Life is simply too short (and this book, far too long).

So, Merry Christmas to myself! Robin, you don't have to finish reading this endless, labyrinthine mess tangle. Putting the book down does not mean it "beat" you. It doesn't say anything definitively bad about you, as a reader. It just means that there is limited time on this earth and other great books are calling your name. Books that don't make your eyes cross and furrow your brow in exasperation and frustration.

Mr. Rushdie, it's not me, it's you.

Midnight’s Children is panoramic and complex and rich in events and thoughts.

Well then: at night. No, it’s important to be more… On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came. Oh, spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of India’s arrival at independence, I tumbled forth into the world. There were gasps. And, outside the window, fireworks and crowds. A few seconds later, my father broke his big toe; but Ms accident was a mere trifle when set beside what had befallen me in that benighted moment, because 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.

Time, history, nations – those are tremendous… A single human life – it’s a mote of dust dancing in the ray of sunlight and blown by the wind…

Memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own.

Our memory is our past – what we do not remember, didn’t happen.

Today, 14 August 2022, is the 75th anniversary of Pakistan's independence, and tomorrow India will celebrate 75 years of its independence. Partition occurred at midnight between 14 and 15 August - the pivotal moment of this book. It's poignant that as I joined the local Pakistani-heritage community's celebrations today, and was thinking of this, probably Rushdie's second most famous book, he is recovering from being stabbed multiple times.

Prophesy and partition

“Nose and knees and knees and nose” – part of a prophecy about the unborn narrator. A few days after reading this, I was fortunate to be in the Acropolis Museum, and was struck by a collection of three bas-reliefs that were just of knees. Coupled with the relative lack of whole noses on some of the statues, I was transported back to this book.

This was my first adult Rushdie, following soon after his gorgeous children’s/YA novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

My initial reaction to this was “The language is lush and sensuous, seasoned with a little wit. But I feel hampered by my vague knowledge of Indian history, culture and mythology”. I thought much same at the end, although I also realised it’s a powerful and entrancing book at any level.

“I am the sum total of everything that went before me… To understand me you’ll have to swallow the world.” But not just him, “To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.”

What and for who(m)?

A knowledge of 20th century Indian history is clearly an advantage but, given the complexity and length of the story, it might be a slight distraction as well. Perhaps a timeline of key events would be a useful appendix.

In the preface, Rushdie observes that Indians treat it as historical fiction and westerners as fantasy. I think it’s a hybrid, with the mystical, magical, surreal aspects increasing towards the end. He also explains that many of the characters are based on family and childhood friends. He doesn't mention that the adult bedwetter shares a name with his own son! His son was an infant at the time of writing, so it may have reflected the frustrations of early parenthood, but I can't believe his son thanked him for it later. On the other hand, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, written a few years later, has a beautiful and heart-breaking to the same son.

It’s a curious, disorienting book that has passages of conventional narrative interspersed with rambling passages of history, allegory, philosophical reverie, and recaps and foreshadowing of plot. It’s worth keeping a few notes, as many characters change name and/or turn out not to be who you were first told they were.

Reading it was a strange sensation: it was so far removed from anything familiar to me that it could almost have been sci-fi (I know that sounds weird). I loved some of the language, and appreciated the craft of the author, but I could not quite love it in the way I wanted and expected to. Straight after this, I turned to Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, which is another long and multi-layered novel, but where the desire to read just a little bit more was a deeper compulsion, with no parallel sense of… worthiness (not the right word, but I’m not sure what is).

Rushdie delivered, but I fell short. The book deserves all its awards and a full 5*, but my own experience was 4*.

Plot

The plot is both simple and complex (duality and opposites are recurring themes).

Saleem (the narrator)’s mother visits a soothsayer when pregnant, and his bizarre and seemingly contradictory conundrums sum up events, including: the knees and nose (above), “two heads – but you shall see only one… cobra will creep… Washing will hide him – voices will guide him… Blood will betray him” mentions of doctors, spittoons, jungle, wizards and soldiers, ending “He will have sons without having sons! He will be old before he is old! And he will die. . . before he is dead!”

Saleem is born at midnight on the day India becomes independent, and raised in a wealthy Indian family. As a child, he becomes aware of a telepathic link to other Indian children born that night: Midnight’s Children, each of whom has at least one special power. “Thanks to the occult tyrannies of those blandly saluting clocks, I had been mystically handcuffed to history”.

The events he tells, from his grandparent’s meeting onwards, are many and varied, but with common themes, woven in to a kaleidoscopic story that stays just short of confusing.

Themes

Early on, the idea of something being revealed in fragments is introduced, and later, Saleem says “the ghostly echo of that perforated sheet… condemned me to see my own life – its meanings, its structures – in fragments also.” Midnight’s Children are fragmented across the country; Saleem is their only connection. Hence, it seems appropriate to conjure impressions of the book from its many disparate, but intertwined, themes. As for assembling all these fragments…? That’s where I feel I failed slightly.

•tFragments and holes, versus wholeness

When Dr Aadam Aziz (Saleem’s grandfather) found himself “unable to worship a god in whose existence he could not wholly disbelieve”, it “made a hole in him… leaving him vulnerable to women and history.” There are many mentions of that hole (and others): “Sometimes, through a trick of the light, Amina thought she saw, in the centre of her father’s body, a dark shadow like a hole.”

The original perforated sheet is used to examine a young female patient, seeing only what he needs to see. After many different ailments, he had a “badly-fitting collage of her severally-inspected parts” that filled up the hole inside him, even though he had never seen her face. It is sensitively and sensuously written.

Loving in fragments is harder, especially when the subject is “now unified and transmuted into a formidable figure”, but more than one character attempts it.

A descendant uses a different piece of perforated fabric to maintain modesty and anonymity while pursuing a singing career.

•tDuality, pairs and opposites

There are so many instances and aspects of these concepts, that there is no need to list or expand on them. Perhaps the most significant are Saleem and his “destructive, violent alter-ego”, leading opposite lives, and The Widow (Mrs Gandhi) with her centre parting giving her a white side and black side.

•tSnakes (and ladders), hence reversal

As prophesised, snakes are important, both real and imaginary. Cobra venom cures typhoid, and from Snakes and Ladders (“perfect balance of rewards and penalties”), Saleem has “an early awareness of the ambiguity of snakes” and encounters plenty of ups and downs. This is an area where knowledge of Indian mythology would help.

•tImpotence

Biological and metaphorical impotence, permanent and temporary, affects several characters (quite apart from mention of high-pressure sterilisation campaigns), including the nation of India itself.

•tConfused parentage, gaining parents

“Once again a child was to be born to a father who was not his father, although by a terrible irony the child would be the true grandchild of his father’s parents.”

Not everyone is the biological child of who they are thought to be, not just from illicit relationships, but also, in incident at the heart of the book, by the deliberate act of a third party. Furthermore, Saleem develops a habit of acquiring a string of fathers and father figures.

•tName-changing

Some characters are known by nicknames (Saleem’s grandmother is Reverend Mother and his sister The Brass Monkey), and others change their name – especially women, to have children (his grandmother, mother and wife). This probably resonates with Indian mythology and culture in ways I don’t know.

•tStorytelling, truth, memory, reality, and free speech

“What’s real and what’s true are not necessarily the same.”

“Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems.” Just as a cinema screen looks real until you’re so close you can see the pixels.

“Memory’s truth… in the end it creates its own reality.”

“What actually happens is less important than what the author can manage to persuade his audience to believe.”

This was written years before the fatwa that sent Rushdie into hiding (and which is reflected in Haroun; see my review, linked at the top). However, a punishment in this is to “seal our lips”, like the "Sign of the Zipped Lips" in Haroun. One character here is voluntarily mute for three years, as a protest, and another is very late learning to speak.

•tMagic

All the Midnight’s Children have a power. Saleem considers his telepathic and telegraphic skills to be the most powerful (“the ability to look into the hearts and minds of men”), with those born less close to midnight having progressively weaker skills. But others can become invisible, step in and out of mirrors, multiply fish, change sex at will, inflict physical pain with words, have perfect memory, heal, do alchemy, time travel, speak all languages, prophesy and more. Appropriately, the child of two Midnight’s Children is mute for three years, then his first word is Abracadabra.

There is also a little numerology: 420 = fraud, 1001 = magic, 555 = evil.

•tVanishing

Several characters disappear for a time, or permanently: oblivion via the Djinn bottle, magical invisibility, running away, death, and two who apparently have vitiligo.

•tTime and preservation

The time of birth is key to Saleem’s life and self-appointed mission to rescue his country. He ends up (no spoiler – he says this early on) as a pickle-maker and a writer: “I spend my time at the great work of preserving. Memory, as well as fruit, is being saved from the corruption of the clocks.” This reminded me of one of the few other Indian books I’ve read, The God of Small Things, in which the family has a pickle factory.

•tSmell and other senses

Saleem has a huge nose, and at different times has no sense of smell and a very powerful, magical one that can detect safety, danger, the “glutinous reek of hypocrisy” and “the fatalistic hopelessness of the slum dwellers and the smug defensiveness of the rich”. “The perfume of her sad hopefulness permeates her.”

Emotions can be transferred via sewing and cooking: “the curries and meatballs of intransigence… fish salans of stubbornness and the birianis of determination” and clothes “into whose seams she had sewn her old maid’s bile… the baby-things of bitterness, then the rompers of resentment… the starch of jealousy… our wardrobe was binding us into the webs of her revenge.”

•tBlood

Blood was in the prophecy in a specific way, but it crops up in many other ways and there are a couple of paragraphs where Saleem rattles them off.

•t Spittoon and Anglepoise

A silver spittoon inlaid with lapis lazuli is important, as are spittoons in general. I felt the cultural gap here.

Trivial (or maybe not), but within the first hundred pages, I’d noted at least three variants of “Anglepoised pool of light”. Having spotted it, it was almost more distracting to find only two more in the remaining 500+ pages.

I'm not the only person to have noticed:

Salman Rushdie and Translation:
"the Anglepoise lamp, a uniquely individualistic type of lighting which lights up only the small, restricted area of desk or writing materials in its scope. The phrase also seems to imply Anglophone or Anglophile literary writing alongside the notion of writing by lamplight."

Salman Rushdie: Critical Essays volume 1:
"The trope of the Anglepoise light... suggests the divided sensibility in Saleem, a child born in post-colonial India, not post-Independence India."

And the moral is...?

I’m not sure there is one. The subject is raised obliquely a few times, but somehow feels lacking. I’m puzzled that I wrote that: I don’t seek out morality tales, but as I compile this review, I realise this felt like the sort of book that had, or ought to have, such a thread, and yet I lost it in the rich tapestry.

The Midnight Children “found it easy to be brilliant, [but] we were always confused about being good”, just as Saleem used his powers to cheat in class in an attempt to gain parental approval.

Another gap was precisely WHY Mary Pereira does the thing she does. A reason is given, but it doesn’t really make sense to me, and the implications and effects are so huge, I wanted to understand. Related to that, why did those who found out, not try to investigate and find?

“For what reason you’re rich and I’m poor?”

Quotes

•t“His face was a sculpture of wind and water: ripples made of hide.”

•t“Most of what happens in our lives happens in our absence.”

•t“Even in his moments of triumph, there hung the stink of future failure.”

•t“Poverty eats away at the tarmac like a drought, where people live their invisible lives.”

•t“He had eyes like road-drills, hard and full of ratatat.”

•t“An apartment of such supernatural untidiness.”

•t“Blurred the edges of himself by drink.”

•t"I have become, it seems to me, the apex of an isosceles triangle, supported equally by twin deities, the wild god of memory and the lotus-goddess of the present... but must I now be reconciled to the narrow one-dimensionality of a straight line?"

•t“Uncreated lives rotting in her womb.”

•t“We could hear the creaks and groans of a rustling, decayed imagination.”

•tArmy recruits “were so young, and had not had time to acquire the type of memories which give men a firm hold on reality.”

•tWhen invisible, “I hung in a sphere of absence”.

•t“A girl who followed him with eyes moistened with accusation.”

•t“The widow’s finest, most delicate joke: instead of torturing us, she gave us hope. Which meant she had something… to take away.”

•t“Soft, amorous susurrations, like the couplings of velvet mice.”

•t“The quinquesyllabic monotony of the wheels.”

•tApparently, Lady Mountbatten “ate chicken breasts secretly behind a locked lavatory door.” It is strange if true, and even stranger to mention it.

There were also a few multi-tense strings, which were quite effective in context: “we were are shall be the gods you never had” and he ”will be is already more cautious.”

بچه های نیمه شب
نثر داستانی غنی، لحن طناز و پر نشاط، استفاده از شیوه های روایی جذاب، سرشاری از اشارات به جا و هنرمندانه به اساطیر هندی و اسلامی، ترسیم تصویری روشن و زنده از زندگی در هند، همه و همه امتیازاتی است که این کتاب را تبدیل به یک شاهکار ادبی می کند. همه ی این ها را باید ممنون ترجمه ی خوب مهدی سحابی هم باشیم که با ارائه ی نثری پاک، خیلی ساکت و آرام خود را از صحنه کنار می کشد تا از داستان لذت ببریم، تا حدی که فراموش کنیم این داستان به زبانی غیر از فارسی نگاشته شده. و مگر کمال یک مترجم در چیست؟

پ ن: بعداً در همین گودریدز، این جملات را از مهدی سحابی یافتم، و فهمیدم که این نامرئی بودن مترجم اتفاقی نبوده:


“ ...اینکه می گویم مترجم نباید دیده شود وقتی به ترجمه ی ادبی می رسیم ممکن است حکم بی رحمانه ای باشد. شاید تسکین این درد این است که مترجم بداند در کار بسیار مهمی دخالت کرده است. او در تب و تاب و شور آفرینش با مؤلف و نویسنده وارد مشارکت شده است. مثل آهنکاری که در ساختن یک بنای فخیم معماری از او کمک بخواهیم اما بعد از اتمام کار دیگر تیرآهن ها را نمی بینیم. ترجمه به نظر من چنین سهمی از آفرینش می گیرد. یک چیزهایی از آفرینش در او هست... منتها اصل قضیه به نظر من این است که ترجمه آفرینش نیست. ترجمه مشارکت دورادور در اثری ست که قبلاً آفریده شده. اینجاست که بحث فنی آن پیش می آید. یعنی ترجمه یک کار بسیار دقیق فنی در انتقال یک اثر آفریده شده است. این امر دوقطبی بودن یا دولبه بودن کار ترجمه را نشان می دهد... یعنی شما از یک طرف در یک اثر آفرینشی دخالت دارید و از طرف دیگر باید هرچه کمتر دیده شوید. دلداری ای که به مترجم می شود داد این است که در یک کار بزرگ مشارکت دارد و دارد در کار سترگی دخالت می کند. بنابراین هرقدر فروتنی نشان بدهد باز هم از باد آن آفرینش اصلی چیزی به او می رسد.”


آیات شیطانی
نمی شود از بچه های نیمه شب صحبت کرد، بدون آن که ذهن ها به سمت آیات شیطانی برود. اولین سؤالی که با مواجهه با این کتاب برای اکثر خوانندگان ایرانی رخ می دهد، این است که آیا این کتاب هم مایه هایی ضد اسلامی دارد؟ اگر سؤال کننده اسلام گرا باشد، این سؤال را با وحشت می پرسد، اگر ضد اسلام باشد، با هیجان.
باید وحشت اسلام گرا را تسکین بدهم، و هیجان ضد اسلام را دلسرد کنم: کتاب مایه ی ضد اسلامی ندارد. کتاب به سال 64 در ایران چاپ شده و در همان سال برنده ی بهترین رمان خارجی کتاب سال جمهوری اسلامی ایران شد. ماجراهای کتاب بیشتر حول تاریخ هندوستان، پس از استقلال از انگلیس و تجزیه به کشورهای هند و پاکستان و بنگلادش، با زمینه ای جادویی است.
در نتیجه، اسلام گرا با خیال راحت می تواند کتاب را بخواند، و ضد اسلام فقط اگر علاقه ی واقعی به ادبیات داستانی دارد می تواند سراغ این کتاب بیاید، چون در غیر این صورت، اگر فقط جذب اسم وسوسه انگیز سلمان رشدی شود، به زودی ناامید خواهد شد.

نقص ها
کتاب نقص هایی هم داشت، از جمله کند شدن روند داستان در کتاب سوم، یا این که گه گاه بر روایت وقایع تاریخی هند زیادی تأکید می شد و طوری می شد که انگار خواننده دارد تیتر روزنامه های آن زمان را می خواند و وقایع پشت سر هم گزارش می شد که باعث می شد داستان از پا بیفتد.
اما همه ی این نقص ها آن قدر نیست که لذت یک داستان خوب را از آدم بگیرد. در نهایت، وقتی کتاب تمام می شود، طعم ترشی های تند و تیز سلیم سینایی که در سی و یک شیشه ترشی (سی و یک فصل) ارائه کرده زیر زبان آدم می ماند، نه این موها و آشغال هایی که گاهی در ترشی ها یافت می شود.




ریویوی قبلی:
ما همه بچه های نیمه شب هستیم. دوقلوهایی به هم چسبیده با سرزمین و فرهنگ مان که هر دو همسن هم هستیم، نه یک دقیقه پیرتر و نه یک دقیقه جوان تر. که هر چیزی بر سر یکی بیاید بر سر دیگری هم می آید. که تقدیرمان گره خورده به تقدیر تاریخی وطن مان.

درست نصف شب بود. در لحظه ای که من پا به جهان می گذاشتم، عقربه های ساعت روی هم افتاد؛ و این درست در لحظه ای بود که هند به استقلال رسید. به حکم جبارانه ی عقربه ها، من و تاریخ به هم پیوسته شده بودیم؛ سرنوشتم برای همیشه با سرنوشت کشورم عجین شد.

ما همه بچه های نیمه شبیم. به دنیا آمده ایم برای کارهای بزرگ. برای شگفت انگیزترین جادوها. ما خود اساطیریم، اساطیر زنده ای که روی زمین راه می رویم. با قدرت هایی جادویی که خودمان هم نمی دانیم به چه کار می آید. پیش از تولّدمان جهان در انتظار تولّدمان بوده است، پیشگوها این عظیم ترین رخداد هستی را پیشگویی کرده بودند، چشم مردم سرزمین مان به زندگی ماست.

"تو تازه ترین نمود آن چهره ی کهن سرزمین هندی، که جوانیِ جاودانه دارد. همواره به دقت چشم به زندگی تو خواهیم دوخت، که به نوعی، نمایانگر زندگی همه ی ماست."

رودخانه ی گنگ هستیم ما، مادر همه ی رودخانه ها، سرچشمه گرفته از موهای شیوا. اما به کجا می ریزیم؟ در کدام باتلاق ها به خاک فرو می رویم و ناپدید می شویم؟ مقدس ترین رود جهانیم، کدام لجن زار را آبیاری می کنیم؟ بچه های نیمه شبیم، که "سربازها محاکمه اش می کنند، جبّارها سرخش می کنند..."

n  "Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible."n

The story of Saleem Sinai's life, born at the midnight of India's independence, can be construed as India's story after independence with the sublime intertwining of the protagonist's emotions with that of the country.

The violence and callousness are corollaries to any colonial rule. The author intricately portrays the quandaries of the denizens and their children born at midnight in the new India amid the ebullience of independence and the dolors of the partition. It is riveting to see, despite the controversies, how the characters' countenance convinced even the not so gullible Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. Not even Rushdie's harshest critic can say that this novel seemed contrived to them.

The interplay of reality and magical realism makes this novel as gratifying as its kindred congenial companion, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. There is no wonder that this book won the Booker Prize (1981), Booker of Bookers prize (1993), and The Best of the Booker prize (2008).

n  n    "Because silence, too, has an echo, hollower and longer-lasting than the reverberations of any sound." n  n

Ο ΑΝΔΡΑΣ ΜΕ ΤΙΣ ΜΟΙΡΑΙΕΣ ... ΡΩΓΜΕΣ.

Ένα φαντασμαγορικός οργασμός με ατελείωτη
αφηγηματική δύναμη και αξιοθαύμαστη πνευματική ενέργεια.
Ένα αληθινό παραμύθι της Ανατολής που ανοίγεται στα παράθυρα της ψυχής και του μυαλού και μιλάει με ένα άγριο,προκλητικό,αφοπλιστικό και μοναδικά φορτισμένο αφηγηματικό πλούτο που σε διεγείρει και σε ταυτίζει υπαρξιακά και φυσιογνωμικά.

Ο Σαλίμ γεννιέται στην Ινδία των εκατοντάδων θεών και παραδόσεων τη νύχτα που η χώρα ανεξαρτητοποιείται απο την αγγλική κυριαρχία. Ακριβώς τα μεσάνυχτα της σημαδιακής αυτής ημερομηνίας μέσα στο πανδαιμόνιο της απελευθέρωσης,γεννιούνται πολλά παιδιά τα οποία
μαζί με το Σαλίμ διαθέτουν κάποιες μαγικές ικανότητες.
Είναι ξεχωριστά παιδιά. Είναι τα παιδιά του μεσονυκτίου.

Το βιβλίο είναι γεμάτο λεπτομέρειες, γεγονότα,και καταστάσεις που παίζουν σπουδαίο ρόλο στην πλοκή και την εξέλιξη. Έχει μεγάλο όγκο και δεν είναι εύκολο ανάγνωσμα,είναι όμως αληθινό και μαγικό και τόσο καλογραμμένο που αποκλείεται να μην σε βυθίσει στους ψιθύρους και τα αρώματα της πολύπαθης Ινδίας.

Αρχικά μαθαίνουμε την ιστορία της οικογένειας του Σαλίμ. Ξεκινώντας απο τον αξιοθαύμαστο γιατρό παππού με το κενό στο κέντρο της ψυχής του, μέχρι το γάμο των γονιών του Σαλίμ ή μυξιάρη ή ρουφήχτρα ή καράφλα ή βούδα, ακόμη και φεγγαράκι. Κάθε παρατσούκλι ένα κομμάτι ζωής.

Έπειτα στη Βομβάη και μετά στο Πακιστάν παρακολουθούμε την γέννηση και την παιδική ηλικία του χαρισματικού ήρωα μας. Ο Σαλίμ μέσα απο μια παράξενη παιδική ωριμότητα γίνεται μάρτυρας πολέμου μεταξύ Ινδίας και Πακιστάν και τραγικός επιζών που βιώνει το χαμό ολόκληρης σχεδόν της οικογένειας του. Παράλληλα έχει να παλέψει με τα δικά του κρυφά τέρατα και την ανεκπλήρωτη ερωτική του εμμονή που τον σημαδεύει για πάντα.

Στο τέλος ως ενήλικας με πολλά και βαριά σακιά τραγικών εμπειριών στην πλάτη,επιστρέφει στο Δελχί, αυτή τη φορά μαζί με ένα μωρό,έναν αποτυχημένο αλησμόνητο γάμο,μια φυλάκιση,πλήθος εικονικών προσώπων που χάραξαν ανεξίτηλα τη ζωή του,τον απαγορευμένο εμμονικό του έρωτα,μια απελευθέρωση,μια στείρωση ουσιαστική και μεταφορική και εκατοντάδες χιλιάδες σωματικές,ψυχικές και πνευματικές ρωγμές.


Ρωγμές λόγω αποστράγγισης των δικών του αλλοιωμένων αναμνήσεων, των χαμένων ελπίδων,των ονείρων,των ιδεών του.

Ρωγμές για τη μαζική παραγωγή αισθήσεων και πολιτικών-κοινωνικών και ιστορικών δυνάμεων που έφεραν την μαζική αμνησία στο δικό του έθνος και στο μυαλό του.

Τέλος ταξιδιού.

Τώρα ερχόμαστε στο παρόν της αφήγησης του Σαλίμ. Ο άντρας με τις ρωγμές που ζει ανάμεσα σε βαζάκια τουρσί βιδώνοντας καπάκια,προσπαθώντας να κλείσει μέσα το χρόνο,την ιστορία του και τις μάγισσες των αναμνήσεων του.

"Πρέπει να ζήσουμε,δυστυχώς,με τις σκιές της ατέλειας"

Γευτείτε αυτόν τον συγγραφέα.

Πολλούς ασπασμούς!

I tried tackling this "sacred monster" of a book twenty years ago, and I was defeated - neither my English skills, nor my cultural background were up to the task, and I had to return it to the library only a third of the way in. In a way I'm glad I've waited so long to come back, because Midnight's Children is still a difficult book, but worth all the effort on my part and all the critical praise it received from the Booker Prize crowd.

It was from the start a most ambitious project - the Indian epic to rival War and Peace, Les Miserables, Gone With the Wind and One Hundred Years of Solitude - the big canvas that captures and preserves for posterity the birth of a nation and all of its spirituality:

And there are so many stories to tell, too many, such an excess of intertwined lives / events / miracles / places / rumors, so dense an commingling of the improbable and the mundane! I have been a swallower of lives; and to know me, just the one of me, you'll have to swallow the lot as well.

Despite the Gordian Knot puzzle of the narrative line (Rushdie has an inborn aversion to the straight line from event A to event B), I have the feeling that every chapter in the story of Saleem Sinai, later variously called Snotnose, Stainface, Baldy, Sniffer, Buddha and even Piece-of-the-Moon, was carefully planned and integrated in the larger story of the subcontinent. The metaphor is not difficult to discern, as the book starts with Saleem being born at the stroke of midnight, August 15, 1947, the exact time of India Indepencence from British rule. Of course, from here the author will spent the next 300 pages traipsing back and forth through the saga of the Sinai family from the clear lakes of Kashmir, to Agra, Delhi, Bombay and beyond. I wish, at times, for a more discerning audience, someone who would understand the need for rhythm, pacing, the subtle introduction of minor chords which will later rise, swell, seize the melody. . And the book indeed feels like a symphony, with hundreds of instruments playing different tunes, but following the partiture of the composer and the baton of the conductor. It's also very demanding on the focus of the reader. Sometimes I speed-read my books, especially thrillers, but I found it impossible to fast forward here. On the contrary, I often had to backtrack and re-read a baroque passage to see where I started and make sure I didn't miss one clue or one note played by one specific instrument / character.

The individual life and the history of the country are one indivisible entity, macrocosm and microcosm tied in a cause-effect loop by such innocuous artefacts as a lapis-lazuli decorated silver spitoon, a perforated linen sheet, or a dash of mercurochrome. Politics is life in the tumultous years of Indian and Pakistan struggle for independence, and Salman Rushdie is no casual outside observer of events - he is full of passion and righteous indignation - to the point where the line between his character Saleem and his own personal experiences is blurred. Both of them a unreliable narrators, embelishing the truth to make a point and introducing the magic wand of the supernatural to explain coincidences and causalities. Is factual accuracy more important than the message? The author doesn't think so:

Does one error invalidate the whole fabric? Am I so far gone, in my desperate need for meaning, that I'm prepared to distort everything - to re-write the whole history of my times purely in order to place myself in a central role?

and, in another place:
We're living in the Age of Darkness, Kali-Yuga, in which the cow of morality has been reduced to standing, teeteringly, on a single leg! Kali-Yuga - the losing throw in our national dice-game; the worst of everything; the age when property gives a man rank, when wealth is equatted with virtue, when passion becomes the sole bond between men and women, when falsehood brings success (is it any wonder, in such a time, that I too have become confused about good and evil)

I find it impossible to make a concise resume of the plot or to introduce each major character - remember, I've swallowed a whole world - so I will try to make a few observations about style. Rushdie follows the oral traditions of the Oriental world, where the narrator sits in the dust in front of the whole village and will eat and drink well only if he captures the audience imagination. He will start his chapters with teaser like movie trailers, foretelling in cryptic utterances the coming attractions, postponing the death sentence for another night, holding the reader / listener rooted in place for one more tall story, one more chapter, one more pickle jar of memories:
... and still so much remains to be told ... Uncle Mustapha is growing inside me, and the pout of Parvati-the-witch; a certain lock of a hero's hair is waiting in the wings; and also a labor of thirteen days, and history as an analogue of a prime minister's hair-style; there is to be treason, and fare-dodging, and the scent (wafting on breezes heavy with the ululations of widows) of something frying in an iron skillet) ... .
I look forward to re-reading the book just to savour these titbits of prophetic utterances, now that I have an inkling what they mean. He ends his chapters with promises of more to come, stories waiting in the wings for their time on the scene.

Like the already mentioned Arabian Tales, the content is earthy / slightly rude, with little reticence in tackling sexuality, a really raw sense of humor, freaky characters and improbable magical abilities: If I seem a little bizarre, remember the wild profusion of my inheritance ... perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque. . The result is partly a circus show, but so full of life , so brilliantly colourful, noisy and smelly and overpowering in scale.

In a wily inversion of gender roles, if Saleem takes the role of Sheherezade, The Prince / listener is played in the book by Padma: the down to earth helper, prospective consort and keeper of common sense, pulling the author's sleeve when he goes on a tangent for too long and keeping in check the wilder fancies of his exuberant imagination:
Padma! The Lotus Goddess; The One Who Possesses Dung; Who is Honey-Like, and Made of Gold; whose sons are Moisture and Mud ... Padma, who along with the yaksa genii, who represent the sacred treasure of the earth, and the sacred rivers, Ganga Yamuna Sarasvati, and the tree goddesses, is one of the Guardians of Life, beguiling and comforting mortal men while they pass through the dream web of Maya ... Padma, the lotus calyx which grew out of Vishnu navel, and from which Brahma himself was born; Padma the Source, the mother of Time! ...

The novel mixes freely and to great effect the Gods of Ramayama with the Muslim heritage and with the British / Western pop culture icons in a melting pot that reflects the raw materials from which Saleem spicy pickle preserves / chapters are made. I got the impression the actual Children of Midnight are incarnations / avatars of the old gods - Vishnu, Rama, Ganesh, Shiva, Kali - but I'm not so well versed in the Indian Pantheon to be sure of each reference and godly atribute. The point, anyway is that they are all part and source of the India we are seeing today.

Why introduce magic realism into what is basically a historical account? Because the author operates with symbols and allegories rather than academic reports; because history is made of people not cold statistics, with all their imperfections and irrationalities; and because sometimes reality is too hard to swallow:
What I hope to immortalize in pickles as well as words: that condition of the spirit in which the consequences of acceptance could not be denied, in which an overdose of reality gave birth to a miasmic longing for flight into the safety of dreams
The birth of a nation is not a pretty watercolour to swoon over - it is painted in the blood of millions - from the British troops opening fire in Agra, to the burning of mosques and warehouses, stormtroopers invading Bangladesh, political dissidents dissapearing without trace or prime ministers declaring a state of emergency in order to keep their position ( do we not get the leaders we deserve? . Midnight Children is thus a painful book, with few heroes and a multitude of ordinary people who will get crushed under the steamroller weight of history. Saleem himself has been in the thick of it and then has been thrwn to the sidelines. He has come out with more questions than answers. Most of all he has the people and their stories to preserve in his pickle factory, least they be forgotten:

Who / What am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been / seen / done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone / everything whose being-in-the world affected / was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone, which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each "I", every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world.

Chutnification: the immortalization of a cucumber, or rather, a nose, into something indelibly Indian.

Just... wow.
This story of an inner-ear and nose follows through India's independence through the Emergency during Indra Ghandi, taking on mythological proportions. It is, first and foremost, a delightful, sensual, funny, detailed portrayal of a family saga that pretty much mirrors the trials and tribulations of India itself. Between the partition, Pakistan, the wars, the religions, the profundity of an India that cannot know itself.

To know one person in India, you must eat the world. You must eat it every time for every person.

But as if this wasn't enough to make a brilliant novel, and it certainly is deserving all the awards it ever got, it ALSO happens to be science fiction. Or is it? The thing is, all these Midnight Children born on the hour of India's rebirth (even if political), are all gifted with extraordinary powers.

Our main character, Saleem, when really young, had an ever-snotty nose, and while it was blocked, he could read minds. He was able to contact all the Midnight Children and connect them all. When he could breathe right, he had a preternaturally supreme sense of smell. Others could enter mirrors, change their sex at will, become werewolves. 512 children. All of them modern Hindu Gods. :)

But this book is full of tragedies as well as humor, full of profundity and silliness, anger and optimism, memory and forgetfulness. Just like India, the family is all things at all times and can never be pigeonholed.

I could easily write a few books on this book. It's just that rich. And delightful. I know enough of this part of the world that I didn't flounder that much, but more than that, I was struck by the smells this book evoked. :) I rather fell into the book and couldn't breathe until I finished.

Ah, it deserves all the praise. :)

This is my absolute favourite Rushdie novel. Its background of the Partition of India and Pakistan after the disastrous and cowardly retreat of the British occupiers and the ensuing Emergency under Indira Ghandi provides a breathtaking tableau for Rushdie's narrative. His narrator is completely unreliable and that is what makes the story so fascinating. I lend this book out so many times after talking about it so much (and never got my paperback copy returned) that I had to buy a hardcover that I would no longer lend out so as not to lose it anymore. It was the first time I read a book with this kind of narration (mostly having had the omniscient, distant 3rd party narrator or the interior dialog or stream-of-consciousness 1st person narrator) and this was a revelation for me which later led me to read DFW, Pynchon and other post-modern writers with relish. A fantastic 20th C masterpiece!

I used to talk about it all the time and lend it out and folks liked it so much that I kept having to replace my paperback copy. At one point, I got fed up and bought a hardcover that I don't lend out anymore. The backdrop of the horrors of the partition of India and Pakistan, bungled so badly by the United Kingdom's cowardly retreat leaving a chaotic bloody vacuum in '48, is already compelling but what really makes this novel so fascinating for me is the unreliable narration. It was the first book I read where the first person narrator was a known liar and so you could not always believe what he said. In terms of writing and narration, this was quite a revelation to me (who was used to the omniscient and neutral 3rd person narrator or the deep stream-of-conscious first person narrator). I found it fast-paced and extremely well-written. If you have never read Rushdie before, this is where I would suggest you start!

Yes!!!

The first 100 pages were confusing . I was unsure about finishing this book . I had to do some googling to check on all the characters and the story . It started to make sense . Still it’s not an easy read . I liked it more that I expected.

Between the adored and the adorer falls the shadow.
*
I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’m gone which would not have happened if I had not come.
*
I must finish what I’ve started, even if, inevitably, what I finish turns out not to be what I began …
*
Who were we? Broken promises; made to be broken.