Picture Singh whispered, “Okay, captain—damn good!” And Parvati bent down close to me; her lips must have been against the outside of the basket. What Parvati-the-witch whispered through wickerwork:
“Hey, you Saleem: just to think! You and me, mister—midnight’s children, yaar! That’s something, no?”
That’s something … Saleem, shrouded in wickerwork darkness, was reminded of years-ago midnights, of childhood wrestling bouts with purpose and meaning; overwhelmed by nostalgia, I still did not understand what that something was. Then Parvati whispered some other words, and, inside the basket of invisibility, I, Saleem Sinai, complete with my loose anonymous garment, vanished instantly into thin air.
“Vanished? How vanished, what vanished?” Padma’s head jerks up; Padma’s eyes stare at me in bewilderment. I, shrugging, merely reiterate: Vanished, just like that. Disappeared. Dematerialized. Like a djinn: poof, like so.
“So,” Padma presses me, “she really-truly was a witch?”
Really-truly. I was in the basket, but also not in the basket; Picture Singh lifted it one-handed and tossed it into the back of the Army truck taking him and Parvati and ninety-nine others to the aircraft waiting at the military airfield; I was tossed with the basket, but also not tossed. Afterwards, Picture Singh said, “No, captain, I couldn’t feel your weight”; nor could I feel any bump thump bang. One hundred and one artistes had arrived, by I.A.F. troop transport, from the capital of India; one hundred and two persons returned, although one of them was both there and not there. Yes, magic spells can occasionally succeed. But also fail: my father, Ahmed Sinai, never succeeded in cursing Sherri, the mongrel bitch.
Without passport or permit, I returned, cloaked in invisibility, to the land of my birth; believe, don’t believe, but even a sceptic will have to provide another explanation for my presence here. Did not the Caliph Haroun al-Rashid (in an earlier set of fabulous tales) also wander, unseen invisible anonymous, cloaked through the streets of Baghdad? What Haroun achieved in Baghdad streets, Parvati-the-witch made possible for me, as we flew through the air-lanes of the subcontinent. She did it; I was invisible; bas. Enough.
Memories of invisibility: in the basket, I learned what it was like, will be like, to be dead. I had acquired the characteristics of ghosts! Present, but insubstantial; actual, but without being or weight … I discovered, in the basket, how ghosts see the world. Dimly hazily faintly … it was around me, but only just; I hung in a sphere of absence at whose fringes, like faint reflections, could be seen the specters of wickerwork. The dead die, and are gradually forgotten; time does its healing, and they fade—but in Parvati’s basket I learned that the reverse is also true; that ghosts, too, begin to forget; that the dead lose their memories of the living, and at last, when they are detached from their lives, fade away—that dying, in short, continues for a long time after death. Afterwards, Parvati said, “I didn’t want to tell you—but nobody should be kept invisible that long—it was dangerous, but what else was there to do?”
In the grip of Parvati’s sorcery, I felt my hold on the world slip away—and how easy, how peaceful not to never to return!—to float in this cloudy nowhere, wafting further further further, like a seed-spore blown on the breeze—in short, I was in mortal danger.
What I held on to in that ghostly time-and-space: a silver spittoon. Which, transformed like myself by Parvati-whispered words, was nevertheless a reminder of the outside … clutching finely-wrought silver, which glittered even in that nameless dark, I survived. Despite head-to-toe numbness, I was saved, perhaps, by the glints of my precious souvenir.
No—there was more to it than spittoons: for, as we all know by now, our hero is greatly affected by being shut up in confined spaces. Transformations spring upon him in the enclosed dark. As a mere embryo in the secrecy of a womb (not his mother’s), did he not grow into the incarnation of the new myth of August 15th, the child of ticktock—did he not emerge as the Mubarak, the Blessed Child? In a cramped wash-room, were name-tags not switched around? Alone in a washing-chest with a drawstring up one nostril, did he not glimpse a Black Mango and sniff too hard, turning himself and his upper cucumber into a kind of supernatural ham radio? Hemmed in by doctors, nurses and anesthetic masks, did he not succumb to numbers and, having suffered drainage-above, move into a second phase, that of nasal philosopher and (later) tracker supreme? Squashed, in a small abandoned hut, beneath the body of Ayooba Baloch, did he not learn the meaning of fair-and-unfair? Well, then—trapped in the occult peril of the basket of invisibility, I was saved, not only by the glints of a spittoon, but also by another transformation: in the grip of that awful disembodied loneliness, whose smell was the smell of graveyards, I discovered anger.
Something was fading in Saleem and something was being born. Fading: an old pride in baby-snaps and framed Nehru-letter; an old determination to espouse, willingly, a prophesied historical role; and also a willingness to make allowances, to understand how parents and strangers might legitimately despise or exile him for his ugliness; mutilated fingers and monks’ tonsures no longer seemed like good enough excuses for the way in which he, I, had been treated. The object of my wrath was, in fact, everything which I had, until then, blindly accepted: my parents’ desire that I should repay their investment in me by becoming great; genius-like-a-shawl; the modes of connection themselves inspired in me a blind, lunging fury. Why me? Why, owing to accidents of birth prophecy etcetera, must I be responsible for language riots and after-Nehru-who, for pepperpot-revolutions and bombs which annihilated my family? Why should I, Saleem Snotnose, Sniffer, Mapface, Piece-of-the-Moon, accept the blame for what-was-not-done by Pakistani troops in Dacca? … Why, alone of all the more-than-five-hundred-million, should I have to bear the burden of history?
What my discovery of unfairness (smelling of onions) had begun, my invisible rage completed. Wrath enabled me to survive the soft siren temptations of invisibility; anger made me determined, after I was released from vanishment in the shadow of a Friday Mosque, to begin, from that moment forth, to choose my own, undestined future. And there, in the silence of graveyard-reeking isolation, I heard the long-ago voice of the virginal Mary Pereira, singing:
Anything you want to be, you kin be,
You kin be just what-all you want.
Tonight, as I recall my rage, I remain perfectly calm; the Widow drained anger out of me along with everything else. Remembering my basket-born rebellion against inevitability, I even permit myself a wry, understanding smile. “Boys,” I mutter tolerantly across the years to Saleem-at-twenty-four, “will be boys.” In the Widows’ Hostel, I was taught, harshly, once-and-for-all, the lesson of No Escape; now, seated hunched over paper in a pool of Anglepoised light, I no longer want to be anything except what who I am. 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.
Although now, as the pouring-out of what-was-inside-me nears an end; as cracks widen within—I can hear and feel the rip tear crunch—I begin to grow thinner, translucent almost; there isn’t much of me left, and soon there will be nothing at all. Six hundred million specks of dust, and all transparent, invisible as glass …
But then I was angry. Glandular hyper-activity in a wicker amphora: eccrine and apocrine glands poured forth sweat and stink, as if I were trying to shed my fate through my pores; and, in fairness to my wrath, I must record that it claimed one instant achievement—that when I tumbled out of the basket of invisibility into the shadow of the mosque, I had been rescued by rebellion from the abstraction of numbness; as I bumped out on to the dirt of the magicians’ ghe
tto, silver spittoon in hand, I realized that I had begun, once again, to feel.
Some afflictions, at least, are capable of being conquered.
The Shadow of the Mosque
NO SHADOW OF A DOUBT: an acceleration is taking place. Rip crunch crack—while road surfaces split in the awesome heat, I, too, am being hurried towards disintegration. What-gnaws-on-bones (which, as I have been regularly obliged to explain to the too many women around me, is far beyond the powers of medicine men to discern, much less to cure) will not be denied for long; 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 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 … so that I, too, am forced to accelerate, to make a wild dash for the finishing line; before memory cracks beyond hope of reassembly, I must breast the tape. (Although already, already there are fadings, and gaps; it will be necessary to improvise on occasion.)
Twenty-six pickle-jars stand gravely on a shelf; twenty-six special blends, each with its identifying label, neatly inscribed with familiar phrases: “Movements Performed by Pepperpots,” for instance, or “Alpha and Omega,” or “Commander Sabarmati’s Baton.” Twenty-six rattle eloquently when local trains go yellow-and-browning past; on my desk, five empty jars tinkle urgently, reminding me of my uncompleted task. But now I cannot linger over empty pickle-jars; the night is for words, and green chutney must wait its turn.
… Padma is wistful: “O, mister, how lovely Kashmir must be in August, when here it is hot like a chilli!” I am obliged to reprove my plump-yet-muscled companion, whose attention has been wandering; and to observe that our Padma Bibi, long-suffering tolerant consoling, is beginning to behave exactly like a traditional Indian wife. (And I, with my distances and self-absorption, like a husband?) Of late, in spite of my stoic fatalism about the spreading cracks, I have smelled, on Padma’s breath, the dream of an alternative (but impossible) future; ignoring the implacable finalities of inner fissures, she has begun to exude the bitter-sweet fragrance of hope-for-marriage. My dung-lotus, who remained impervious for so long to the sneer-lipped barbs hurled by our workforce of downy-forearmed women; who placed her cohabitation with me outside and above all codes of social propriety, has seemingly succumbed to a desire for legitimacy … in short, although she has not said a word on the subject, she is waiting for me to make an honest woman of her. The perfume of her sad hopefulness permeates her most innocently solicitous remarks—even at this very moment, as she, “Hey, mister, why not—finish your writery and then take rest; go to Kashmir, sit quietly for some time—and maybe you will take your Padma also, and she can look after … ?” Behind this burgeoning dream of a Kashmiri holiday (which was once also the dream of Jehangir, the Mughal Emperor; of poor forgotten Ilse Lubin; and, perhaps, of Christ himself), I nose out the presence of another dream; but neither this nor that can be fulfilled. Because now the cracks, the cracks and always the cracks are narrowing my future towards its single inescapable fullpoint; and even Padma must take a back seat if I’m to finish my tales.
Today, the papers are talking about the supposed political rebirth of Mrs. Indira Gandhi; but when I returned to India, concealed in a wicker basket, “The Madam” was basking in the fullness of her glory. Today, perhaps, we are already forgetting, sinking willingly into the insidious clouds of amnesia; but I remember, and will set down, how I—how she—how it happened that—no, I can’t say it, I must tell it in the proper order, until there is no option but to reveal … On December 16th, 1971,1 tumbled out of a basket into an India in which Mrs. Gandhi’s New Congress Party held a more-than-two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.
In the basket of invisibility, a sense of unfairness turned into anger; and something else besides—transformed by rage, I had also been overwhelmed by an agonizing feeling of sympathy for the country which was not only my twin-in-birth but also joined to me (so to speak) at the hip, so that what happened to either of us, happened to us both. If I, snot-nosed stain-faced etcetera, had had a hard time of it, then so had she, my subcontinental twin sister; and now that I had given myself the right to choose a better future, I was resolved that the nation should share it, too. I think that when I tumbled out into dust, shadow and amused cheers, I had already decided to save the country.
(But there are cracks and gaps … had I, by then, begun to see that my love for Jamila Singer had been, in a sense, a mistake? Had I already understood how I had simply transferred on to her shoulders the adoration which I now perceived to be a vaulting, all-encompassing love of country? When was it that I realized that my truly-incestuous feelings were for my true birth-sister, India herself, and not for that trollop of a crooner who had so callously shed me, like a used snake-skin, and dropped me into the metaphorical waste-basket of Army life? When when when? … Admitting defeat, I am forced to record that I cannot remember for sure.)
… Saleem sat blinking in the dust in the shadow of the mosque. A giant was standing over him, grinning hugely, asking, “Achha, captain, have a good trip?” And Parvati, with huge excited eyes, pouring water from a lotah into his cracked, salty mouth … Feeling! The icy touch of water kept cool in earthenware surahis, the cracked soreness of parched-raw lips, silver-and-lapis clenched in a fist … “I can feel!” Saleem cried to the good-natured crowd.
It was the time of afternoon called the chaya, when the shadow of the tall red-brick-and-marble Friday Mosque fell across the higgledy shacks of the slum clustered at its feet, that slum whose ramshackle tin roofs created such a swelter of heat that it was insupportable to be inside the fragile shacks except during the chaya and at night … but now conjurers and contortionists and jugglers and fakirs had gathered in the shade around the solitary stand-pipe to greet the new arrival. “I can feel!” I cried, and then Picture Singh, “Okay, captain—tell us, how it feels?—to be born again, falling like baby out of Parvati’s basket?” I could smell amazement on Picture Singh; he was clearly astounded by Parvati’s trick, but, like a true professional, would not dream of asking her how she had achieved it. In this way Parvati-the-witch, who had used her limitless powers to spirit me to safety, escaped discovery; and also because, as I later discovered, the ghetto of the magicians disbelieved, with the absolute certainty of illusionists-by-trade, in the possibility of magic. So Picture Singh told me, with amazement, “I swear, captain—you were so light in there, like a baby!”—But he never dreamed that my weightlessness had been anything more than a trick.
“Listen, baby sahib,” Picture Singh was crying, “What do you say, baby-captain? Must I put you over my shoulder and make you belch?”—And now Parvati, tolerantly: “That one, baba, always making joke shoke.” She was smiling radiantly at everyone in sight … but there followed an inauspicious event. A woman’s voice began to wail at the back of the cluster of magicians: “Ai-o-ai-o! Ai-o-o!” The crowd parted in surprise and an old woman burst through it and rushed at Saleem; I was required to defend myself against a brandished frying pan, until Picture Singh, alarmed, seized her by pan-waving arm and bellowed, “Hey, capteena, why so much noise?” And the old woman, obstinately: “Ai-o-ai-o!”
“Resham Bibi,” Parvati said, crossly, “You got ants in your brain?” And Picture Singh, “We got a guest, capteena—what’ll he do with your shouting? Arré, be quiet, Resham, this captain is known to our Parvati personal! Don’t be coming crying in front of him!”
“Ai-o-ai-o! Bad luck is come! You go to foreign places and bring it here! Ai-oooo!”
Disturbed visages of magicians stared from Resham Bibi to me—because although they were a people who denied the supernatural, they were artistes, and like all performers had an implicit faith in luck, good-luck-and-bad-luck, luck … “Yourself you said,” Resham Bibi wailed, “this man is born twice, and
not even from woman! Now comes desolation, pestilence and death. I am old and so I know. Arré baba,” she turned plaintively to face me, “Have pity only; go now—go go quick!” There was a murmur—“It is true, Resham Bibi knows the old stories”—but then Picture Singh became angry. “The captain is my honored guest,” he said, “He stays in my hut as long as he wishes, for short or for long. What are you all talking? This is no place for fables.”
Saleem Sinai’s first sojourn at the magicians’ ghetto lasted only a matter of days; but during that short time, a number of things happened to allay the fears which had been raised by ai-o-ai-o. The plain, unadorned truth is that, in those days, the ghetto illusionists and other artistes began to hit new peaks of achievement—jugglers managed to keep one thousand and one balls in the air at a time, and a fakir’s as-yet-untrained protegée strayed on to a bed of hot coals, only to stroll across it unconcerned, as though she had acquired her mentor’s gifts by osmosis; I was told that the rope-trick had been successfully performed. Also, the police failed to make their monthly raid on the ghetto, which had not happened within living memory; and the camp received a constant stream of visitors, the servants of the rich, requesting the professional services of one or more of the colony at this or that gala evening’s entertainment … it seemed, in fact, as though Resham Bibi had got things the wrong way round, and I rapidly became very popular in the ghetto. I was dubbed Saleem Kismeti, Lucky Saleem; Parvati was congratulated on having brought me to the slum. And finally Picture Singh brought Resham Bibi to apologize.
“Pol’gize,” Resham said toothlessly and fled; Picture Singh added, “It is hard for the old ones; their brains go raw and remember upside down. Captain, here everyone is saying you are our luck; but will you go from us soon?”—And Parvati, staring dumbly with saucer eyes which begged no no no; but I was obliged to answer in the affirmative.
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