Talk

Midnight's Children

Notable quotes from Midnight's Children

How we made the revolution: General Zulfikar described troop movements; I moved pepperpots symbolically while he spoke. In the clutches of the active-metaphorical mode of connection, I shifted salt-cellars, bowls of chutney: This mustard jar is Company A occupying Head Post Office; there are two pepperpots surrounding a serving spoon, which means Company B has seized the airport. With the fate of the nation in my hands, I shifted condiments and cutlery, capturing empty biriani-dishes with water-glasses, stationing salt-cellars, on guard around water-jugs. And when General Zulfiqar stopped talking, the march of the table-service also came to an end. Ayub Khan seemed to settle down in his chair; was the wink he gave me just my imagination? - at any rate the Commander-in-Chief said, "Very good, Zulfiqar; good show."

He wa born in Old Delhi .. once upon a time. No, that won't do, there's no getting away from the date: Aadam Sinai arrived at a night-shadowed slum on June 25th, 1975. And the time? The time matters, too. As I said: at night. No, its more important to be more... On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms. Oh, spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of India's arrival at Emergency, he emerged. There were gasps; and, across the country, silences and fears. And owing to the occult tyrannies of that benighted hour, he was mysteriously handcuffed to history, his destinies indissolubly chaines to those of his country. Unprophesied, uncelebrated, he came; no prime ministers wrote him letters; but just the same, as my time of connection neared its end, his began. He, of course, was left entirely without a say in the matter; after all he couldn't even wipe his nose at the time.

He was the child of a father who was not his father, but also the child of a time which damaged reality so badly that noboy ever managed to put it together again;

He was the true great-grandson of his great grandfather but elephantiasis attacked him in the ears instead of the nose because he was also the the true son of Shiva-and-Parvati; he was elephant-headed Ganesh;