Wednesday 11 April 2012


Midnight’s Children: An Indian Story

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is the story of Saleem Sinai, who was born at the exact moment when India became independent and as we follow his personal experiences, the story of India also unfolds.

The book was written in 1981 and it introduces us to Salman’s unique writing style which Linda Hutcheon also refers to as the “narcissistic narrative”. Through Saleem, Rushdie has not only offered a different perspective of India but also given his readers an insight into the making of the novel. Saleem’s influences, his relationship with Padma and how it shapes the story, his mistakes…

“Re-reading my work, I have discovered an error in chronology. The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi occurs, in these pages, on the wrong date. But I cannot say, now, what the actual sequence of events might have been; in my India, Gandhi will continue to die at the wrong time.”

His prolific use of words with their pace almost make it seem like he is talking to his readers. Some have pointed out that use of such a narrative and magical realism are found in post-modern and post-colonial literature and they complement such a story, based in and on India, which brings us to how this novel is distinctly Indian.

The novel starts in 1915, 32 years before the birth of Saleem Sinai and ends when he is about to be 31 and it traces the story of a Muslim Indian family up to 1977. It looks back at India’s past and gives accounts of the important historical events, such as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Quit India movement, the partition and independence, State of Emergency, through the eyes of a local citizen.

It gives us a deep insight into the Indian society, the variety of cultures, family values and relationships here. For instance,

“.. it was a mass fantasy shared in varying degrees by Bengali and Punjabi, Madrasi and Jat and would periodically need the sanctification and renewal which can only be provided by rituals of blood.”

“.. children were born who were only partially the offspring of their parents- the children of midnight were also the children of the time: fathered, you understand by history. It can happen especially in a country which itself is a sort of dream”

The narrative comprises and compresses Indian cultural history.

'Once upon a time,' Saleem muses, 'there were Radha and Krishna, and Rama and Sita, and Laila and Majnun; also (because we are not unaffected by the West) Romeo and Juliet, and Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn,"

Several Indian phrases and words have been used in the text. Like,

“Eat na, the food is spoiling”, “writing-shiting” or “who cares two pice” etc.

The range and shades of the text try to capture India’s complex history full of a variety of influences and how it is constantly changing and evolving.

The style of writing, with Saleem’s blatant interferences and interjections into his own work, gives us an idea of how history is relayed, with the help of memory and that each person can have his own version of it.  In a discussion between Gunter Grass and Salman Rushdie, Grass observes that “We have many realities.  Our problem is that we don’t accept that there are many realities”. The novel strongly questions our beliefs in history and presents the history of India with a different perspective, through Saleem’s memory which is not entirely uninfluenced.

What makes the novel brilliant is that despite its many many digressions into the past, politics, fantasy, myths, stories and incidents, it has one central theme. And however much arbitrary the different things seem, they unify and proceed in a direction. Such writing gives a sense of an oral narrative, which is the oldest, most popular form of narrative in India, thus making it essentially Indian.

The book received worldwide appreciation. It is obviously a very well researched book and heavily detailed and dense, which makes it a tough read.  

References:
http://www.ugr.es/~revpaz/resenas/Midnights_Children.html

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