Holey Sheets! They're everywhere... Review on Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

From Shrinagar to Amritsar, from Holey Sheets to Mercurochrome to Lifafa Das, and from Rawalpindi to Quaid –e – Azam to Karachi to Bombay, India is intertwined throughout this deserving Booker of the Bookers winner novel by Salman Rushdie. Woven around the history of a family called India, Saleem Sinai, the lead character of this story, describes how his being (or not being) affected the nation’s being! Or rather the being of two nations. India, and the Land of Pure: Pakistan!

Using extraordinary surrealism, lively metaphors entangled with historical events occurring in the pre-independence India, and later on in both the nations: events such as the Jallianwalla Baug massacre, the midnight hour of independence (which is the seed of the story), Pandit Nehru’s speech, the transfer of power, the riots, the Language Marches by the Gujratis and the Maharashtrians claiming ownership over Bombay (which apparently is, now, Aamchi Mumbai), the dictatorship in Pakistan, the Indo Pak wars, and finally the Emergency era under the reign of the aptly named Widow with Saleem’s life make the Indian reader identify with him, as a part of the story, and the others feel witness to the history.

The other characters throughout the story live up to the objective of reliving the history for the readers! The writer has a knack of getting deep into the psyche of his readers, be them adolescents, who would be holding their breaths over the faithful love affair of the Lal Qasim turned red communist Nadir and the Amina Sinai turned Mumtaz Aziz; or be them some philosophical ones, who would swear by events such as the one when the doctor Aadam Aziz tells his wife Naseem that the red stains on his shirt are blood stains and not the usual Mercurochrome, and that he had just been to ‘Nowhere on Earth’!

And finally, to make the impossible possible, Rushdie has witches, children who can fly, those who can change their sex by entering water, those who can travel time and space through mirrors, and Saleem Sinai, who can read others’ minds!

All in all, a masterpiece! Never before, never again!