Midnights Children

greenly-blackly, she sailed into my cell. Children: it begins. Prepare, children. United we stand. Let Widow’s Hand do Widow’s work but after, after … think of then. Now does not bear thinking about … and she, sweetly, reasonably, “Basically, you see, it is all a question of God.”
    (Are you listening, children? Pass it on.)
    “The people of India,” the Widow’s Hand explained, “worship our Lady like a god. Indians are only capable of worshipping one God.”
    But I was brought up in Bombay, where Shiva Vishnu Ganesh Ahuramazda Allah and countless others had their flocks … “What about the pantheon,” I argued, “the three hundred and thirty million gods of Hinduism alone? And Islam, and Bodhisattvas … ?” And now the answer: “Oh, yes! My God,
millions
of gods, you are right! But all manifestations of the same OM . You are Muslim: you know what is OM? Very well. For the masses, our Lady is a manifestation of the OM.”
    There are four hundred and twenty of us; a mere 0.00007 per cent of the six-hundred-million strong population of India. Statistically insignificant; even if we were considered as a percentage of the arrested thirty (or two hundred and fifty) thousand, we formed a mere 1.4 (or 0.168) per cent! But what I learned from the Widow’s Hand is that those who would be gods fear no one so much as other potential deities; and that, that and that only, is why we, the magical children of midnight, were hated feared destroyed by the Widow, who was not only Prime Minister of India but also aspired to be Devi, the Mother-goddess in her most terrible aspect, possessor of the shakti of the gods, a multi-limbed divinity with a center-parting and schizophrenic hair … And that was how I learned my meaning in the crumbling palace of the bruised-breasted women.
    Who am I? Who were we? We were are shall be the gods you never had. But also something else; and to explain that, I must tell the difficult part at last.
    All in a rush, then, because otherwise it will never come out, I tell you that on New Year’s Day, 1977, I was told by a gorgeous girl with rolling hips that yes, they would be satisfied with four hundred and twenty, they had verified one hundred and thirty-nine dead, only a handful had escaped, so now it would begin, snip snip, there would be anesthetic and count-to-ten, the numbers marching one two three, and I, whispering to the wall, Let them let them, while we live and stay together who can stand against us? … And who led us, one-by-one, to the chamber in the cellar where, because we are not savages, sir, air-conditioning units had been installed, and a table with a hanging lamp, and doctors nurses green and black, their robes were green their eyes were black … who, with knobbly irresistible knees, escorted me to the chamber of my undoing? But you know, you can guess, there is only one war hero in this story, unable to argue with the venom of his knees I walked wherever he ordered … and then I was there, and a gorgeous girl with big rolling hips saying, “After all, you can’t complain, you won’t deny that you once made assertions of Prophethood?”, because they knew everything, Padma, everything everything, they put me down on the table and the mask coming down over my face and count-to-ten and numbers pounding seven eight nine …
    Ten.
    And “Good God he’s still conscious, be a good fellow, go on to twenty …”
    … Eighteen nineteen twen
    They were good doctors: they left nothing to chance. Not for us the simple vas- and tubectomies performed on the teeming masses; because there was a chance, just a chance that such operations could be reversed … ectomies were performed, but irreversibly: testicles were removed from sacs, and wombs vanished for ever.
    Test- and hysterectomized, the children of midnight were denied the possibility of reproducing themselves … but that was only a side-effect, because they were truly extraordinary doctors, and they drained us of more than that: hope, too, was excised, and I don’t know how it was done, because the numbers had marched over me, I was out for the count, and all I can tell you is that at the end of eighteen days on which the stupefying operations were carried out at a mean rate of 23.33 per day, we were not only missing little balls and inner sacs, but other things as well: in this respect, I came off better than most, because drainage-above had robbed me of my midnight-given telepathy, I had nothing to lose,