Soo che, saru che.... Review on Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

''Confusion never stops,

Closing walls and ticking clocks''

• Clocks by Coldplay

So what its like to be a part of history? Its great I guess... So then, what's is it like to have history being a part of you? Confused? You must be... But then, what does it mean if the stars position themselves over you, time plays a game against you and you are cursed with super powers? Well, I have got to a lot more clear...

Not many books have left me as much in as much amazement as has this brilliant tale of Saleem Sinai.. Again narrated in first person (Is that itself not a clear indication of my love?), this book tells us the story of a child... no, children that were born on a midnight.. No, that won't do, I have to be more clear.. Well, they were born at the threshold of 15th August... Sigh.. I just cannot hide it... Ok, this is the story of children that were born at the same moment that independent India was...

But, the poignant tale does not begin with the birth of Saleem... It does with the confusion of the mercurial Aadam Aziz... Aadam, the grandfather of Saleem, he of the clear blue eyes of Kashmir, he of the red mercurochrome, he of the dynastic and gigantic nose... The organ that was to be the identity of the ancestry... The huge nose of Aadam could not smell out the happenings that were to engulf his family in time and history...

Aadam, the foreign returned doctor, is summoned to treat as the patient, Naseem Aziz, whom no masculine eye had seen... And thus, through a perforated bedsheet, seeing parts of the anatomy, there developed a love in patches... History intervened and Jalianwalah Bagh scarred Aadam... After which, they retreated to Agra... Then, there came a fever of optimism that India would gain her independence and the patterns of the Muslim league would be dashed... Aadam, affected by the same, was pained when his hero, Abdullah, was killed by rioters and he provides shelter to Nadir, a poet who was Abdullah's consort...

Nadir ends up marrying Mumtaz, Aadam's daughter... However treachery makes him sign the triple talaq on the walls and leaving Mumtaz alone... The story then proceeds to let Mumtaz meet the merchant Ahmed Sinai, who marries Mumtaz, rechristens her Amina and then sire a midnight's child...

The narrative of Salman Rushdie in this epic is to be admired no less than anything you have ever experienced... Because he draws metaphors and twines history into the story in such a beautiful manner and humour that you are left to wonder whether what he says actually true.. Of the Saleem that creates fathers, of the falling objects from the sky that have cursed the family, of the gigantic nose and the silver lapiz-lazuli, of the knock knees of Shiva and the giant ears of Ganesha, Saleem's son... And yes, of the midnight's children, their powers, their innocence, their conferences and their purpose... their destruction...

And as the clock, that played such a horrible and ironic game with Saleem's life, ticks down on his life, he writes his life and imagines his death as it would be... His bones becoming powdery and his sole aim to live enough to narrative his story, just as Scheherazade did in the Arabian Nights...

Finding the purpose for being is the most important quest carried out by a man... Carrying out that purpose completes him... What if that purpose is something that is disagreed by the society? What if you possess a gift that others do not possess? This tells the tale of Saleem, the child who was gifted with a curse....

And finally to complete the title of the review...

Danda leke maru che...

To know, how this affected Saleem's life, read the book....