n  

What's real and what's true aren't necessarily the same.

n
Discard skepticism as you approach this epic. Suspend disbelief. Because myth and truth blend into each other imperfectly to spin a gossamer-fine web of reality on which the nation state is balanced precariously. And we, the legatees of this yarn, are caught up in a surrealist farce which plays out interminably in this land of heat and dust and many smells, our rational selves perennially clashing with our shallow beliefs but eventually succumbing to an incomprehensible love of the absurd. Illusion has more to offer than you think.

Approach this panorama with a sense of wonder. This land of Sultunates of slave-kings and Empires wrought by alien invaders, of manic religious ritualism, of a civilization which had co-existed with Mesopotamia and Egypt, of most accomplished snake-charmers of the world, of crushing poverty and staggering riches. The peepshow-man with his dugdugee drum beckons you to behold the images of Meenakshi temple and the Taj Mahal and the Bodhgaya and the holy Ganges streaming down from Lord Shiva's tresses to quench our mortal thirst. And you cannot be a witness to the unfolding of a spectacle without awe.

Approach this homage to the spirit of a time and place with joined palms, head dipping mildly in reverence. With palms bracing the earth, knees bent, forehead kissing the ground. With a hand raised to the forehead then the heart and each shoulder. With an erect palm, thumb and forefinger meeting in a circle. Our pantheon of divinities will look down on you with displeasure otherwise.
But above all, approach this plenitude of tales within tales within tales with love. Without love for the shared fantasy of 'unity in diversity', this book would not have existed at all.
n  

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 teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque.

n
O Swallower of Multitudes! Bearer of Multiple Identities! Assimilator of a million and one traditions! Nation of dubious ancestry, born of imperialism and revolution, of three hundred and thirty million gods and goddesses, prophets and saviours and enlightened ones, fortune-tellers and clairvoyants, fantasies and dreams and nightmares, of self contradictions galore, this is a love letter to you from a besotted son if there ever was one. O people of fractured selves, you who have been scarred by the vicissitudes of history, traumatized by partitioned fates, absorbed by the currents of dynastic politics, afflicted by the optimism disease, gather up and listen to the saga of midnight's children, your very own: one a child of hardwon freedom, other a child of flesh and blood.

Saleem and India. India and Saleem. Not-identical twins but twins bound to mirror each other's ambiguous trysts with destiny, twins doomed to share a love-hate relationship. Listen to vain, foolish, self-deluded, cuckolded Saleem and his self-aggrandizing story-telling. Awash in the glow of his 'Anglepoised pool of light' as he is, fallacious and chutneyfied as his 'history' is, I detect in his voice a quiver, a note of humble deference and endless love.

Love of lapiz-lazuli encrusted silver spittoons, and perforated sheets, of the progress of a nation tied tragicomically with his own. Love of flap-eared Ganesh and a resolutely silent, flap-eared son, love of Sunderbans' phantasmal mangrove forests and Bombay's non-conformity. Love of the blue skies of Kashmir and the hubbub of old Delhi's slums and Amritsar's narrow, malodorous bylanes. Love of people and places beyond borders.
n  

There are as many versions of India as Indians....

n
Do you not make out the throbbing ache in his declamations, for historical compounds left bloodied by dastardly mustachioed brigadiers? For a subcontinent trifurcated meaninglessly and wars waged without rhyme or reason? Can you discern the tone of suppressed anguish and rage for the promise of midnight's children withering away under the harsh glare of an Emergency? The grief for a broken republic and a flickering hope for regeneration and renewal?

n  Midnight has many children; the offspring of Independence were not all human. Violence, corruption, poverty, generals, chaos, greed and pepperpots ... I had to go into exile to learn that the children of midnight were more varied than I - even I - had dreamed.n

I can. In Saleem's contrived cornucopia of stories 'leaking' into each other, I sense his despondency and his joy, his pride and his guilt. And in his implicit avowals of filial love, I find an expression of my own.

n  I had entered into the illusion of the artist, and thought of the multitudinous realities of the land as the raw unshaped material of my gift.n

'Midnight's Children' might be an overblown, unsubtle metaphor for India but it is also a celebration of multiplicity in a universal context. Despite the narrative's flaws and the forced nature of the analogies in the latter half, I choose to honour Saleem Sinai's self-professed intentions. I choose to remember and cherish it as an act of love, as an act of faith.

Does anyone besides me have a book that they mean to read, schedule to read, actually pick up from the library, and yet find every reason not to read it, return it unread or push it backward on the shelf? That has been Midnight’s Children for me. I added it to my TBR in 2016, but I had it on my radar long before that. I’m not sure why I sensed I didn’t really want to read it, but 100 pages of torture later, I am dnfing this. I can now mark it off--stop looking at it, thinking about it, or feeling pressured to read it--I now know it is not for me.

من أجمل ما قرأت من الأعمال المترجمة، رواية سلمان رشدي. لاشك عمله (آيات شيطانية) أصابه بلعنة حالت دون أن يلتفت له القارئ المسلم حتى نكون أكثر دقة، ثم العربي. لكن هذا العمل لابد أن يقرأ لهذا الرجل. عمل تكاملت جوانبه الإبداعية من موضوع وحبكة درامية وتفسير للحدث – حتى لو كان شخصي – وحبكة تنم عن إجتهاد لإرضاد النص فلماذا لا يقرأ؟!. بل هو يستحق القراءة والنقد والترجمة لكل اللغات هذه هي رواية أطفال منتصف الليل.


في البدء وحتى تضع هذه الرواية ضمن أول قائمتك القرائية. هذه الرواية المسكونة حبكة وجنون وسرد خرافي. قد حازت التالي :
1- البوكر العالمية 1981م.
2- جائزة ذكرى جيمس تيت بلاك في العام 1981م.
3- بركر البوكر 1993م.
4- أفضل حائز على جائزة بوكر 2008م.

سيرة شبه القارة الهندية منذ الإحتلال البريطاني حتى الإستقلال ينقلها لنا بضمير المخاطب الهندي، "سليم سينائي" المولود (1947م) كإلتافتة من المؤلف لميلاد الهند الجديد (يوم الإستقلال 15 أغسطس) بعد أن عفست به بريطانيا عقود طويلة وهي تنهب وتسرق خيراتها وتسعبد أبنائها – في الوقت الذي لم يتحرر بعض أبنائه من العنصر البريطاني في الثقافة الهندية – وهي مسيرة طويلة من الأحداث في (667) صفحة. يمزج رشيدي في ثلاثة كتب روائية ذات وحدة موضوعية واحدة بفصول عدة وفق كل كتاب هذه الرواية الجميلة والساحرة والتي أعتبرها من جميل الروايات لكاتب هندي – أصبح محسوب على بريطانيا – ومن أجمل الأعمال الإنجليزية بما أنها خرجت من هذه البيئة رغم موضوعها المناهض للإحتلال البريطاني. خرجت لتنقل لنا مصورة ثلاث ممحطات هندية الإحتلال وبداية خروج المحتل والهند بعد الإستقلال. بواسطة الرواي البطل بآلية الإعترافات المباشرة وتقنية الفلاش باك للأحداث التاريخية التي تستعيدها الرواية.

تقرأ وستعرف كل أحداث الهند إستنادًا على مخزون لدينا لثقافة لابأس بها من السينما الهندية وهذا سوف تشاهده في أحداث الرواية من العادات والتقاليد وإختلاف الأديان والطبقات في المجتمع الهندي والموسيقى وسدهارت وبوذا وكل ما تعرفه عن الهند والإحتلال البريطاني والملكية والدم والسيف والبندقية. حيث يتماهى التاريخ الحقيقي لحقبة الرواية مع التاريخ المتخيل الذي يخدم عنصر التشويق والإيثارة. الرواية ساحرة واسلوبها الأدبي غاية في الجمال وحبكتها قوية متينة قادرة على الثبات لعقود طويلة مخلدة نفسها في قائمة الروايات العالمية.

يمثل الكتاب الأول :
بشخصياته الثانوية كل شعب الهند منذ الإحتلال البريطاني والعبوذية وبعض المحاولات البسيطة في قول (لا) في وجه بريطانيا ويبدو صعوبة تناول مثل هذه المقاومات في ثلث الكتاب حيث الرواية تغطي ثلاثة مراحل وفي هذا الجزء يتجلى الطقس الهندي ذات الأصل البراهمي والسحر والمثيولوجيا المتغلغلة في الهند وتضح معالم الطبقات في المجتمع، وهذه الأحداث في كتابها الأول تتلاقى بطريقة (الفلاش باك) مع عائلة "سليم" قبل ولادته حتى خروجه للحياة وهو يرويها لخادمته.

يمثل الكتاب الثاني :
عنصر حيوي وشيق ومشوق وهو بدايات الصراع الحقيقي ومحاولات حقيقية لنيل الإستعمار وهي فترة كانت بريطانيا بدت تاريخيًا تضعف فيها وتفقد عنصر الشمس المتوهج وقد أنتفخ كرشها وتوجب عليها التقليل من هذه الشحوم مقابلة بالنهضة الحديثة في العالم ومحاولات بريطانيا تحسين صورتها – أنىّ لها ذلك – ويظهر عنصر الشعب بين الرافض للإحتلال وبين قلة من العناصر التي دومًا ما تجد نفسها في المحتل وترتمي تحت قدمه.

يمثل الكتاب الثالث : هو المرحلة الأخيرة وهي الإستقلال (1947م) وظهور إقليم الأكثرية المسلمة (باكستان) أخر هدايا بريطانيا للأمة الهندية وقد أشعلت فتيل العداوة بينهما بتقسيم وترسيم الحدود وتاركة (كشيمر) كمنتطقة صراع وكيف تبدع الرواية في حبكة رائعة تسجيل أثر هذه الإنقسام. وكيف أثرها على البطل (سليم) حيث تمثل ولادته ولادة خديجة مقارنةً بولادة الهند الجديدة مقسمة بالمسطرة ليتصدر هذا التقسيم أحداث دموية في قادم العمر.

أخيرًا.. وهو مما يلتف نظري عطفًا على عمله الذي سوف يليه في التأليف وهو آيات شيطانية" هذا العمل كان بها حس خفي إسلامي أستوقفني. أقول توقفت عنده عطفًا على الرواية التالية التي سوف يتجاوز فيها رشدي، المقدس ويخترق التابو. لكن أترك لكم قراءة كلا النصين.

هنا مراجعتي لرواية آيات شيطانية :
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

قراءات 2009م

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.

This exceptionally lauded, magical tour-de-force needs not my humble opinions, it already has the praise of countless clever wordsmiths and the critiques of many superior minds, but the laying down of my thoughts is none the less my task and I shall do so with haste to meet the end. Rushdie's writing is cyclical and beautiful, it's beat forces your mind to match it's stolid and whimsical pace; a story that is organic yet maintains a deliberateness that allows you to take a breathe and rest your eyes, knowing that while the destination is not fully known the conductor will deliver you there at a time of their choosing and by circuitous routes.

I am not completely sure where to start, how to approach the task I have undertaken, still smitten with the beauty of this book and the ugliness it contains, I almost dare not pick at it for fear it will vanish like a man in a basket crossing political barriers, or crumble in my mind like so much eaten away bone matter. Let me just try to sum up what kind of book this is - as anyone will know, it is a superb (perhaps the superb) example of magic realism, it is also a multi-generational family epic and the epic of India herself. This book is a coming-of-age, again of a man, but also of a nation. This book is about the magic a place and people can hold, breed, and live; it is also about how that magic can be stolen, ripped away, squandered - birth and death, hope and fear. This is a tale of Kashmiri blue eyes, cucumbers, pickles, knees and noses, hands that dance, and perforated sheets. There are diamonds and rubies, snakes and ladders, mothers and fathers; there are tetrapods, as well as, center partings. I fear I am still just circling, failing to describe this incredible story of India and of Saleem Sinai, if I tried to explain you wouldn't believe, but if you read you will doubt your present, but accept his past.

Perhaps nonsensical rambling is all I can give you... I was not born at a time of magic. As far as I know my life is my own, not burdened with ties to that of my homeland. I have no special gifts bestowed upon me and thus I can not use them to entrance you in a tale, but Salman does, and Saleem does, so quick, depart this circling drain of hints and glimpses, enter the world of children born at midnight where destiny rules over reason, bends it, morphs it, contorts it into a likeable if not always attractive and enviable form. Go be witness to the alpha and omega. Go see what silver spittoons have to offer and how the dead are burdened by the sins of the living. Go now, to the land of green chutneys and saffron beards. Do not be weary, this a tale that contains pain and suffering true, but it is not suffocated by it, it lives... it will live on in your own mind long after you reach the close.

“a son who will never be older than his motherland..there will be two heads—but you will see only one—there will be knees and a nose, a nose and knees. Newspapers will praise him, two mothers raise him. Sisters will weep, cobras will creep. Washing will hide him—voices will guide him. Friends mutilate him—blood will betray him!....He will have sons without having sons. He will be old before he is old! And he will die…before he is dead.”

This is only a small part of the prophecy that begins the story of Saleem Sinai the principal narrator of “Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdie. This a story of one child who is born at the midnight on August 15, 1947 the very hour when India gained independence from British rule. It is a book that has been sitting on my bookshelf for the last 3 years. I knew it would be difficult and an undertaking to plow through. Took me over 6 weeks of committed reading. I had to start it twice, listen to parts to get the names right and almost stopped about ¾ through. The story did keep me going though I felt there were only tidbits of India’s history and felt that, “A Fine Balance” by Rohinton Misty actually gave me more of a flavor of India.
The writing was many layered and often hard to follow completely. I’m sure I missed much looking for the gem of the story but it was a good read and I am most glad to say I read it. Don’t think I am ready for any more Rushie for a while.

امتیاز من: 3.6
مغزم باد کرده، از تاریخ هند، از وقایع غیرمعمول، از زندگی تمام‌نشدنی سلیم سینایی. او خیلی قبل‌تر از این‌که به دنیا بیاید داستانش را شروع می‌کند ولی برای خواننده عجیب به نظر نمی‌رسد که چطور؟ شاید به این دلیل که خیلی خوب می‌تواند خودش را همتای تاریخ نشان بدهد و در ردیف اسطوره‌ها. خیلی راحت می‌تواند وقایع را به خودش ربط بدهد و خودش را «هند» بداند. خیلی هم صحبت نماد و استعاره نیست چرا که سلیم سینایی به این موضوع اشاره می‌کند. بارها خودش را هند می‌داند با آن لکه‌های روی صورت و آن دماغ خیاری. و هر چقدر سلیم سینایی به‌تدریج ناقص می‌شود -مثل قربانی‌ای در یک مراسم آیینی- اوضاع هند هم وخیم‌تر می‌شود. البته شاید خواننده نخواهد پابه‌پای تمام وقایع هند پیش برود. شاید حوصله‌اش از این‌همه اطلاعات تاریخی سر برود. سلمان رشدی خواننده را تشنه نگه نمی‌دارد تا جرعه جرعه داستان را سر بکشد، او خواننده را سیر می‌کند و گاهی حتا دلزده. اینجوری است که رمان «بچه‌های نیمه‌شب» گاهی کم‌تر جذاب است.

Inspired by Salman Rushdie, I plan to write this review in the same style as he has written the book. A small group, …. a huge beginning, ….. the first ever Book of the Month to be nominated, …. a young man with a desire to read the best, …. a Booker prize winner, and ….. me finally at the end, a reader with certain prejudices, which led to this book becoming the Book of the Year, not because it was the best book I have read this year but because it took me the better part of the year to finally read it. However, let’s not race to the end but start at the beginning. And all this began when or rather after I joined GoodReads……

I joined GR primarily to keep track of my reads and to look out for new books and genres. Groups and people were not in the circle of things but being new to the site, I joined a few, in order to get a grip on how things worked. At this stage, the groups I joined were mostly those that were geographically applicable to me or were genres that I loved reading. Little did I know that this would lead to some wonderful friends and cherished relationships, or better still bring about some changes me and make me want to be a better person.

As with any social interface, some relationships gave me pain whilst some others giving me so much joy and happiness that I forgot all the pain and instead wallowed heartily in the love that was coming my way. History would want me to lay down that there was a split in the relationship, which gave birth to a small group, one that became really close to my heart. When starting a group, one of the first activities that most groups indulge in is the BOTM or BOM, which is what our small group did as well. And as with any BOMs there were many options, of which one was chosen. However, let me take a pause here before I run further and talk about something that occurred simultaneously during this time or maybe even before the group nominated its first BOM.

A friendship, one special friendship, which transformed into a mother-son relationship, one that taught me to love and love unconditionally, even those who were not related to me by way of blood. This was a relationship I shared with a special friend, my first born. Yes, my first born here in GR, for that’s what he calls himself despite us not being related to each other by way of blood and I have to tell you that I not only love it but am immensely proud of him and the honour he has done me by giving me the tag of a mother. He is someone who knows and understands that the world should be enjoyed with a childlike enthusiasm and wonder.

He is a person who not only loves everyone around him but ensures that they fall in love with him as well. He is the one who is responsible for the brood of kiddos I have in GR today and let me tell you that I have loved every bit of mothering that I gave them, although I am not sure if they have loved it or not! He puts me on a pedestal, despite my not wanting him to and when I call him to task about that he denies it and provides me with so much love that I don’t want to get down from that pedestal. All I wish for him is the very best in life, for he truly deserves all that and more!

Coming back to the book, the group and the first BOM, books were nominated and one among those was this book, which won the contest and became our first ever BOM in the group. Needless to say that I wasn’t impressed with it and got into it pretty reluctantly. After reading a couple of pages, I threw the book away and wanted to go somewhere and simply bang my head. Am sure you must have understood by now that my first attempt at this book was a total disaster. Not surprising therefore that I badgered my first born, as he was the one who wanted the book to win.

To say I hated it then would be putting it really mildly as it was a hatred with such fervor that I never thought of ever getting back to this ever again in life. I had taken that pledge and of course like all literary pledges that I take, which is quite often in life, this one was to be broken. Persisting in his encouragement, pleading in favour of the book and often subjecting me to dramatic tears and outbursts, this young man made it clear that I should read it, else I shall remain wondering for life about it. And so began my journey with this book, nearly 6 months after it was nominated. Given that this book was read because of the persistence, perseverance and encouragement of my first born, it is obvious that I dedicate this book review to him.

Hajarath Prasad aka Harry aka my first born - this review is for you. Despite my many outbursts, which my family had to suffer through, while I read this book, I owe you a huge thanks for making me read it and for enriching my reading experience.

With the history now in place, we can easily move towards the actual review of this book. It is not, at least by me, the best book or even worthy of its various monikers or even the prize. However, it is a book that is at the same time well deserved of every praise that it has got till now. Confused at my paradoxical statement? To be honest, in every aspect of life, truth lies somewhere in the middle and so it is with this book and its plot or narration.

Let us talk about the plot first, which according to me was simply superb and totally imaginative. The basic theme on which this book was written is so sublime that I have to give its author full marks for conceiving it and implementing it in a manner that deserves praise and all accolades. However, the book, despite its great plot, fails a little in narration. Don’t get me wrong, there are parts that are totally brilliant, in fact superlative in terms of their imagery and delivery but there are other parts which feel a little contrived, largely due to their staccato prose. Staccato prose, by itself, is not the problem, especially if it has a certain reason to be present in the book. Here, however, Mr. Rushdie uses it so often and sometimes unnecessarily that it used to become a chore to concentrate on what is written and worse to interpret it.

Another irritating factor in this book is the grammar and sentence construction used by the author. I am not a great scholar of grammar and I guess that’s why I am not a writer but when a book wins the Booker, it is obvious to have high expectations from the author in this regard. However, Mr. Rushdie, through his convoluted sentence constructions and several basic mistakes spoiled my reading experience. While there aren’t any glaring mistakes as such, one often feels that the sentence could have been constructed in a different manner, which would have been both sound in grammar whilst also sounding correct to the ears or eyes.

Moreover, in places where staccato prose is used, you are left with a feeling of disillusion, largely because you want the imagery to be perfect and reality says that it is not. In addition to leaving you disillusioned at times, you are also irritated with the use of literal translations of certain phrases originally used in the vernacular language to English, although in all honesty I have to admit that it did sound apt and natural in certain circumstances.

Despite these irks, I did love the book as my rating shows. I loved it for the characters, the story line, plot development and more importantly character development; especially the main character of Saleem Sinai. Mr. Rushdie, through his narration and sometimes superlative prose, brings to our minds the triumphs and failures of Saleem Sinai so beautifully that you don’t care about the other irks.

The plot and character development is woven together so beautifully that it forms a tapestry that is simply brilliant; albeit a little random at times. Nevertheless, this final tapestry, which goes seamlessly between the past and the present, is definitely awe inspiring. Whether it is hysterical grandmother or the reclusive parents or even the boisterous and later subdued sister or even the crazy friends or the mysterious Padma, the listener; Mr. Rushdie manages to paint a picture that is both fascinating and repulsive, a kind of feeling that you love to hate and hate to love and yet you are left loving. The various emotions running through the characters when interwoven with the history of the land creates a hold on you as a reader and this is truly magical.

The realistic nature of the prose and the honesty in human emotions that is portrayed in this book is incomparable and is perhaps its true redeeming factor. No human emotion or dialogue or even monologue is contrived or artificial or wrongly placed. This book reaches new heights in terms of displaying raw human need and emotions. Whether it is avarice, fear, courage, victory, failure, joy or sorrow, there is an element of truth in the manner in which it has been expressed and this truly endeared me to this book. Honesty is what Saleem Sinai wants to achieve and he says so to that extent in the beginning of the book and he does deliver it in style through the prose which is at times mellifluous and at times jerky but is always true to its basic tenet of being honest. It manages to produce hilarity at one instant whilst converging into a pathos in another, which is something remarkable. The narrative is also marked with a certain intrigue and suspense that you are drawn into it without even being aware of it. In short, as a reader, you cannot deny that Mr. Rushdie has achieved what he wanted to achieve, despite there being certain irksome features in that entire process. Finally, the plot with its myriad twists and turns made for an excellent read. Where some were predictable, others were quite incredible, making it a fun reading experience.

I would like to end this review with this quote, which I feel sums it up aptly,

”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.”

Thank you Harry, once again for making me read this one!

Magical Realism allows the author to break free from traditional literary constraints and let his imagination soar.....and Salman Rushdie's imagination takes flight with the high- flying eagle .




In this 1981 Booker Prize winning novel, Rushdie imagines a pre- and post- Colonial India whose fate is intertwined with those who were born at the stroke of midnight on the date of the nation's independence from British rule. These 'midnight's children' possess special abilities- in the case of the main character and narrator, Saleem Sinai, it is telekinesis, the ability which connects the other 500+ 'children'. India's Partition, the Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi, the wars with Pakistan are all a reflection of the thoughts and actions of 'the children'. Allegorical musings aside, Rushdie is a writer of the highest order. Intelligent, humorous, whimsical, he packs alot of punch per page. The narrative meanders, backtracks, dips and doodles and can frustrate the first time reader, but if you hang in there, like I did, the payoff is vastly rewarding.
With a vast array of characters, Midnight's Children is a novel rich in scope and imagination, an emotionally charged look at a nation learning how to, once again, live with itself.

Όταν διαβάζω ξένους συγγραφείς που καταφέρνουν να μεταμορφώνουν την ιστορία της χώρας τους σε τόσο συναρπαστικές αφηγήσεις, απαιτητικές και ονειρικές μαζί, εγκεφαλικές αλλά και συναισθηματικές, μαγικές χωρίς να αιθεροβατούν και δαιδαλώδεις χωρίς να χάνεσαι ποτέ αλλά να αναζητάς την επόμενη έκπληξη, τότε μου βγαίνει ένα μικρό γαμώτο γιατί κανείς δεν μπορεί να κάνει κάτι ανάλογο στη χώρα μας. Αν και από Ρουσντί έχω διαβάσει μόνο άλλα δύο βιβλία, δε νομίζω πως ξεπέρασε ή θα ξεπεράσει ποτέ τα ύψη που έπιασε με αυτό.

Now, I am beginning to like Salman Rushdie.

Last year, I read his controversial novel The Satanic Verses and I hated it so I gave it a lone star.

Here in Midnight's Children, his playful and I-don't-care-if-you-like-me-or-not writing style is still very much around. This is a long read and it took me the whole week to reach up to its last word on page 647. It started strong, interesting and clear. Once details, too much of them, are introduced, I dazed off and became an outsider watching the passing Rushdie's parade. I think this is my problem with Salman Rushdie's books.

I do not see the snow-capped house in the eyes of Yuri in Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. I do not hear the sweet mandolin played by Captain Corelli in De Bernieres' Corelli's Mandolin. Rushdie does his own thing and I am there watching. The same feeling I got sitting down in the movie theater this week watching Leonardo de Caprio's Inception. It is good, the story is imaginative, and the cinematic effects are mind-blowing. However, at the end of almost 3 hours, I felt cheated. I felt alienated.

Same thing with Midnight's Children. This book won the Man Booker Prize in 1981 and Booker of Bookers twice: 1993 and 2008. This means that the Booker committee is saying that in 1993, this novel is the best among all the past Booker winners since 1969 like Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea (1978), J. M. Coetzee's Life and Times of Michael K. (1983), Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day (1989), A. S. Byatt's Possession (1990) and Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient (1992). However, in 2008, Midnight Children won again. This means that it bested all those novels again plus the winners between 1993 and 2008 like J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace (1999), Yann Martel's Life of Pi (2002), John Banville's The Sea (2005) , Anne Enright's The Gathering (2007) and Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger (2008). I only included the ones that I've read so far but the Booker committees seem to be saying that Rushdie is one hell of an author, a league of its own by besting all the works of these other well-known and liked writers.

To its credit, Midnight's Children is well-written. The story's scope is wide and the effort put in it is highly commendable. I mean if you put a character's life story (I am talking about its main protagonist Saleem Sinai's life story) in parallel with India's story as a country gaining independence from Great Britain, it is too stupid for me not to see Rushdie's brilliance. In this novel, you will learn a lot about India as a nation. You will know that Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kashmir used to be part of India until the Partition (which forms the backdrop of this novel). You will meet (not in person but on those pages) the different actual personalities involved and still involve in that struggle. Rushdie successfully mixed fiction and non-fiction characters in the story. You will know what those countries went through the Muslims arriving in India on trains only to be struck by bullets as they fight over territories. It is a thousand times more comprehensive and effective than how the Philippine's National Hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, portrayed and capture our country's situation during the Spanish regime in his revolutionary book, Noli Me Tangere. Rushdie's powerful solid punches just shame Rizal's timid air strokes.

I am almost tempted to give this a 4- or 5-star rating. It is just that I cannot shake off the alienation I felt while reading this for more than 6 days this week.

Nevertheless, after writing this review, I now like Salman Rushdie.

“To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world” (Everyman’s Library, p. 125). Midnight’s Children’s ambition is elephantine: a multi-layered, dizzying kaleidoscope encompassing and spinning together the narrator’s phantasmagorical biography, the complicated history of 20th-century India, and the deep-rooted beliefs and cultural archetypes of its people. In a (long) word, Midnight’s Children is a sprawling, swirling historical-auto-meta-fictional-polyglottal-confabulating-Bildungsroman.

In a (different) word: Saleem Sinai was born at the stroke of midnight, on the 15th of August 1947, at the exact moment of India’s independence from the British Empire and its partition into two countries, India and Pakistan. One thousand and one other babies were born during that same fateful and miraculous hour, and their destinies were thereafter intimately connected.

This (unreliable) tale speaks of its narrator and its author just as well: Saleem and Salman, both born in 1947, both of Kashmiri Muslim descent, both raised in Bombay, both bearers of a twitchy nose. The novel starts 30 years before their birth, at the end of World War I, and spans across time, all the way to the late 1970s, 30 years after their birth, to the moment when the tale is being told, the book is being written, and a new generation is being born. Meanwhile, the narrative travels through space, like a flying carpet, from Delhi to Bombay and from Karachi to Dhaka.

In addition, Midnight’s Children subsumes a vast literary tradition. The style of Rushdie’s novel is strongly associated with magic realism, and Cien años de soledad often comes to mind: the archaic, almost mythic beginnings, the surreal elements, the circularity of time, the encyclopaedic scope. In a way, Midnight’s Children is a sort of “David Copperfield goes to Bollywood”, just as Cien años might be “Don Quijote goes to El Dorado”. Midnight’s Children also harks back (sometimes quite explicitly) to an even more venerable body of texts, such as the One Thousand and One Nights, with its frame narrative, the Book of Genesis or the Mahabharata, with their brotherly antagonisms (Abel vs Cain, Yudhishthira vs Duryodhana, Saleem vs Shiva, snakes & ladders, knees & nose).

All in all, Rushdie uses two metaphors to describe his literary project. The first one is at the start of the novel: it is the perforated sheet through which Aadam Aziz discovers, bit by bit, the body of his future wife and the growing love in his heart. The book proceeds in much the same way, like watching life through a keyhole or observing history through the lens of a camera, and putting together a disjointed, dis-chronological, dis-probable set of fragments, intentionally confusing and playfully assorted.

The second metaphor, at the very end of the novel, describes the upshot of this technique: “the chutnification of history; the grand hope of the pickling of time” (p. 585). Indeed, Midnight’s Children’s ambition is to jam together a complete family saga and the epic of a whole nation. A narrative that gobbles up an entire universe, like the vision of Krishna’s cosmic body in the Gita, with unlimited arms, faces, and stomachs, pureeing everything into a chunky concoction, a supreme turd. Admittedly, the result is, dare I say, tasty, spicy even? And yes, it is a perfect novel, a masterpiece... at times a bit overdone and stodgy as well… In a (last) word… *burp*

Kamaal Hai! What a novel!

Reading this masterpiece was like smoking an aromatic, intoxicating, hallucinogenic herb.

India offers the world yet another great value product. And to be honest, I believe that the Indian subcontinent has offered the world more than the world has ever offered it in return.


Snake charmers on the side of the road.

India, the home of tolerance and violence, wealth and poverty of magical fables and harsh reality.
We are talking about the fatherland of Ghandi and Mohammed Rafi, origin of Yoga, Bollywood, chai masala, biryani, Alphonso mango, kulfi ice cream and …. of Rani Mukerji