Midnights Children

one particular girl, a girl with one long hairy continuous eyebrow shading both eyes, the eight-year-old daughter of that same discourteous Sindhi who is even now raising the flag of the still-fictional country of Pakistan on his roof, who is even now hurling abuse at his neighbor, while his daughter rushes into the street with her chavanni in her hand, her expression of a midget queen, and murder lurking just behind her lips. What’s her name? I don’t know; but I know those eyebrows.
    Lifafa Das: who has by an unfortunate chance set up his black peepshow against a wall on which someone has daubed a swastika (in those days you saw them everywhere; the extremist R.S.S.S. party got them on every wall; not the Nazi swastika which was the wrong way round, but the ancient Hindu symbol of power. Svasti is Sanskrit for good) … this Lifafa Das whose arrival I’ve been trumpeting was a young fellow who was invisible until he smiled, when he became beautiful, or rattled his drum, whereupon he became irresistible to children. Dugdugee-men: all over India, they shout, “Dilli dekho,” “come see Delhi!” But this was Delhi, and Lifafa Das had altered his cry accordingly. “See the whole world, come see everything!” The hyperbolic formula began, after a time, to prey upon his mind; more and more picture postcards went into his peepshow as he tried, desperately, to deliver what he promised, to put everything into his box. (I am suddenly reminded of Nadir Khan’s friend the painter: is this an Indian disease, this urge to encapsulate the whole of reality? Worse: am I infected, too?)
    Inside the peepshow of Lifafa Das were pictures of the Taj Mahal, and Meenakshi Temple, and the holy Ganges; but as well as these famous sights the peepshow-man had felt the urge to include more contemporary images—Stafford Cripps leaving Nehru’s residence; untouchables being touched; educated persons sleeping in large numbers on railway lines; a publicity still of a European actress with a mountain of fruit on her head—Lifafa called her Carmen Verandah; even a newspaper photograph, mounted on card, of a fire at the industrial estate. Lifafa Das did not believe in shielding his audiences from the not-always-pleasant features of the age … and often, when he came into these gullies, grown-ups as well as children came to see what was new inside his box on wheels, and among his most frequent customers was Begum Amina Sinai.
    But today there is something hysterical in the air; something brittle and menacing has settled on the muhalla as the cloud of cremated Indiabikes hangs overhead … and now it slips its leash, as this girl with her one continuous eyebrow squeals, her voice lisping with an innocence it does not possess, “Me firtht! Out of my way … let me thee! I can’t
thee!
” Because there are already eyes at the holes in the box, there are already children absorbed in the progression of postcards, and Lifafa Das says (without pausing in his work—he goes right on turning the knob which keeps the postcards moving inside the box), “A few minutes, bibi; everyone will have his turn; wait only.” To which the one-eyebrowed midget queen replies, “No! No! I want to be firtht!” Lifafa stops smiling—becomes invisible—shrugs. Unbridled fury appears on the face of the midget queen. And now an insult rises; a deadly barb trembles on her lips. “You’ve got a
nerve
, coming into thith muhalla! I know you: my father knows you: everyone knows you’re a Hindu!!”
    Lifafa Das stands silently, turning the handles of his box; but now the pony-tailed one-eyebrowed valkyrie is chanting, pointing with pudgy fingers, and the boys in their school whites and snake-buckles are joining in, “Hindu! Hindu! Hindu!” And chick-blinds are flying up; and from his window the girl’s father leans out and joins in, hurling abuse at a new target, and the Bengali joins in in Bengali …“Mother raper! Violator of our daughters!” … and remember the papers have been talking about assaults on Muslim children, so suddenly a voice screams out—a woman’s voice, maybe even silly Zohra’s, “Rapist! Arré my God they found the badmaash! There he
is!
” And now the insanity of the cloud like a pointing finger and the whole disjointed unreality of the times seizes the muhalla, and the screams are echoing from every window, and the schoolboys have begun to chant, “Ra-pist! Ra-pist! Ra-ray-ray-
pist!
” without really knowing what