Midnights Children

gleamtoothed pixie in a green, elfin, chlorophyll hat proclaimed the virtues of Kolynos Toothpaste: “Keep Teeth Kleen and Keep Teeth Brite! Keep Teeth Kolynos
Super
White!” The kid on his hoarding, the children in the bus: one-dimensional, flattened by certitude, they knew what they were for. Here is Glandy Keith Colaco, a thyroid balloon of a child with hair already sprouting tuftily on his lip: “I’m going to run my father’s cinemas; you bastards want to watch movies, you’ll have to come an’ beg me for seats!” … And Fat Perce Fishwala, whose obesity is due to nothing but overeating, and who, along with Glandy Keith, occupies the privileged position of class bully: “Bah! That’s nothing! I’ll have diamonds and emeralds and moonstones! Pearls as big as balls!” Fat Perce’s father runs the city’s other jewelery business; his great enemy is the son of Mr. Fatbhoy, who, being small and intellectual, comes off badly in the war of the pearl-testicled children … And Eyeslice, announcing his future as a Test cricketer, with a fine disregard for his own empty socket; and Hairoil, who is as slicked-down and neat as his brother is curly-topped and disheveled, says, “What selfish bums you are! I shall follow my father into the Navy; I shall defend my country!” Whereupon he is pelted with rulers, compasses, inky pellets … in the school bus, as it clattered past Chowpatty Beach, as it turned left off Marine Drive beside the apartment of my favorite uncle Hanif and headed past Victoria Terminus towards Flora Fountain, past Churchgate Station and Crawford Market, I held my peace; I was mild-mannered Clark Kent protecting my secret identity; but what on earth was that? “Hey, Snotnose!” Glandy Keith yelled, “Hey, whaddya suppose our Sniffer’ll grow up to be?” And the answering yell from Fat Perce Fishwala, “Pinocchio!” And the rest, joining in, sing a raucous chorus of “There are no strings on me!” … while Cyrus-the-great sits quiet as genius and plans the future of the nation’s leading nuclear research establishment.
    And, at home, there was the Brass Monkey with her shoe-burning; and my father, who had emerged from the depths of his collapse to fall, once more, into the folly of tetrapods … “Where do you find it?” I pleaded at my window; the fisherman’s finger pointed, misleadingly, out to sea.
    Banned from the washing-chests: cries of “Pinocchio! Cucumber-nose! Goo-face!” Concealed in my hiding-place, I was safe from the memory of Miss Kapadia, the teacher at Breach Candy Kindergarten, who had, on my first day at school, turned from her blackboard to greet me, seen my nose, and dropped her duster in alarm, smashing the nail on her big toe, in a screechy but minor echo of my father’s famous mishap; buried amongst soiled hankies and crumpled pajamas, I could forget, for a time, my ugliness.
    Typhoid attacked me; krait-poison cured me; and my early, overheated growth-rate cooled off. By the time I was nearlynine, Sonny Ibrahim was an inch and a half taller than I. But one piece of Baby Saleem seemed immune to disease and extract-of-snakes. Between my eyes, it mushroomed outwards and downwards, as if all my expansionist forces, driven out of the rest of my body, had decided to concentrate on this single incomparable thrust … between my eyes and above my lips, my nose bloomed like a prize marrow. (But then, I was spared wisdom teeth; one should try to count one’s blessings.)
    What’s in a nose? The usual answer: “That’s simple. A breathing apparatus; olfactory organs; hairs.” But in my case, the answer was simpler still, although, I’m bound to admit, somewhat repellent: what was in my nose was snot. With apologies, I must unfortunately insist on details: nasal congestion obliged me to breathe through my mouth, giving me the air of a gasping goldfish; perennial blockages doomed me to a childhood without perfumes, to days which ignored the odors of musk and chambeli and mango kasaundy and home-made icecream: and dirty washing, too. A disability in the world outside washing-chests can be a positive advantage once you’re in. But only for the duration of your stay.
    Purpose-obsessed, I worried about my nose. Dressed in the bitter garments which arrived regularly from my headmistress aunt Alia, I went to school, played French cricket, fought, entered fairy-tales … and worried. (In those days, my aunt Alia had begun to send us an unending stream of