Midnights Children

however, a military operation; no voice, human or canine, is raised in complaint.
    On March 15th, after obeying sartorial instructions, twenty CUTIA units were flown to Dacca, via Ceylon; among them were Shaheed Dar, Farooq Rashid, Ayooba Baloch and their buddha. Also flying to the East Wing by this circuitous route were sixty thousand of the West Wing’s toughest troops: sixty thousand, like sixty-one, were all in mufti. The General Officer Commanding (in a nattily blue double-breasted suit) was Tikka Khan; the officer responsible for Dacca, for its taming and eventual surrender, was called Tiger Niazi. He wore bush-shirt, slacks and a jaunty little trilby on his head.
    Via Ceylon we flew, sixty thousand and sixty-one innocent airline passengers, avoiding overflying India, and thus losing our chance of watching, from twenty thousand feet, the celebrations of Indira Gandhi’s New Congress Party, which had won a landslide victory—350 out of a possible 515 seats in the Lok Sabha—in another recent election. Indira-ignorant, unable to see her campaign slogan, GARIBI HATAO , Get Rid of Poverty, blazoned on walls and banners across the great diamond of India, we landed in Dacca in the early spring, and were driven in specially-requisitioned civilian buses to a military camp. On this last stage of our journey, however, we were unable to avoid hearing a snatch of song, issuing from some unseen gramophone. The song was called “Amar Sonar Bangla” (“Our Golden Bengal,” author: R. Tagore) and ran, in part: “During spring the fragrance of your mango-groves maddens my heart with delight.” However, none of us could understand Bengali, so we were protected against the insidious subversion of the lyric, although our feet did inadvertently tap (it must be admitted) to the tune.
    At first, Ayooba Shaheed Farooq and the buddha were not told the name of the city to which they had come. Ayooba, envisaging the destruction of vegetarians, whispered: “Didn’t I tell you? Now we’ll show them! Spy stuff, man! Plain clothes and all! Up and at ‘em, Number 22 Unit! Ka-bang! Ka-bang! Ka-pow!”
    But we were not in India; vegetarians were not our targets; and after days of cooling our heels, uniforms were issued to us once again. This second transfiguration took place on March 25th.
    On March 25th, Yahya and Bhutto abruptly broke off their talks with Mujib and returned to the West Wing. Night fell; Brigadier Iskandar, followed by Najmuddin and Lala Moin, who was staggering under the weight of sixty-one uniforms and nineteen dog-collars, burst into the CUTIA barracks. Now Najmuddin: “Snap to it! Actions not words! One-two double-quick time!” Airline passengers donned uniforms and took up arms; while Brigadier Iskandar at last announced the purpose of our trip. “That Mujib,” he revealed, “We’ll give him whatfor all right. We’ll make him jump for sure!”
    (It was on March 25th, after the breakdown of the talks with Bhutto and Yahya, that Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman proclaimed the state of Bangladesh.)
    CUTIA units emerged from barracks, piled into waiting jeeps; while, over the loudspeakers of the military base, the recorded voice of Jamila Singer was raised in patriotic hymns. (And Ayooba, nudging the buddha: “Listen, come on, don’t you recognize—think, man, isn’t that your own dear—Allah, this type is good for nothing but sniffing!”)
    At midnight—could it, after all, have been at any other time?—sixty thousand crack troops also left their barracks; passengers-who-had-flown-as-civilians now pressed the starter buttons of tanks. Ayooba Shaheed Farooq and the buddha, however, were personally selected to accompany Brigadier Iskandar on the greatest adventure of the night. Yes, Padma: when Mujib was arrested, it was I who sniffed him out. (They had provided me with one of his old shirts; it’s easy when you’ve got the smell.)
    Padma is almost beside herself with anguish. “But mister, you didn’t, can’t have, how would you do such a thing … ?” Padma: I did. I have Sworn to tell everything; to conceal no shred of the truth. (But there are snail-tracks on her face, and she must have an explanation.)
    So—believe me, don’t believe, but this is what it was like!—I must reiterate that everything ended, everything began again, when a spittoon hit me on the back of the head. Saleem, with his desperation for meaning, for worthy purpose, for genius-like-a-shawl, had gone; would not return until a