Tom Ecob
on
Salman Rushdie’s novel: Midnight’s Children
The narrator describes himself as a bomb in Bombay, a ticking time-bomb whose actions and feelings mirror that of his nation. Rushdie’s novelMidnight’s Children tells the story of a child born at the very moment of India’s independence from British rule. He is hailed as the child of India and great things are predicted for Saleem Sinai, however, no one could predict the supernatural connection between the small child and his native India, a connection which would lead to revolution, war and eventually peace. It is this connection between Saleem and his sister India that drives the underlying plot of the story and it here that we see Rushdie’s view on modern India’s political policies and its uneasy and often volatile relationship with Pakistan.
Told through the writings and eyes of Saleem Sinai the novel deals quite frequently with the idea of fate. As he composes his memoirs the fictional character Saleem sees his past life emerging as a mirror for the political intrigue and war that plagued India during is independence. Rushdie’s first chapter set the stage for this co-dependency: "…thanks to the occult tyrannies of those blandly saluting clocks I had been mysteriously handcuffed to history, my destinies indissolubly chained to those of my country. For the next three decades, there was to be no escape. I was left entirely without say in the matter. I, Saleem Sinai…had become heavily embroiled in Fate" (3). The narrator is so obsessed with the idea of fate that the novel does not start at his birth but rather at the revelation of his young grandfather, thirty-two years before Saleem enters the world. "…I must commence the business of remaking my life from the point at which it really began, some thirty-two years before anything obvious, as present, as my clock-ridden, crime-stained birth" (4).
Saleem is not the only child to be born at the momentous hour of India’s independence. There are over a thousand children born in India alone between the hours of midnight and one that will also serve to shape destiny and the path of India. However, it is Saleem and his rival Shiva, both born at the stroke of midnight, both switched at birth that will play the biggest role in India’s growth. "In fact, all over the new India, the dream we all shared, children were being born who were only partially the offspring of their parents – the children of midnight were also the children of the time: fathered, you understand, by history. It can happen. Especially in a country which is itself a sort of dream" (132). It is important to mention that at this scene of birth an evil act occurs which impacts the lives of every character. "And when she was alone – two babies in her hands – two lives in her power – she did it for Joseph, her own private revolutionary act, thinking He will certainly love me for thins, as she changed name-tags on the two huge infants, giving the poor baby a life of privilege and condemning the rich-born child to accordions and poverty…" (130). This switching of rich for poor is a theme that can be seen in modern India. The classes are at war so the irony is that these two children will eventually meet and war with each other, thereby mirroring India’s internal struggles.
What happens to Saleem physically is also mimicked in his doppelganger nation. When Saleem enters high school he is cajoled by a woman to fight bullies. Yet his courage rewards him with the lose of a finger. "…and sees the top third of my middle finger lying there like a lump of well-chewed gum…It is important to preserve this wholeness. But the loss of my finger…not to mention the removal of certain hairs from my head, has undone all that. Thus we enter into a state of affairs which is nothing short of revolutionary; and its effect on history is bound to be pretty damn startling" (271). This lose of a finger is a metaphor for the eventual Partition that will occur between India and Pakistan. India "loses a finger:" Pakistan.
Pakistan is an important nation in regards to this novel. Not only does it act as a refuge for Saleem and his family but its impending wars with India directly correlate with the wars Saleem must fight amongst his family. It is also important to note that Saleem is present at some of Pakistan’s most important political moments. According to Rushdie, Saleem’s character was present during the planned coup of General Ayub Khan. "’Tonight, therefore’; - yes! I was there! A few yards from him! – General Ayub and I, myself and old Ayub Khan! – ‘I am assuming control of the State’" (331). Ultimately, during the conflict between India and Pakistan Saleem attains what he calls "purity." Suicidal, Saleem drives his motorbike through the streets of Karachi looking for death. "And Saleem? What did he do in the war? This: waiting to be drafted, I went in search of friendly, obliterating, sleep-giving, Paradise-bringing bombs" (390). Instead of falling on him the Indian bombs fell on members of his family, wiping out nearly all of them including his mother and father. Left stunned from the blast and with gaps in his memory he is enlisted into the Pakistani army and fights for them against his Indian people. This also is a metaphor for what was happening in India. Political and internal turmoil was welling up and a series of political revolutions were happening. Saleem symbolizes the Indian people and the rebellious, self-destructive nature the nation held at that time. India was nation that had lost its way and forgotten their past, just like Saleem had done.
Saleem eventually returns to his native India where his position in life has been switched. He is a pauper, forced to live on the streets and uses his amazing olfactory skill for pennies. The irony is glaring for now it is Saleem who is poor and his fellow child of midnight Shiva who has become rich and powerful through a bloody yet successful military career. The two changelings have finally come into their own. Rushdie uses Saleem and the rest of the children of midnight, including the evil Shiva, to perhaps express his disappointment in the fledgling India at this time. Gone are the days of honor and hard work and instead political backstabbing and a cruel government are what Rushdie shows his readers. It is the children of midnight who symbolize this lose. Instead of using the children and their exceptional powers for the good of the nation, they are imprisoned and castrated so they may never procreate. "But what I learned from the Widow’s Hand is that those who would be gods fear no one so much as other potential deities; and that, that and that only, is why we, the magical children of midnight, were hated feared destroyed by the Widow (Indira Gandhi), who was not only Prime Minister of India but also aspired to be Devi, the Mother-goddess in her most terrible aspect, possessor of the shakti of the gods, a multi-limbed divinity with a center-parting and schizophrenic hair" (504). Rushdie is commenting that the government tries too much to control its citizens and rule like a god and instead of nurturing a gift it destroys what it cannot understand.
Although the main plot follows the path of a country in political strife, forging a new future for itself, there are several other themes that present themselves. The idea of fate does not only show itself in the political theatre. Rushdie’s character describes fate as a game a snakes and ladders. "All games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate…but I found, very early in my life, that the game lacked one crucial dimension, that of ambiguity – …it is also possible to slither down a ladder and climb to triumph on the venom of a snake" (160-161). Another interesting element introduced is the power that women have over men’s lives. Rushdie’s character comes to the realization that "’Women have made me; and also unmade’…For sixty-three years, before and after midnight, women have done their best; and also, I’m bound to say, their worst" (465). Saleem lists the women who have influence his life from his grandmother the Reverand Mother to his own mother and her sisters. From Mary Pereira who switched him at birth to his childhood crush Evelyn Lilith Burns who ignited his special powers of telepathy. From his talented sister Monkey who he fell in love with to Parvati-the-witch who he could never truly love to finally the Widow and Padma, one destroyed him the other saved him.
Rushdie’s characters are a sorry lot of people, plagued by ill fortune Saleems extended family are a model in disarray. An alcoholic father, an adulterous mother, a manipulative grandmother are just a few who make up this pack of mongrels. Saleem is no jewel himself. He is a self-loathing man, disappointed in life, who falls in love with his sister and fights for the enemy during the war. Yet through all these faults it is Saleem who is truly the strongest person in the story. Able to overcome the death of his entire family and the betrayal of his sister he manages to carve himself a content niche at the finale of the book. The motivating factor behind Saleem is time. He feels his life slipping away while writing the story, dying of some unexplained "cracking," a condition which also affected his grandfather. It is this knowledge of an early death that forces him through a relentless life.
Rushdie’s influences are many; having been born and raised in India his knowledge of their stories, gods and mythologies is well versed. He uses several references to the story of Rama and Ravana: "…and here is one monkey, scurrying along the ramparts – I shall call him Hanuman, after the monkey god who helped Prince Rama defeat the original Ravana, Hanuman of the flying chariots…" (93), and in the above quote he explains the nature of Kali, a goddess we just recently learned about in class. He uses the tale of the Maharabata as a metaphor for the war being fought between Pakistan and India and also makes several references to the legend of the Buddha including the Boa tree and his sermon at deer park. "One upon a time, a prince, unable to bear the suffering of the world, became capable of not-living-in-the world as well as living in it; he was present, but also absent; his body was in one place, but his spirit was elsewhere. In ancient India, Gautama the Buddha sat enlightened under a tree at Gaya; in the deer park at Sarnath he taught others to abstract themselves from worldly sorrows and achieve inner peace…" (402).
The novel is brimming over with political ideas and gives the reader an excellent look at the early beginnings of both India and Pakistan. Rushdie’s bitter sweet ending leaves the reader with an honest if not semi-distorted view of modern India with both a sense of foreboding and a hope for peace and prosperity. The story is ultimately about midnight’s children and their failure to make a change in the Indian way of life.