Midnights Children

on me; I am the doctor.” Stethoscoped English milord guided witchmoled grandmother across the room; hobblingly, creakingly, she obeyed. After three months of this treatment, she made a full recovery. The neighbors came to celebrate, bearing rasgullas and gulab-jamans and other sweets. Reverend Mother, seated regally on a takht in the living-room, announced: “See my grandson? He cured me, whatsitsname. Genius! Genius, whatsitsname: it is a gift from God.” Was that it, then? Should I stop worrying? Was genius something utterly unconnected with wanting, or learning how, or knowing about, or being able to? Something which, at the appointed hour, would float down around my shoulders like an immaculate, delicately worked pashmina shawl? Greatness as a falling mantle: which never needed to be sent to the dhobi. One does not beat genius upon a stone … That one clue, my grandmother’s one chance sentence, was my only hope; and, as it turned out, she wasn’t very far wrong. (The accident is almost upon me; and the children of midnight are waiting.)
    Years later, in Pakistan, on the very night when the roof was to fall in on her head and squash her flatter than a rice-pancake, Amina Sinai saw the old washing-chest in a vision. When it popped up inside her eyelids, she greeted it like a not-particularly-welcome cousin. “So it’s you again,” she told it, “Well, why not? Things keep coming back to me these days. Seems you just can’t leave anything behind.” She had grown prematurely old like all the women in our family; the chest reminded her of the year in which old age had first begun creeping up on her. The great heat of 1956—which Mary Pereira told me was caused by little blazing invisible insects—buzzed in her ears once again. “My corns began killing me then,” she said aloud, and the Civil Defense official who had called to enforce the blackout smiled sadly to himself and thought, Old people shroud themselves in the past during a war, that way they’re ready to die whenever required. He crept away past the mountains of defective terry towels which filled most of the house, and left Amina to discuss her dirty laundry in private … Nussie Ibrahim—Nussie-the-duck—used to admire Amina: “Such
posture
, my dear, that you’ve got! Such
tone!
I swear it’s a wonder to me: you glide about like you’re on an invisible
trolley!
” But in the summer of the heat insects, my elegant mother finally lost her battle against verrucas, because the sadhu Purushottam suddenly lost his magic. Water had worn a bald patch in his hair; the steady dripping of the years had worn him down. Was he disillusioned with his blessed child, his Mubarak? Was it my fault that his mantras lost their power? With an air of great trouble, he told my mother, “Never mind; wait only; I’ll fix your feet for sure.” But Amina’s corns grew worse; she went to doctors who froze them with carbon dioxide at absolute zero; but that only brought them back with redoubled vigor, so that she began to hobble, her gliding days done for ever; and she recognized the unmistakable greeting of old age. (Chock-full of fantasy, I transformed her into a silkie—“Amma, maybe you’re a mermaid really, taking human form for the love of a man—so every step is like walking on razor blades!” My mother smiled, but did not laugh.)
    1956. Ahmed Sinai and Doctor Narlikar played chess and argued—my father was a bitter opponent of Nasser, while Narlikar admired him openly. “The man is bad for business,” Ahmed said: “But he’s got style,” Narlikar responded, glowing passionately, “Nobody pushes him around.” At the same time, Jawaharlal Nehru was consulting astrologers about the country’s Five Year Plan, in order to avoid another Karamstan; and while the world combined aggression and the occult, I lay concealed in a washing-chest which wasn’t really big enough for comfort any more; and Amina Sinai became filled with guilt.
    She was already trying to put out of her mind her adventure at the racetrack; but the sense of sin which her mother’s cooking had given her could not be escaped; so it was not difficult for her to think of the verrucas as a punishment … not only for the years-ago escapade at Mahalaxmi, but for failing to save her husband from the pink chitties of alcoholism; for the Brass Monkey’s untamed, unfeminine ways; and for the size of her only son’s nose. Looking back at her now, it seems to me that a fog of