'Oh mister, what to say? Everything is my own poor fault!'
Padma is back. And, now that I have recovered from the poison and am at my desk again, is too overwrought to be silent. Over and over, my returned lotus castigates1 herself, beats her heavy breasts, wails2 at the top of her voice. (In my fragile condition, this is fairly distressing3; but I don't blame her for anything.)
'Only believe, mister, how much I have your well-being4 at heart! What creatures we are, we women, never for one moment at peace when our men lie sick and low ... I am so happy you are well, you don't know!'
Padma's story (given in her own words, and read back to her for ' eye-rolling, high-wailing5, mammary-thumping confirmation): 'It was my own foolish pride and vanity, Saleem baba, from which cause I did run from you, although the job here is good, and you so much needing a looker-after! But in a short time only I was dying to return.
'So then I thought, how to go back to this man who will not love me and only does some foolish writery? (Forgive, Saleem baba, but I must tell it truly. And love, to us women, is the greatest thing of all.)
'So I have been to a holy man, who taught me what I must do. Then with my few pice I have taken a bus into the country to dig for herbs, with which your manhood could be awakened7 from its sleep ... imagine, mister, I have spoken magic with these words: "Herb thou hast been uprooted8 by Bulls!" Then I have ground herbs in water and milk and said, "Thou potent9 and lusty herb! Plant which Varuna had dug up for him by Gandharva! Give my Mr Saleem thy power. Give heat like that of Fire of Indra. Like the male antelope10, ?herb, thou hast all the force that Is, thou hast powers of Indra, and the lusty force of beasts." 'With this preparation I returned to find you alone as always and as always with your nose in paper. But jealousy11, I swear, I have put behind me; it sits on the face and makes it old. ?God forgive me, quietly I put the preparation in your food!... And then, hai-hai, may Heaven forgive me, but I am a simple woman, if holy men tell me, how should I argue? ... But now at least you are better, thanks be to God, and maybe you will not be angry.'
Under the influence of Padma's potion, I became delirious12 for a week. My dung-lotus swears (through much-gnashed teeth) that I was stiff as a board, with bubbles around my mouth. There was also a fever. In my delirium13 I babbled14 about snakes; but I know that Padma is no serpent, and never meant me harm.
'This love, mister,' Padma is wailing, 'It will drive a woman to craziness.'
I repeat: I don't blame Padma. At the feet of the Western Ghats, she searched for the herbs of virility15, mucuna pruritus and the root of feronia elephantum; who knows what she found? Who knows what, mashed16 with milk and mingled17 with my food, flung my innards into that state of'churning' from which, as all students of Hindu cosmology will know, Indra created matter, by stirring the primal18 soup in his own great milk-churn? Never mind. It was a noble attempt; but I am beyond regeneration - the Widow has done for me. Not even the real mucuna could have put an end to my incapacity; feronia would never have engendered19 in me the 'lusty force of beasts'.
Still, I am at my table once again; once again Padma sits at my feet, urging me on. I am balanced once more - the base of my isosceles triangle is secure. I hover20 at the apex21, above present and past, and feel fluency22 returning to my pen.
A kind of magic has been worked, then; and Padma's excursion in search of love-potions has connected me briefly23 with that world of ancient learning and sorcerers' lore24 so despised by most of us nowadays; but (despite stomach-cramps and fever and frothings at the mouth) I'm glad of its irruption into my last days, because to contemplate25 it is to regain26 a little, lost sense of proportion.
Think of this: history, in my version, entered a new phase on August 15th, 1947 - but in another version, that inescapable date is no more than one fleeting27 instant in the Age of Darkness, Kali-Yuga, in which the cow of morality has been reduced to standing28, teeter-ingly, 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 equated29 with virtue30, 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 been confused about good and evil?) ... began on Friday, February 18th, 3102 B.C.; and will last a mere31 432,000 years! Already feeling somewhat dwarfed32, I should add nevertheless that the Age of Darkness is only the fourth phase of the present Maha-Yuga cycle which is, in total, ten times as long; and when you consider that it takes a thousand Maha-Yugas to make just one Day of Brahma, you'll see what I mean about proportion.
A little humility33 at this point (when I'm trembling on the brink34 of introducing the Children) does not, I feel, come amiss.
Padma shifts her weight, embarrassed. 'What are you talking?' she asks, reddening a little. 'That is brahmin's talk; what's it to do with me?'
... Born and raised in the Muslim tradition, I find myself overwhelmed all of a sudden by an older learning; while here beside me is my Padma, whose return I had so earnestly desired... my Padma! The Lotus Goddess; the One Who Possesses Dung; who is Honey-Like, and Made of Gold; whose sons are Moisture and Mud ...
'You must be fevered still,' she expostulates, giggling35. 'How made of gold, mister? And you know I have no chil ...'
... 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 Guardians36 of Life, beguiling37 and comforting mortal men while they pass through the dream-web of Maya .. Padma, the Lotus calyx, which grew out of Vishnu's navel, and from which Brahma himself was born; Padma the Source, the mother of Time! ...
'Hey,' she is sounding worried now, 'let me feel your forehead!'
... And where, in this scheme of things, am I? Am I (beguiled and comforted by her return) merely mortal - or something more? Such as - yes, why not - mammoth-trunked, Ganesh-nosed as I am -perhaps, the Elephant. Who, like Sin the moon, controls the waters, bringing the gift of rain ... whose mother was Ira, queen consort38 of Kashyap, the Old Tortoise Man, lord and progenitor39 of all creatures on the earth ... the Elephant who is also the rainbow, and lightning, and whose symbolic40 value, it must be added, is highly problematic and unclear.
Well, then: elusive41 as rainbows, unpredictable as lightning, garrulous42 as Ganesh, it seems I have my own place in the ancient wisdom, after all.
'My God.' Padma is rushing for a towel to wet in cold water, 'your forehead is on fire! Better you lie down now; too soon for all this writing! The sickness is talking; not you.'
But I've already lost a week; so, fever or no fever, I must press on; because, having (for the moment) exhausted43 this strain of old-time fabulism, I am coming to the fantastic heart of my own story, and must write in plain unveiled fashion, about the midnight children.
Understand what I'm saying: during the first hour of August 15th, 1947 - between midnight and one a.m. - no less than one thousand and one children were born within the frontiers of the infant sovereign state of India. In itself, that is not an unusual fact (although the resonances44 of the number are strangely literary) - at the time, births in our part of the world exceeded deaths by approximately six hundred and eighty-seven an hour. What made the event noteworthy (noteworthy! There's a dispassionate word, if you like!) was the nature of these children, every one of whom was, through some freak of biology, or perhaps owing to some preternatural power of the moment, or just conceivably by sheer coincidence (although synchronicity on such a scale would stagger even C. G. Jung), endowed with features, talents or faculties46 which can only be described as miraculous47. It was as though - if you will permit me one moment of fancy in what will otherwise be, I promise, the most, sober account I can manage - as though history, arriving at a point of the highest significance and promise, had chosen to sow, in that instant, the seeds of a future which would genuinely differ from anything the world had seen up to that time.
If a similar miracle was worked across the border, in the newly-partitioned-off Pakistan, I have no knowledge of it; my perceptions were, while they lasted, bounded by the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, the Himalaya mountains, but also by the artificial frontiers which pierced Punjab and Bengal.
Inevitably48, a number of these children failed to survive. Malnutrition49, disease and the misfortunes of everyday life had accounted for no less than four hundred and twenty of them by the time I became conscious of their existence; although it is possible to hypothesize that these deaths, too, had their purpose, since 420 has been, since time immemorial, the number associated with fraud, deception50 and trickery. Can it be, then, that the missing infants were eliminated because they had turned out to be somehow inadequate51, and were not the true children of that midnight hour? Well, in the first place, that's another excursion into fantasy; in the second, it depends on a view of life which is both excessively theological and barbarically cruel. It is also an unanswerable question; any further examination of it is therefore profitless.
By 1957, the surviving five hundred and eighty-one children were all nearing
their tenth birthdays, wholly ignorant, for the most part, of one another's existence - although there were certainly exceptions. In the town of Baud, on the Mahanadi river in Orissa, there was a pair of twin sisters who were already a legend in the region, because despite their impressive plainness they both possessed53 the ability of making every man who saw them fall hopelessly and often suicidally in love with them, so that their bemused parents were endlessly pestered54 by a stream of men offering their hands in marriage to either or even both of the bewildering children; old men who had forsaken55 the wisdom of their beards and youths who ought to have been becoming besotted with the actresses in the travelling picture-show which visited Baud once a month; and there was another, more disturbing procession of bereaved56 families cursing the twin girls for having bewitched their sons into committing acts of violence against themselves, fatal mutilations and scourgings and even (in one case)
self-immolation. With the exception of such rare instances, however, the children of midnight had grown up quite unaware57 of their true siblings58, their fellow-chosen-ones across the length and breadth of India's rough and badly-proportioned diamond.
And then, as a result of a jolt59 received in a bicycle-accident, I, Saleem Sinai, became aware of them all.
To anyone whose personal cast of mind is too inflexible60 to accept these facts, I have this to say: That's how it was; there can be no retreat from the truth. I shall just have to shoulder the burden of the doubter's disbelief. But no literate61 person in this India of ours can be wholly immune from the type of information I am in the process of unveiling - no reader of our national press can have failed to come across a series of - admittedly lesser62 - magic children and assorted63 freaks. Only last week there was that Bengali boy who announced himself as the reincarnation of Rabindranath Tagore and began to extemporize64 verses of remarkable65 quality, to the amazement66 of his parents; and I can myself remember children with two heads (sometimes one human, one animal), and other curious features such as bullock's horns.
I should say at once that not all the children's gifts were desirable, or even desired by the children themselves; and, in some cases, the children had survived but been deprived of their midnight-given qualities. For example (as a companion piece to the story of the Baudi twins) let me mention a Delhi beggar-girl called Sundari, who was born in a street behind the General Post Office, not far from the rooftop on which Amina Sinai had listened to Ramram Seth, and whose beauty was so intense that within moments of her birth it succeeded in blinding her mother and the neighbouring women who had been assisting at her delivery; her father, rushing into the room when he heard the women's screams, had been warned by them just in time; but his one fleeting glimpse of his daughter so badly impaired67 his vision that he was unable, afterwards, to distinguish between Indians and foreign tourists, a handicap which greatly affected68 his earning power as a beggar. For some time after that Sundari was obliged to have a rag placed across her face; until an old and ruthless great-aunt took her into her bony arms and slashed69 her face nine times with a kitchen knife. At the time when I became aware of her, Sundari was earning a healthy living, because nobody who looked at her could fail to pity a girl who had clearly once been too beautiful to look at and was now so cruelly disfigured; she received more alms than any other member of her family.
Because none of the children suspected that their time of birth had anything to do with what they were, it took me a while to find it out. At first, after the bicycle accident (and particularly once language marchers had purged70 me of Evie Burns), I contented71 myself with discovering, one by one, the secrets of the fabulous72 beings who had suddenly arrived in my mental field of vision, collecting them ravenously73, the way some boys collect insects, and others spot railway trains; losing interest in autograph books and all other manifestations75 of the gathering76 instinct, I plunged78 whenever possible into the separate, and altogether brighter reality of the five hundred and eighty-one. (Two hundred and sixty-six of us were boys; and we were outnumbered by our female counterparts - three hundred and fifteen of them, including Parvati. Parvati-the-witch.)
Midnight's children! ... From Kerala, a boy who had the ability of stepping into mirrors and re-emerging through any reflective surface in the land - through lakes and (with greater difficulty) the polished metal bodies of automobiles79 ...
and a Goanese girl with the gift of multiplying fish... and children with powers of transformation80: a werewolf from the Nilgiri Hills, and from the great watershed81 of the Vindhyas, a boy who could increase or reduce his size at will, and had already (mischievously) been the cause of wild panic and rumours82 of the return of Giants ... from Kashmir, there was a blue-eyed child of whose original sex I was never certain, since by immersing herself in water he (or she) could alter it as she (or he) pleased. Some of us called this child Narada, others Markandaya, depending on which old fairy story of sexual change we had heard ...
near Jalna in the heart of the parched83 Deccan I found a water-divining youth, and at Budge-Budge outside Calcutta a sharp-tongued girl whose words already had the power of inflicting84 physical wounds, so that after a few adults had found themselves bleeding freely as a result of some barb52 flung casually85 from her lips, they had decided86 to lock her in a bamboo cage and float her off down the Ganges to the Sundarbans jungles (which are the rightful home of monsters and phantasms); but nobody dared approach her, and she moved through the town surrounded by a vacuum of fear; nobody had the courage to deny her food. There was a boy who could eat metal and a girl whose fingers were so green that she could grow prize aubergines in the Thar desert; and more and more and more ...
overwhelmed by their numbers, and by the exotic multiplicity of their gifts, I paid little attention, in those early days, to their ordinary selves; but inevitably our problems, when they arose, were the everyday, human problems which arise from character-and-environment; in our quarrels, we were just a bunch of kids.
One remarkable fact: the closer to midnight our birth-times were, the greater were our gifts. Those children born in the last seconds of the hour were (to be frank) little more than circus freaks: bearded girls, a boy with the fully-operative gills of a freshwater mahaseer trout87, Siamese twins with two bodies dangling88 off a single head and neck -the head could speak in two voices, one male, one female, and every language and dialect spoken in the subcontinent; but for all their mar-vellousness, these were the unfortunates, the living casualties of that numinous89 hour. Towards the half-hour came more interesting and useful faculties - in the Gir Forest lived a witch-girl with the power of healing by the laying-on of hands, and there was a wealthy tea-planter's son in Shillong who had the blessing90 (or possibly the curse) of being incapable91 of forgetting anything he ever saw or heard. But the children born in the first minute of all - for these children the hour had reserved the highest talents of which men had ever dreamed. If you, Padma, happened to possess a register of births in which times were noted92 down to the exact second, you, too, would know what scion93 of a great Lucknow family (born at twenty-one seconds past midnight)
had completely mastered, by the age of ten, the lost arts of alchemy, with which he regenerated94 the fortunes of his ancient but dissipated house; and which dhobi's daughter from Madras (seventeen seconds past) could fly higher than any bird simply by closing her eyes; and to which Benarsi silversmith's son (twelve seconds after midnight) was given the gift of travelling in time and thus prophesying95 the future as well as clarifying the past ... a gift which, children that we were, we trusted implicitly96 when it dealt with things gone and forgotten, but derided97 when he warned us of our own ends... fortunately, no such records exist; and, for my part, I shall not reveal - or else, in appearing to reveal, shall falsify - their names and even their locations; because, although such evidence would provide absolute proof of my claims, still the children of midnight deserve, now, after everything, to be left alone; perhaps to forget; but I hope (against hope) to remember ...
Parvati-the-witch was born in Old Delhi in a slum which clustered around the steps of the Friday mosque98. No ordinary slum, this, although the huts built out of old packing cases and pieces of corrugated99 tin and shreds100 of jute sacking which stood higgledy-piggledy in the shadow of the mosque looked no different from any other shanty-town ... because this was the ghetto101 of the magicians, yes, the very same place which had once spawned102 a Hummingbird103 whom knives had pierced and pie-dogs had failed to save ... the conjurers' slum, to which the greatest fakirs and prestidigitators and illusionists in the land continually flocked, to seek their fortune in the capital city. They found tin huts, and police harassment104, and rats ... Parvati's father had once been the greatest conjurer in Oudh; she had grown up amid ventriloquists who could make stones tell jokes and contortionists who could swallow their own legs and fire-eaters who exhaled105 flames from their arseholes and tragic106 clowns who could extract glass tears from the corners of their eyes; she had stood mildly amid gasping107 crowds while her father drove spikes108 through her neck; and all the time she had guarded her own secret, which was greater than any of the illusionist flummeries surrounding her; because to Parvati-the-witch, born a mere seven seconds after midnight on August 15th, had been given the powers of the true adept109, the illuminatus, the genuine gifts of conjuration and sorcery, the art which required no artifice110.
So among the midnight children were infants with powers of transmutation, flight, prophecy and wizardry ... but two of us were born on the stroke of midnight. Saleem and Shiva, Shiva and Saleem, nose and knees and knees and nose ... to Shiva, the hour had given the gifts of war (of Rama, who could draw the undrawable.bow; of Arjuna and Bhima; the ancient prowess of Kurus and Pandavas united, unstoppably, in him!)... and to me, the greatest talent of all -the ability to look into the hearts and minds of men.
But it is Kali-Yuga; the children of the hour of darkness were born, I'm afraid, in the midst of the age of darkness; so that although we found it easy to be brilliant, we were always confused about being good.
There; now I've said it. That is who I was - who we were.
Padma is looking as if her mother had died - her face, with its opening-shutting mouth, is the face of a beached pomfret. 'O baba!' she says at last. 'O baba! You are sick; what have you said?'
No, that would be too easy. I refuse to take refuge in illness. Don't make the mistake of dismissing what I've unveiled as mere delirium; or even as the insanely exaggerated fantasies of a lonely, ugly child. I have stated before that I am not speaking metaphorically111; what I have just written (and read aloud to stunned113 Padma) is nothing less than the literal, by-the-hairs-of-my-mother's-head truth.
Reality can have metaphorical112 content; that does not make it less real. A thousand and one children were born; there were a thousand and one possibilities which had never been present in one place at one time before; and there were a thousand and one dead ends. Midnight's children can be made to represent many things, according to your point of view: they can be seen as the last throw of everything antiquated114 and retrogressive in our myth-ridden nation, whose defeat was entirely115 desirable in the context of a modernizing116, twentieth-century economy; or as the true hope of freedom, which is now forever extinguished; but what they must not become is the bizarre creation of a rambling117, diseased mind.
No: illness is neither here nor there.
'All right, all right, baba,' Padma attempts to placate118 me. 'Why become so cross? Rest now, rest some while, that is all I am asking.'
Certainly it was a hallucinatory time in the days leading up to my tenth birthday; but the hallucinations were not in my head. My father, Ahmed Sinai, driven by the traitorous119 death of Dr Narlikar and by the increasingly powerful effect of djinns-and-tonics, had taken flight into a dream-world of disturbing unreality; and the most insidious120 aspect of his slow decline was that, for a very long time, people mistook it for the very opposite of what it was ... Here is Sonny's mother, Nussie-the-duck, telling Amina one evening in our garden: 'What great days for you all, Amina sister, now that your Ahmed is in his prime! Such a fine man, and so much he is prospering121 for his family's sake!' She says it loud enough for him to hear; and although he pretends to be telling the gardener what to do about the ailing6 bougainvillaea, although he assumes an expression of humble123 self-deprecation, it's utterly124 unconvincing, because his bloated body has begun, without his knowing it, to puff125 up and strut126 about. Even Purushottam, the dejected sadhu under the garden tap, looks embarrassed.
My fading father ... for almost ten years he had always been in a good mood at the breakfast table, before he shaved his chin; but as his facial hairs whitened along with his fading skin, this fixed127 point of happiness ceased to be a certainty; and the day came when he lost his temper at breakfast for the first time. That was the day on which taxes were raised and tax thresholds simultaneously128 lowered; my father flung down the Times of India with a violent gesture and glared around him with the red eyes I knew he only wore in his tempers. 'It's like going to the bathroom!' he exploded, cryptically129; egg toast tea shuddered130 in the blast of his wrath131. 'You raise your shirt and lower your trousers! Wife, this government is going to the bathroom all over us!' And my mother, blushing pink through the black, 'Janum, the children, please,' but he had stomped132 off, leaving me with a clear understanding of what people meant when they said the country was going to pot.
In the following weeks my father's morning chin continued to fade, and something more than the peace of the breakfast table was lost: he began to forget what sort of man he'd been in the old days before Narlikar's treason. The rituals of our home life began to decay. He began to stay away from the breakfast table, so that Amina could not wheedle133 money out of him; but, to compensate134, he became careless with his cash, and his discarded clothes were full of rupee notes and coins, so that by picking his pockets she could make ends meet. But a more depressing indication of his withdrawal135 from family life was that he rarely told us bedtime stories any more, and when he did we didn't enjoy them, because they had become ill-imagined and unconvincing. Their subject-matter was still the same, princes goblins flying horses and adventures in magic lands, but in his perfunctory voice we could hear the creaks and groans136 of a rustling137, decayed imagination.
My father had succumbed138 to abstraction. It seems that Narlikar's death and the end of his tetrapod dream had shown Ahmed Sinai the unreliable nature of human relationships; he had decided to divest140 himself of all such ties. He took to rising before dawn and locking himself with his current Fernanda or Flory in his downstairs office, outside whose windows the two evergreen141 trees he planted to commemorate142 my birth and the Monkey's had already grown tall enough to keep out most of the daylight when it arrived. Since we hardly ever dared disturb him, my father entered a deep solitude143, a condition so unusual in our overcrowded country as to border on abnormality; he began to refuse food from our kitchen and to live on cheap rubbish brought daily by his girl in a tiffin-carrier, lukewarm parathas and soggy vegetable samosas144 and bottles of fizzy drinks. A strange perfume wafted145 out from under his office door; Amina took it for the odour of stale air and second-rate food; but it's my belief that an old scent146 had returned in a stronger form, the old aroma147 of failure which had hung about him from the earliest days.
He sold off the many tenements148 or chawls which he'd bought cheaply on his arrival in Bombay, and on which our family's fortunes had been based. Freeing himself from all business connections with human beings - even his anonymous149 tenants150 in Kurla and Worli, in Matunga and Mazagaon and Mahim - he liquefied his assets, and entered the rarefied and abstract air of financial speculation151.
Locked in his office, in those days, his one contact with the outside world (apart from his poor Fernandas) was his telephone. He spent his day deep in conference with this instrument, as it put his money into such-andsuch shares or soandso stocks, as it invested in government bonds or bear market equities152, selling long or short as he commanded ... and invariably getting the best price of the day. In a streak153 of good fortune comparable only to my mother's success on the horses all those years previously154, my father and his telephone took the stock exchange by storm, a feat45 made more remarkable by Ahmed Sinai's constantly-worsening drinking habits. Djinn-sodden, he nevertheless managed to ride high on the abstract undulations of the money market, reacting to its emotional, unpredictable shifts and changes the way a lover does to his beloved's slightest whim155 ... he could sense when a share would rise, when the peak would come; and he always got out before the fall. This was how his plunge77 into the abstract solitude of his telephonic days was disguised, how his financial coups156 obscured his steady divorce from reality; but under cover of his growing riches, his condition was getting steadily157 worse.
Eventually the last of his calico-skirted secretaries quit, being unable to tolerate life in an atmosphere so thin and abstract as to make breathing difficult; and now my father sent for Mary Pereira and coaxed158 her with, 'We're friends, Mary, aren't we, you and I?', to which the poor woman replied, 'Yes, sahib, I know; you will look after me when I'm old,' and promised to find him a replacement159. The next day she brought him her sister, Alice Pereira, who had worked for all kinds of bosses and had an almost infinite tolerance160 of men.
Alice and Mary had long since made up their quarrel over Joe D'Costa; the younger woman was often upstairs with us at the end of the day, bringing her qualities of sparkle and sauciness161 into the somewhat oppressive air of our home.
I was fond of her, and it was through her that we learned of my father's greatest excesses, whose victims were a budgerigar and a mongrel dog.
By July Ahmed Sinai had entered an almost permanent state of intoxication162; one day, Alice reported, he had suddenly gone off for a drive, making her fear for his life, and returned somehow or other with a shrouded163 bird-cage in which, he said, was his new acquisition, a bulbul or Indian nightingale. 'For God knows how long,' Alice confided164, 'he tells me all about bulbuls; all fairy stories of its singing and what-all; how this Calipha was captivated by its song, how the singing could make longer the beauty of the night; God knows what the poor man was babbling165, quoting Persian and Arabic, I couldn't make top or bottom of it.
But then he took off the cover, and in the cage is nothing but a talking budgie, some crook166 in Chor Bazaar167 must have painted the feathers! Now how could I tell the poor man, him so excited with his bird and all, sitting there calling out, "Sing, little bulbul! Sing!" ... and it's so funny, just before it died from the paint it just repeated his line back at him, straight out like that -not squawky like a bird, you know, but in his own self-same voice: Sing! Little bulbul, sing!'
But there was worse on the way. A few days later I was sitting with Alice on the servants' spiral iron staircase when she said, 'Baba, I don't know what got into your daddy now. All day sitting down there cursing curses at the dog!'
The mongrel bitch we named Sherri had strolled up to the two-storey hillock earlier that year and simply adopted us, not knowing that life was a dangerous business for animals on Methwold's Estate; and in his cups Ahmed Sinai made her the guinea-pig for his experiments with the family curse.
This was that same fictional168 curse which he'd dreamed up to impress William Methwold, but now in the liquescent chambers169 of his mind the djinns persuaded him that it was no fiction, that he'd just forgotten the words; so he spent long hours in his insanely solitary170 office experimenting with formulae ... 'Such things he is cursing the poor creature with!' Alice said, 'I wonder she don't drop down dead straight off!'
But Sherri just sat there in a corner and grinned stupidly back at him, refusing to turn purple or break out in boils, until one evening he erupted from his office and ordered Amina to drive us all to Hornby Vellard. Sherri came too. We promenaded171, wearing puzzled expressions, up and down the Vellard, and then he said, 'Get in the car, all of you.' Only he wouldn't let Sherri in... as the Rover accelerated away with my father at the wheel she began to chase after us, while the Monkey yelled Daddydaddy and Amina pleaded Janumplease and I sat in mute horror, we had to drive for miles, almost all the way to Santa Cruz airport, before he had his revenge on the bitch for refusing to succumb139 to his sorceries... she burst an artery172 as she ran and died spouting173 blood from her mouth and her behind, under the gaze of a hungry cow.
The Brass174 Monkey (who didn't even like dogs) cried for a week; my mother became worried about dehydration175 and made her drink gallons of water, pouring it into her as if she were a lawn, Mary said; but I liked the new puppy my father bought me for my tenth birthday, out of some flicker176 of guilt177 perhaps: her name was the Baroness178 Simki von der Heiden, and she had a pedigree chock-full of champion Alsatians, although in time my mother discovered that that was as false as the mock-bulbul, as imaginary as my father's forgotten curse and Mughal ancestry179; and after six months she died of venereal disease. We had no pets after that.
My father was not the only one to approach my tenth birthday with his head lost in the clouds of his private dreams; because here is Mary Pereira, indulging in her fondness for making chutneys, kasaundies and pickles180 of all descriptions, and despite the cheery presence of her sister Alice there is something haunted in her face.
'Hullo, Mary!' Padma - who seems to have developed a soft spot for my criminal ayah - greets her return to centre-stage. 'So what's eating her?'
This, Padma: plagued by her nightmares of assaults by Joseph D'Costa, Mary was finding it harder and harder to get sleep. Knowing what dreams had in store for her, she forced herself to stay awake; dark rings appeared under her eyes, which were covered in a thin, filmy glaze181; and gradually the blurriness of her perceptions merged182 waking and dreaming into something very like each other ... a dangerous condition to get into, Padma. Not only does your work suffer but things start escaping from your dreams.. .Joseph D'Costa had, in fact, managed to cross the blurred183 frontier, and now appeared in Buckingham Villa122 not as a nightmare, but as a full-fledged ghost. Visible (at this time) only to Mary Pereira, he began haunting her in all the rooms of our home, which, to her horror and shame, he treated as casually as if it were his own. She saw him in the drawing-room amongst cut-glass vases and Dresden figurines and the rotating shadows of ceiling fans, lounging in soft armchairs with his long raggedy legs sprawling184 over the arms; his eyes were filled up with egg-whites and there were holes in his feet where the snake had bitten him. Once she saw him in Amina Begum's bed in the afternoon, lying down cool as cucumber right next to my sleeping mother, and she burst out, 'Hey, you! Go on out from there! What do you think, you're some sort of lord?' - but she only succeeded in awaking my puzzled mother. Joseph's ghost plagued Mary wordlessly; and the worst of it was that she found herself growing accustomed to him, she found forgotten sensations of fondness nudging at her insides, and although she told herself it was a crazy thing to do she began to be filled with a kind of nostalgic love for the spirit of the dead hospital porter.
But the love was not returned; Joseph's egg-white eyes remained expressionless; his lips remained set in an accusing, sardonic185 grin; and at last she realized that this new manifestation74 was no different from her old dream-Joseph (although it never assaulted her), and that if she was ever to be free of him she would have to do the unthinkable thing and confess her crime to the world. But she didn't confess, which was probably my fault - because Mary loved me like her own unconceived and inconceivable son, and to make her confession186 would have hurt me badly, so for my sake she suffered the ghost of her conscience and stood haunted in the kitchen (my father had sacked the cook one djinn-soaked evening) cooking our dinner and becoming, accidentally, the embodiment of the opening line of my Latin textbook, Ora Maritima: 'By the side of the sea, the ayah cooked the meal.' Ora maritima, ancilla cenam parat. Look into the eyes of a cooking ayah, and you will see more than textbooks ever know.
On my tenth birthday, many chickens were coming home to roost. On my tenth birthday, it was clear that the freak weather -storms, floods, hailstones from a cloudless sky - which had succeeded the intolerable heat of 1956, had managed to wreck187 the second Five Year Plan. The government had been forced - although the elections were just around the corner - to announce to the world that it could accept no more development loans unless the lenders were willing to wait indefinitely for repayment188. (But let me not overstate the case: although the production of finished steel reached only 2.4 million tons by the Plan's end in 1961, and although, during those five years, the number of landless and unemployed189 masses actually increased, so that it was greater than it had ever been under the British Raj, there were also substantial gains. The production of iron ore was almost doubled; power capacity did double; coal production leaped from thirty-eight million to fifty-four million tons. Five billion yards of cotton textiles were produced each year. Also large numbers of bicycles, machine tools, diesel190 engines, power pumps and ceiling fans. But I can't help ending on a downbeat: illiteracy191 survived unscathed; the population continued to mushroom.)
On my tenth birthday, we were visited by my uncle Hanif, who made himself excessively unpopular at Methwold's Estate by booming cheerily, 'Elections coming! Watch out for the Communists!'
On my tenth birthday, when my uncle Hanif made his gaffe192, my mother (who had begun disappearing on mysterious 'shopping trips') dramatically and unaccountably blushed.
On my tenth birthday, I was given an Alsatian puppy with a false pedigree who would shortly die of syphilis.
On my tenth birthday, everyone at Methwold's Estate tried hard to be cheerful, but beneath this thin veneer193 everyone was possessed by the same thought: 'Ten years, my God! Where have they gone? What have we done?'
On my tenth birthday, old man Ibrahim announced his support for the Maha Gujarat Parishad; as far as possession of the city of Bombay was concerned, he nailed his colours to the losing side.
On my tenth birthday, my suspicions aroused by a blush, I spied on my mother's thoughts; and what I saw there led to my beginning to follow her, to my becoming a private eye as daring as Bombay's legendary194 Dom Minto, and to important discoveries at and in the vicinity of the Pioneer Cafe.
On my tenth birthday, I had a party, which was attended by my family, which had forgotten how to be gay, by classmates from the Cathedral School, who had been sent by their parents, and by a number of mildly bored girl swimmers from the Breach195 Candy Pools, who permitted the Brass Monkey to fool around with them and pinch their bulging196 musculatures; as for adults, there were Mary and Alice Pereira, and the Ibrahims and Homi Catrack and Uncle Hanif and Pia Aunty, and Lila Sabarmati to whom the eyes of every schoolboy (and also Homi Catrack) remained firmly glued, to the considerable irritation197 of Pia.
But the only member of the hilltop gang to attend was loyal Sonny Ibrahim, who had defied an embargo198 placed upon the festivities by an embittered199 Evie Burns.
He gave me a message: 'Evie says to tell you you're out of the gang.'
On my tenth birthday, Evie, Eyeslice, Hairoil and even Cyrus-the-great stormed my private hiding-place; they occupied the clock-tower, and deprived me of its shelter.
On my tenth birthday, Sonny looked upset, and the Brass Monkey detached herself from her swimmers and became utterly furious with Evie Burns. Til teach her,'
she told me. 'Don't you worry, big brother; I'll show that one, all right.'
On my tenth birthday, abandoned by one set of children, I learned that five hundred and eighty-one others were celebrating their birthdays, too; which was how I understood the secret of my original hour of birth; and, having been expelled from one gang, I decided to form my own, a gang which was spread over the length and breadth of the country, and whose headquarters were behind my eyebrows200.
And on my tenth birthday, I stole the initials of the Metro201 Cub202 Club - which were also the initials of the touring English cricket team - and gave them to the new Midnight Children's Conference, my very own M.C.C.
That's how it was when I was ten: nothing but trouble outside my head, nothing but miracles inside it.
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castigates
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| v.严厉责骂、批评或惩罚（某人）( castigate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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wails
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| 痛哭，哭声( wail的名词复数 ) | |
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distressing
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| a.使人痛苦的 | |
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well-being
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| n.安康，安乐，幸福 | |
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wailing
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱 | |
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ailing
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| v.生病 | |
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awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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uprooted
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| v.把（某物）连根拔起( uproot的过去式和过去分词 )；根除；赶走；把…赶出家园 | |
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potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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antelope
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| n.羚羊；羚羊皮 | |
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jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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delirious
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| adj.不省人事的，神智昏迷的 | |
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delirium
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| n. 神智昏迷,说胡话;极度兴奋 | |
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babbled
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| v.喋喋不休( babble的过去式和过去分词 )；作潺潺声（如流水）；含糊不清地说话；泄漏秘密 | |
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virility
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| n.雄劲，丈夫气 | |
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mashed
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| a.捣烂的 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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primal
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| adj.原始的；最重要的 | |
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engendered
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| v.产生（某形势或状况），造成，引起( engender的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hover
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| vi.翱翔，盘旋；徘徊；彷徨，犹豫 | |
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apex
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| n.顶点，最高点 | |
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fluency
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| n.流畅，雄辩，善辩 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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lore
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| n.传说；学问，经验，知识 | |
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contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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regain
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| vt.重新获得，收复，恢复 | |
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fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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equated
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| adj.换算的v.认为某事物（与另一事物）相等或相仿( equate的过去式和过去分词 )；相当于；等于；把（一事物） 和（另一事物）等同看待 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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dwarfed
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| vt.（使）显得矮小（dwarf的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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humility
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| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
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brink
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| n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿 | |
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giggling
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
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guardians
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| 监护人( guardian的名词复数 )； 保护者，维护者 | |
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beguiling
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| adj.欺骗的，诱人的v.欺骗( beguile的现在分词 )；使陶醉；使高兴；消磨（时间等） | |
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consort
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| v.相伴；结交 | |
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progenitor
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| n.祖先，先驱 | |
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symbolic
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| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
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elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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garrulous
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| adj.唠叨的，多话的 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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resonances
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| n.共鸣( resonance的名词复数 )；（声音） 洪亮；（文章、乐曲等） 激发联想的力量；（情感）同感 | |
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feat
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| n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的 | |
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faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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malnutrition
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| n.营养不良 | |
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deception
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| n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计 | |
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inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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barb
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| n.（鱼钩等的）倒钩，倒刺 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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pestered
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| 使烦恼，纠缠( pester的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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Forsaken
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| adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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bereaved
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| adj.刚刚丧失亲人的v.使失去（希望、生命等）( bereave的过去式和过去分词)；（尤指死亡）使丧失（亲人、朋友等）；使孤寂；抢走（财物） | |
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unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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siblings
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| n.兄弟，姐妹( sibling的名词复数 ) | |
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jolt
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| v.（使）摇动，（使）震动，（使）颠簸 | |
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inflexible
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| adj.不可改变的，不受影响的，不屈服的 | |
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literate
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| n.学者；adj.精通文学的，受过教育的 | |
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lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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assorted
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| adj.各种各样的，各色俱备的 | |
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extemporize
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| v.即席演说，即兴演奏，当场作成 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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impaired
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| adj.受损的；出毛病的；有（身体或智力）缺陷的v.损害，削弱( impair的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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slashed
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| v.挥砍( slash的过去式和过去分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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purged
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| 清除（政敌等）( purge的过去式和过去分词 )； 涤除（罪恶等）； 净化（心灵、风气等）； 消除（错事等）的不良影响 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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fabulous
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| adj.极好的；极为巨大的；寓言中的，传说中的 | |
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ravenously
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| adv.大嚼地，饥饿地 | |
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manifestation
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| n.表现形式；表明；现象 | |
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manifestations
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| n.表示，显示（manifestation的复数形式） | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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automobiles
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| n.汽车( automobile的名词复数 ) | |
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transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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watershed
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| n.转折点，分水岭，分界线 | |
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rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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parched
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| adj.焦干的；极渴的；v.（使）焦干 | |
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inflicting
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的现在分词 ) | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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trout
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| n.鳟鱼；鲑鱼(属) | |
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dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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numinous
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| adj.庄严的，神圣的 | |
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blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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scion
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| n.嫩芽，子孙 | |
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regenerated
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| v.新生，再生( regenerate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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prophesying
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| v.预告，预言( prophesy的现在分词 ) | |
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implicitly
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| adv. 含蓄地, 暗中地, 毫不保留地 | |
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derided
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| v.取笑，嘲笑( deride的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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mosque
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| n.清真寺 | |
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corrugated
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| adj.波纹的；缩成皱纹的；波纹面的；波纹状的v.（使某物）起皱褶(corrugate的过去式和过去分词) | |
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100
shreds
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| v.撕碎，切碎( shred的第三人称单数 )；用撕毁机撕毁（文件） | |
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101
ghetto
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| n.少数民族聚居区，贫民区 | |
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102
spawned
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| （鱼、蛙等）大量产（卵）( spawn的过去式和过去分词 )； 大量生产 | |
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103
hummingbird
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| n.蜂鸟 | |
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104
harassment
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| n.骚扰，扰乱，烦恼，烦乱 | |
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105
exhaled
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| v.呼出，发散出( exhale的过去式和过去分词 )；吐出（肺中的空气、烟等），呼气 | |
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106
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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107
gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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108
spikes
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| n.穗( spike的名词复数 )；跑鞋；（防滑）鞋钉；尖状物v.加烈酒于( spike的第三人称单数 )；偷偷地给某人的饮料加入（更多）酒精（ 或药物）；把尖状物钉入；打乱某人的计划 | |
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109
adept
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| adj.老练的，精通的 | |
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110
artifice
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| n.妙计，高明的手段；狡诈，诡计 | |
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111
metaphorically
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| adv. 用比喻地 | |
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112
metaphorical
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| a.隐喻的，比喻的 | |
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113
stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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114
antiquated
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| adj.陈旧的，过时的 | |
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115
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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116
modernizing
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| 使现代化，使适应现代需要( modernize的现在分词 )； 现代化，使用现代方法 | |
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117
rambling
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| adj.[建]凌乱的，杂乱的 | |
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118
placate
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| v.抚慰，平息(愤怒) | |
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119
traitorous
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| adj. 叛国的, 不忠的, 背信弃义的 | |
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120
insidious
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| adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧 | |
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121
prospering
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| 成功，兴旺( prosper的现在分词 ) | |
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122
villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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123
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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124
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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125
puff
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| n.一口(气)；一阵(风)；v.喷气，喘气 | |
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126
strut
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| v.肿胀，鼓起；大摇大摆地走；炫耀；支撑；撑开；n.高视阔步；支柱，撑杆 | |
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127
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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128
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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129
cryptically
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130
shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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131
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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132
stomped
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| v.跺脚，践踏，重踏( stomp的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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133
wheedle
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| v.劝诱，哄骗 | |
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134
compensate
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| vt.补偿，赔偿；酬报 vi.弥补；补偿；抵消 | |
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135
withdrawal
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| n.取回，提款；撤退，撤军；收回，撤销 | |
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136
groans
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| n.呻吟，叹息( groan的名词复数 )；呻吟般的声音v.呻吟( groan的第三人称单数 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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137
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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138
succumbed
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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139
succumb
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| v.屈服，屈从；死 | |
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140
divest
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| v.脱去，剥除 | |
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141
evergreen
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| n.常青树；adj.四季常青的 | |
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142
commemorate
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| vt.纪念，庆祝 | |
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143
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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144
samosas
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| n.萨莫萨三角饺( samosa的名词复数 ) | |
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145
wafted
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| v.吹送，飘送，（使）浮动( waft的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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146
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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147
aroma
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| n.香气，芬芳，芳香 | |
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148
tenements
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| n.房屋，住户，租房子( tenement的名词复数 ) | |
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149
anonymous
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| adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的 | |
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150
tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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151
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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152
equities
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| 普通股，股票 | |
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153
streak
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| n.条理，斑纹，倾向，少许，痕迹；v.加条纹，变成条纹，奔驰，快速移动 | |
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154
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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155
whim
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| n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想 | |
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156
coups
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| n.意外而成功的行动( coup的名词复数 )；政变；努力办到难办的事 | |
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157
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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158
coaxed
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| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的过去式和过去分词 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱 | |
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159
replacement
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| n.取代，替换，交换；替代品，代用品 | |
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160
tolerance
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| n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差 | |
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161
sauciness
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| n.傲慢，鲁莽 | |
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162
intoxication
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| n.wild excitement;drunkenness；poisoning | |
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163
shrouded
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| v.隐瞒( shroud的过去式和过去分词 )；保密 | |
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164
confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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165
babbling
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| n.胡说，婴儿发出的咿哑声adj.胡说的v.喋喋不休( babble的现在分词 )；作潺潺声（如流水）；含糊不清地说话；泄漏秘密 | |
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166
crook
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| v.使弯曲；n.小偷，骗子，贼；弯曲(处) | |
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167
bazaar
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| n.集市，商店集中区 | |
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168
fictional
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| adj.小说的，虚构的 | |
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169
chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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170
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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171
promenaded
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| v.兜风( promenade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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172
artery
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| n.干线，要道；动脉 | |
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173
spouting
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| n.水落管系统v.（指液体）喷出( spout的现在分词 )；滔滔不绝地讲；喋喋不休地说；喷水 | |
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174
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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175
dehydration
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| n.脱水，干燥 | |
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176
flicker
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| vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现 | |
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177
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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178
baroness
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| n.男爵夫人，女男爵 | |
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179
ancestry
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| n.祖先，家世 | |
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180
pickles
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| n.腌菜( pickle的名词复数 )；处于困境；遇到麻烦；菜酱 | |
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181
glaze
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| v.因疲倦、疲劳等指眼睛变得呆滞，毫无表情 | |
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182
merged
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| （使）混合( merge的过去式和过去分词 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中 | |
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183
blurred
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| v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离 | |
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184
sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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185
sardonic
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| adj.嘲笑的，冷笑的，讥讽的 | |
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186
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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187
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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188
repayment
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| n.偿还，偿还款；报酬 | |
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189
unemployed
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| adj.失业的，没有工作的；未动用的，闲置的 | |
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190
diesel
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| n.柴油发动机，内燃机 | |
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191
illiteracy
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| n.文盲 | |
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192
gaffe
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| n.（社交上令人不快的）失言，失态 | |
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193
veneer
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| n.(墙上的)饰面，虚饰 | |
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194
legendary
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| adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学） | |
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195
breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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196
bulging
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| 膨胀； 凸出（部）； 打气； 折皱 | |
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197
irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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198
embargo
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| n.禁运（令）；vt.对...实行禁运，禁止（通商） | |
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199
embittered
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| v.使怨恨，激怒( embitter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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200
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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201
metro
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| n.地铁；adj.大都市的；(METRO)麦德隆(财富500强公司之一总部所在地德国，主要经营零售) | |
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202
cub
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| n.幼兽，年轻无经验的人 | |
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