Midnights Children

urchins scatter; the car knocks over the spittoon. A dark red fluid with clots in it like blood congeals like a red hand in the dust of the street and points accusingly at the retreating power of the Raj.
    Memory of a mildewing photograph (perhaps the work of the same poor brained photographer whose life-size blow-ups so nearly cost him his life): Aadam Aziz, aglow with optimism-fever, shakes hands with a man of sixty or so, an impatient, sprightly type with a lock of white hair falling across his brow like a kindly scar. It is Mian Abdullah, the Hummingbird. (“You see, Doctor Sahib, I keep myself fit. You wish to hit me in the stomach? Try, try. I’m in tiptop shape.” … In the photographs, folds of a loose white shirt conceal the stomach, and my grandfather’s fist is not clenched, but swallowed up by the hand of the ex-conjurer.) And behind them, looking benignly on, the Rani of Cooch Naheen, who was going white in blotches, a disease which leaked into history and erupted on an enormous scale shortly after Independence … “I am the victim,” the Rani whispers, through photographed lips that never move, “the hapless victim of my cross-cultural concerns. My skin is the outward expression of the internationalism of my spirit.” Yes, there is a conversation going on in this photograph, as like expert ventriloquists the optimists meet their leader. Beside the Rani—listen carefully now; history and ancestry are about to meet!—stands a peculiar fellow, soft and paunchy, his eyes like stagnant ponds, his hair long like a poet’s. Nadir Khan, the Hummingbird’s personal secretary. His feet, if they were not frozen by the snapshot, would be shuffling in embarrassment. He mouths through his foolish, rigid smile, “It’s true; I have written verses …” Whereupon Mian Abdullah interrupts, booming through his open mouth with glints of pointy teeth: “But what verses! Not one rhyme in page after page! …” And the Rani, gently: “A modernist, then?” And Nadir, shyly: “Yes.” What tensions there are now in the still, immobile scene! What edgy banter, as the Hummingbird speaks: “Never mind about that; art should uplift; it should remind us of our glorious literary heritage!” … And is that a shadow, or a frown on his secretary’s brow? … Nadir’s voice, issuing lowaslow from the fading picture: “I do not believe in high art, Mian Sahib. Now art must be beyond categories; my poetry and—oh—the game of hit-the-spittoon are equals.” … So now the Rani, kind woman that she is, jokes, “Well, I shall set aside a room, perhaps; for paan-eating and spittoon-hittery. I have a superb silver spittoon, inlaid with lapis lazuli, and you must all come and practice. Let the walls be splashed with our inaccurate expectorating! They will be honest stains, at least.” And now the photograph has run out of words; now I notice, with my mind’s eye, that all the while the Hummingbird has been staring towards the door, which is past my grandfather’s shoulder at the very edge of the picture. Beyond the door, history calls. The Hummingbird is impatient to get away … but he has been with us, and his presence has brought us two threads which will pursue me through all my days: the thread that leads to the ghetto of the magicians; and the thread that tells the story of Nadir the rhymeless, verbless poet and a priceless silver spittoon.
    “What nonsense,” our Padma says. “How can a picture talk? Stop now; you must be too tired to think.” But when I say to her that Mian Abdullah had the strange trait of humming without pause, humming in a strange way, neither musical nor unmusical, but somehow mechanical, the hum of an engine or dynamo, she swallows it easily enough, saying judiciously, “Well, if he was such an energetic man, it’s no surprise to me.” She’s all ears again; so I warm to my theme and report that Mian Abdullah’s hum rose and fell in direct relationship to his work rate. It was a hum that could fall low enough to give you toothache, and when it rose to its highest, most feverish pitch, it had the ability of inducing erections in anyone within its vicinity. (“Arré baap,” Padma laughs, “no wonder he was so popular with the men!”) Nadir Khan, as his secretary, was attacked constantly by his master’s vibratory quirk, and his ears jaw penis were forever behaving according to the dictates of the Hummingbird. Why, then, did Nadir stay, despite erections which