Midnights Children

his navel, into which her finger could go right up to the first joint, without even pushing; she grew to love the knobbliness of his knees; but, try as she might (and as I’m giving her the benefit of my doubts I shall offer no possible reasons here), there was one part of him which she never managed to love, although it was the one thing he possessed, in full working order, which Nadir Khan had certainly lacked; on those nights when he heaved himself up on top of her—when the baby in her womb was no bigger than a frog—it was just no good at all.
    … “No, not so quick, janum, my life, a little longer, please,” she is saying; and Ahmed, to spin things out, tries to think back to the fire, to the last thing that happened on that blazing night, when just as he was turning to go he heard a dirty screech in the sky, and, looking up, had time to register that a vulture—at night!—a vulture from the Towers of Silence was flying overhead, and that it had dropped a barely-chewed Parsee hand, a right hand, the same hand which—now!—slapped him full in the face as it fell; while Amina, beneath him in bed, ticks herself off: Why can’t you enjoy, you stupid woman, from now on you must really
try
.
    On June 4th, my ill-matched parents left for Bombay by Frontier Mail. (There were hangings, voices hanging on for dear life, fists crying out, “Maharaj! Open for one tick only! Ohé, from the milk of your kindness, great sir, do us favor!” And there was also—hidden beneath dowry in a green tin trunk—a forbidden, lapis-lazuli-encrusted, delicately-wrought silver spittoon.) On the same day, Earl Mountbatten of Burma held a press conference at which he announced the Partition of India, and hung his countdown calendar on the wall: seventy days to go to the transfer of power … sixty-nine … sixty-eight … tick, tock.

Methwold
    T HE FISHERMEN were here first. Before Mountbatten’s ticktock, before monsters and public announcements; when underworld marriages were still unimagined and spittoons were unknown; earlier than Mercurochrome; longer ago than lady wrestlers who held up perforated sheets; and back and back, beyond Dalhousie and Elphinstone, before the East India Company built its Fort, before the first William Methwold; at the dawn of time, when Bombay was a dumbbell-shaped island tapering, at the center, to a narrow shining strand beyond which could be seen the finest and largest natural harbor in Asia, when Mazagaon and Worli, Matunga and Mahim, Salsette and Colaba were islands, too—in short, before reclamation, before tetrapods and sunken piles turned the Seven Isles into a long peninsula like an outstretched, grasping hand, reaching westward into the Arabian Sea; in this primeval world before clocktowers, the fishermen—who were called Kolis—sailed in Arab dhows, spreading red sails against the setting sun. They caught pomfret and crabs, and made fish-lovers of us all. (Or most of us. Padma has succumbed to their piscine sorceries; but in our house, we were infected with the alienness of Kashmiri blood, with the icy reserve of Kashmiri sky, and remained meat-eaters to a man.)
    There were also coconuts and rice. And, above it all, the benign presiding influence of the goddess Mumbadevi, whose name—Mumbadevi, Mumbabai, Mumbai—may well have become the city’s. But then, the Portuguese named the place Bom Bahia for its harbor, and not for the goddess of the pomfret folk … the Portuguese were the first invaders, using the harbor to shelter their merchant ships and their men-of-war; but then, one day in 1633, an East India Company Officer named Methwold saw a vision. This vision—a dream of a British Bombay, fortified, defending India’s West against all comers—was a notion of such force that it set time in motion. History churned ahead; Methwold died; and in 1660, Charles II of England was betrothed to Catharine of the Portuguese House of Braganza—that same Catharine who would, all her life, play second fiddle to orange-selling Nell. But she has this consolation—that it was her marriage dowry which brought Bombay into British hands, perhaps in a green tin trunk, and brought Methwold’s vision a step closer to reality. After that, it wasn’t long until September 21st, 1668, when the Company at last got its hands on the island … and then off they went, with their Fort and land-reclamation, and before you could blink there was a city here, Bombay, of which the old tune sang:
    Prima in