“Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams
are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and
forgot.”
- Neil
Gaiman, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“I told you the truth,” I say yet again, “Memory’s truth,
because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters,
exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end creates
its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent versions of event; and
no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more that his own.”
- Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
These lines most emphatically describe the idea around which
Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children dwells. The author asserts that there never is a
single, true reality but a multitude purported by an equal number of narrators.
Every human being has his own version of truth, and an absolute, universal
reality is non-existent.
Magical Realism as a Post-Colonization Device
Unlike the west, where everything is defined, and where
exist clear distinctions between reality and fantasy, the post-colonial
countries have been left bereft of this definiteness. The demarcation between
reality and fantasy, that is implicit in the west and which forms the very
basis of all the Occidental literature, is a nebulous concept in the
post-colonial nations. This rational and skeptic perspective of the colonial
nations has failed to acknowledge the everyday beliefs of the colonial people
as real and hence considered these as eccentricities. While the whole gamut of the
western literature could be reduced to the two ramifications reality and fantasy,
post-colonial writings have resorted abundantly to employing magical realism to
portray their native conditions most correctly.
Post-colonial writing, per se, encompasses a wide range of
discursive practices, which resist colonialism and colonial ideologies, since the
colonized were forced to occupy two conflicting worlds or cultures, introducing
the duality of reality in their lives. As the “reason” and “logic” of the
colonial intellectual tradition collided with “mysterious” and “mythic”
perspective of the colonial people, a new ‘reality’ emerged altogether, in with
the otherwise unacceptable elements found admission as real in conjunction with
the conventionally realist ones. Thus, any attempt to describe these lands
could be manifested in one and one way only, which does not differentiate
between fantastic and real.
Magical realism hence originated in one of the loci of
colonization, Latin America and was carried forward with the works of Gabriel
Garcia Marquez, Isabelle Allende etc., and is subsequently a domain of a
majority of post-colonial literature. It raises questions on the very
definition of reality and magic, uniting the two in the process.
In Midnight’s Children
Midnight’s Children depicts the story of post-colonial India
employing magical realism as the main theme. The 1001 midnight’s children with
the multitude of abilities and shortcomings are intended to represent India as
an emerging nation in the aftermath of the post-colonial. India, itself being a
British colony for about three centuries, was profoundly influenced by the idiosyncrasies
of foreign rule. Hence, Midnight’s Children aptly invokes the theme of magical
realism to depict its struggle for identity after independence, which are
mirrored in the life of the protagonist, Saleem Sinai. Rushdie uses a careful
blend of magical realism and acute symbolization to gracefully delineate the
story of the birth of a nation after centuries of repression. As the country
faces wars, political vicissitudes, and inner tumult, Saleem’s life also
undergoes similar experiences – at the exact time and to a proportional
magnitude. This personification of the fortunes and losses of the country in
Saleem renders a sublime quality to the story, inspiring the admiration of the
reader.
In all, two inter-related complimentary
themes span the text, the primary being the striking similarity between India
and Saleem. Many instances in the novel reinforce the nexus between Saleem and
India, which as such is established at the birth of Saleem, who is born at the
exact time as India gains independence. Saleem is an illegitimate child of an
Indian mother(Vanita) and a British father (William Methwold), a genealogy that
embodies the lineage of India as a post-colonial country. As he grows up,
Saleem has a large cucumber like nose, which resembles the shape of the India
subcontinent. Moving further we find many other instances, which re-assert the entwinement
of the destinies of the protagonist and his country. For ex. The desertion of
Saleem by the midnight’s children during the Sino-Indian war of 1962, the
massacre of the Saleem’s family and friends in the Indo-Pak wars of 1965 and
1971, the birth of Saleem’s ‘son’ on the night that emergency is declared and
finally, the disintegration of Saleem into 630 milllion speckles of dust – a
number equal to the Indian population at that time, all recursively complement Saleem’s
relation with India.
Besides this ‘surreal’ correspondence, there are many other
entities/episodes, which go beyond the realm of ordinary to make the text further
appealing and harmonize with the above-mentioned theme. For ex. Saleem’s remarkable ability to read other
people’s minds and later, his ability to sense emotions through his nose; all
the 1001 midnight’s children and their extraordinary abilities; the corrosive
humming of Mian Abdullah when attacked by assassins; the black guilt of fog
surrounding Amina upon indulging in a liaison with Nadir Khan etc. All these incidents
further fortify the magical nature of the story and its appeal.
Parallels with
Arabian Nights
The magical nature of Midnight’s Children draws huge
influence from the stories of Arabian Nights, which form an inseparable part of
the Indian culture. Saleem to Padma recounts his tale in the same way that
Scheherazade recites the stories to her husband, King Shahryar in Arabian
Nights in self-referential narrative. Also, many events from the novel, like
the levitation of Ramram Seth, the basket of invisibility etc. have corresponding
counterparts in Arabian Nights. Thus, this analogy was deliberately employed by
Rushdie to lend an air of occult to the novel, and serves as a prelude to the nature
of the upcoming events as well.
Conclusion
Rushdie, through Saleem, describes the continued struggle
for identity in the polarities of the post-colonial. The children are seen as a
hope of freedom for the whole nation, who, through their tremendous abilities
will take the nation forward. This freedom, in the end of the text is defined
as ‘being now forever extinguished’ as most of the midnight’s children are now
killed or sterilized. However, Rushdie points out that such a hope exists in
every generation of midnight’s children, who are the children of each
successive era. Hence, he gives an open-ended conclusion to the novel
“Yes, they will trample me underfoot…. they will trample my
son who is not my son, and his son who is not his…”
Thus, every generation of midnight’s children represents a
new hope for a nation to free itself from the chains of inability and create a
unique identity – only by ensuring freedom to its new rays of hope.
“….it is the privilege of midnight’s children to be both
masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the
annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and be unable to live or die in peace.”
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