimeter fence is heavily camouflaged; the gate bears neither symbol nor name. Yet it does, did, exist; though its existence has been hotly denied—at the fall of Dacca, for instance, when Pakistan’s vanquished Tiger Niazi was quizzed on this subject by his old chum, India’s victorious General Sam Manekshaw, the Tiger scoffed: “Canine Unit for Tracking and Intelligence Activities? Never heard of it; you’ve been misled, old boy. Damn ridiculous idea, if you don’t mind my saying.” Despite what the Tiger said to Sam, I insist: the camp was there all right …
    … “Shape up!” Brigadier Iskandar is yelling at his newest recruits, Ayooba Baloch, Farooq Rashid and Shaheed Dar. “You’re a CUTIA unit now!” Slapping swagger-stick against thigh, he turns on his heels and leaves them standing on the parade-ground, simultaneously fried by mountain sun and frozen by mountain air. Chests out, shoulders back, rigid with obedience, the three youths hear the giggling voice of the Brigadier’s batman, Lala Moin:
“So you’re the poor suckers who get the man-dog!”
    In their bunks that night: “Tracking and intelligence!” whispers Ayooba Baloch, proudly. “Spies, man! O.S.S.117 types! Just let us at those Hindus—see what we don’t do! Ka-dang! Ka-pow! What weaklings, yara, those Hindus! Vegetarians all! Vegetables,” Ayooba hisses, “always lose to meat.” He is built like a tank. His crew-cut begins just above his eyebrows.
    And Farooq, “You think there’ll be war?” Ayooba snorts. “What else? How not a war? Hasn’t Bhutto Sahib promised every peasant one acre of land? So where it’ll come from? For so much soil, we must conquer Punjab and Bengal! Just wait only; after the election, when People’s Party has won—than Ka-pow! Ka-blooey!”
    Farooq is troubled: “Those Indians have Sikh troops, man. With so-long beards and hair, in the heat it pricks like crazy and they all go mad and fight like hell …!”
    Ayooba gurgles with amusement. “Vegetarians, I swear, yaar … how are they going to beat beefy types like us?” But Farooq is long and stringy.
    Shaheed Dar whispers, “But what did he mean: man-dog?”
    … Morning. In a hut with a blackboard, Brigadier Iskandar polishes knuckles on lapels while one Sgt.-Mjr. Najmuddin briefs new recruits. Question-and-answer format; Najmuddin provides both queries and replies. No interruptions are to be tolerated. While above the blackboard the garlanded portraits of President Yahya and Mutasim the Martyr stare sternly down. And through the (closed) windows, the persistent barking of dogs … Najmuddin’s inquiries and responses are also barked. What are you here for?—Training. In what field?—Pursuit-and-capture. How will you work?—In