Chapter – 2

Midnight’s Children.

The 1980s witnessed a second coming or revival for the Indian novel in English.
Its messiah seems to have been Salman Rushdie. The appearance of Midnight’s Children
in 1981 brought about a renaissance in Indian Writing in English which has surely
surpassed that of 1930s. Its influence, acknowledged by critics and novelists alike, has been
apparent in numerous ways: the appearance of a certain modern playfulness, the turn to
history, a new exuberance of language, the reinvention of allegory, the sexual frankness,
even the prominent references to Bollywood, all seem to owe something to Rushdie’s
novel.

Midnight’s Children, Rushdie’s magnum opus and monumental novel,

encompasses the whole of reality of the Indian sub-continent using magic realism. In fact,
with this most famous novel, Rushdie established a new trend of writing. He used a hybrid
language- English generously peppered with Indian terms- to convey a theme that could be
seen as representing the vast canvass of India. It has generally been categorized under the
magic realism mode of writing.

Midnight’s Children has fascinated the readers and critics all over the world with
its ‘chutnification’ of history and language as well. It has been acclaimed as a major
milestone in post-colonial literature. It truly represents a departure from conventional
Indian Writing in English.

With the publication of Midnight’s Children, Rushdie has signified a major

thematic and technical break away from Indian English novels written before 1980s. In a
sense, he has been a ‘liberating’ force for the Indian writers to break away from the colonial
ghosts that plagued his country. Reflecting the same concept, Dr. P. Indira Devi has quoted
the words of C. Kanaganayakam in her book, Salman Rushdie and Magic Realism as under;

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children marks the long awaited birth

of the great Indo-Anglian novel. His Magic Realism foregrounding
of style, syncopated dialogue, constant shifts of chronological

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 sequence, self-conscious narrative mode and the fusion of realism
and fantasy point to an awareness post-modern and metafictional
trends in fiction and a desire to break away from the realism and
assumptions governing the growth of the average Indo-Anglian
novel. (Indira Devi: 118)

Along with this, it must be noted that the fascination of Midnight’s Children lies
not only in the way it is grounded in realistic details, but also in the way it takes off from
the real world.

2.1 About the Book:-

Midnight’s Children is a 1981 book by Salman Rushdie. It is about the transition

of India from British Colonialism to independence. It has been considered as the best
example of post-colonial literature and that of Magic Realism. The story of the novel is
expressed through various characters and is contextualized by actual historical events as
with historical fiction.

Midnight’s Children has won the prizes like Booker Prize in 1981 and the James
Tait Black Memorial Prize in the same year. It has also been awarded the “Booker of
Bookers” Prize and the best all-time prize winners in 1993 and 2008 to celebrate the Booker
Prize 25th and 40th anniversary. Midnight’s Children is also the only Indian novel on Time’s
list of the 100 best English-language novels since its founding in 1923.

This novel has been divided in to three books. Each of them further
subdivides in to several different chapters. The first book consists eight chapters, while the
second one includes fifteen chapters and the third book has only seven chapters. Overall,
the whole novel is divided in to thirty chapters under the different titles. About this novel,
Rushdie writes in his Imaginary Homelands,

My novel, Midnight’s Children was really born; when I realized

how much I wanted to restore the past to myself…. What I was
actually doing was a novel of memory, so that my India was just that
; ‘my’ India, a version and no more than one version of all

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 the….possible versions I made my narrator suspect his narration; his
mistakes are the mistakes of a fallible memory ….and his vision is
fragmentary. It may be that when the Indian writer who writes from
outside India tries to reflect that world, he is obliged to deal in
broken mirrors, some of whose fragments have been irretrievably
lost. (Rushdie: 10 - 11)

In the novel, Rushdie tries to revision the history of his homeland, his community
and family and reveals his diasporic consciousness. Ironically, an immigrant writer gives
an authentic image of his homeland as he has distanced himself by migrating to a foreign
land and produces the effect of insider/outsider to every detail that is engraved in his
memory. Midnight’s Children is about India, the country of Rushdie’s own cherished
childhood.

It is experimental and confessional, an ingenious blending of history,

political allegory and fantasy, and it combines the truth and fluency of Mulkraj
Anand, the speculative acumen of R.K. Narayan with its linguistic wildness,
inventiveness and fantasy of G.V.Desani. (Walsh: 257)

2.2 Summary of the Novel:-

The narrator and protagonist of the novel, Saleem Sinai, begins his narration with
the detailed information about his birth at midnight of the 15th August,1947, at the exact
moment India gained independence from the British rule. Nearing to his thirty first
birthday, Saleem feels that his body is beginning to crack and fall apart. Fearing that his
death is imminent, he grows anxious to tell his life story as fast as he can. His loyal and
loving companion, Padma, serves as his patient, but often skeptical audience. Saleem
begins his narration from Kashmir, thirty two years before his birth, in 1915. There, his
grandfather is a doctor named Adam Aziz who begins to treat his first patient, Naseem-the
only daughter of a wealthy landlord, Ghani Saheb. For three years, Adam Aziz treats
Naseem while she stands behind a sheet with a small hole of seven inches in diameter
which is moved to expose the part of her body that is sick. Adam sees his future wife’s face
for the first time on the day when the World War-I ends in 1918.

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 Adam and Naseem get married and move to Agra. They have three daughters –
Alia, Mumtaz and Emerald, and two sons – Mustapha and Hanif. Adam becomes the
follower of optimistic activist Mian Abdullah whose anti-partition stance eventually leads
to his assassination. Adam hides Abdullah’s frightened assistant, Nadir Khan in his house
despite his wife’s opposition. While living in the basement, Nadir Khan falls in love with
Mumtaz, and the two are secretly married. However, after two years of marriage, Adam
finds out that his daughter is still a virgin. On hearing this, Emerald informs Major Zulfikar,
to be Emerald’s husband, about the hiding of Nadir Khan in the basement of their house,
but before his arrival, Nadir Khan has escaped running for his life. On the other side,
abandoned by her husband, Mumtaz agrees to marry Ahmed Sinai, a young merchant who
until then had been courting her sister, Alia.

Mumtaz gets her name changed to Amina Sinai and moves to Delhi with her new
husband. After a terrorist organization burns down Ahmed’s factory, they move to Bombay
(now Mumbai). Amina becomes pregnant and goes to the fortune teller to know about his
coming child’s future. She gets highly confused by the prophesy about her child. They buy
a house from a departing Englishman, William Methwold. A poor man named Wee Willy
Winky who entertains the families at the Methwold estate, says that his wife, Vanita, is
also expecting a child soon. In fact, Vanita has been seduced by William Methwold who is
the real biological father of Vanita’s unborn child. Amina and Vanita both go in to labor at
the same time and exactly at midnight of 15th August, 1947 each woman delivers a son.
Here a nurse, Mary Pereira, under the influence of her Marxist lover switches these new
born babies, thereby giving the poor baby the life of privilege and the rich baby a life of
poverty. Driven by a sense of guilt afterwards, she becomes an ayah to Saleem in trying to
make amend of her guilt.

As his birth coincides with the independence of India, the then Prime Minister and
the press heralds Saleem’s birth as highly significant. Young Saleem has an enormous
cucumber like nose and blue eyes like those of his grandfather, Adam Aziz. His
mischievous sister, Jamila, nick named as ‘Brass Monkey’ is born a few years later.
Ridiculed by other children for his huge nose, Saleem takes to hiding in a washing chest.
While hiding one day, he sees his mother sitting down on the toilet; when Amina discovers

36
him, she punishes Saleem to one day of silence. Unable to speak, he hears, for the first
time, a babble of voices in his head. He realizes he has the power of telepathy and can enter
any one’s thoughts. Eventually, Saleem begins to hear the thoughts of the other children
born during the first hour of independence. The 1,001 midnight’s children – a number
reduced to 581 by their tenth birthday – all have magical powers, which vary according to
how close to midnight they were born. Saleem discovers that Shiva, the boy with whom he
was switched at birth, was born with pair of enormous, powerful knees and a gift of war.

One day, Saleem loses a portion of his finger in an accident and is rushed to the
hospital, where his parents learn that according Saleem’s blood type; he couldn’t possibly
be their biological son. After he leaves the hospital, Saleem is sent to live with his uncle,
Hanif and Aunt Pia for a while. Shortly after Saleem returns home to his parents, Hanif
commits suicide. While the family mourns Hanif’s death, Mary confesses that she had
switched Saleem and Shiva at the time of their birth. Ahmed – now an alcoholic – grows
violent with Amina, prompting her to take Saleem and the Brass Monkey to Pakistan,
where she moves in with Emerald. In Pakistan, Saleem watches as Emerald’s husband,
General Zulficar, stages a coup against the Pakistani government and ushers in period of
martial law.

Four years later, after Ahmed suffers a heart failure, Amina and the children move
back to Bombay. India goes to war with China; while Saleem’s perpetually congested nose
undergoes a medical operation. As a result, he loses his telepathic powers, but, in return,
gains an incredible sense of smell, with which he can detect emotions.

Saleem’s entire family moves to Pakistan after India’s military loss to China. His
younger sister, now known as Jamila Singer, becomes the most famous singer in Pakistan.
Already on the brink of ruin, Saleem’s entire family – save Jamila and himself – dies in the
span of a single day during the war between India and Pakistan. During the air raids, Saleem
gets hit in the head by his grandfather’s silver spittoon, which erases his memory entirely.

Relieved of his memory, Saleem is reduced to an animalistic state. He finds himself

into military service, as his keen sense of smell makes him an excellent tracker. Though he
doesn’t know exactly how he came to join the army, he suspects that Jamila might have

37
sent him there as a punishment for having fallen in love with her. While in the army, Saleem
helps crush the independence movement in Bangladesh. After witnessing a number of
atrocities, however, he flees in to the jungle with three of his fellow soldiers. In the jungle
of the Sunderbans, he regains all of his memory except the knowledge of his name. After
leaving the jungle, Saleem finds Parvati – the – witch, one of midnight’s children, who
reminds him of his name and helps him escape back to India. He lives with her in the
magician’s ghetto, along with a snake charmer named Picture Singh.

Disappointed that Saleem will not marry her, Parvati-the-witch has an affair with
Shiva, now a famous war hero. Things between Parvati and Shiva quickly sour, and she
returns to the magician’s ghetto, pregnant and still unmarried. There, the ghetto residents
shun Parvati until Saleem agrees to marry her. Meanwhile, Indira Gandhi, the prime-
minister of India, begins a sterilization campaign. Shortly after the birth of Parvati’s son,
the government destroys the magician’s ghetto. Parvati dies while Shiva captures Saleem
and brings him to a forced sterilization camp. There, Saleem divulges the names of the
other midnight’s children. One by one, the midnight’s children are rounded up and
sterilized, effectively destroying the powers that so threaten the prime minister. Later,
however, Indira Gandhi loses the first election she holds.

The midnight’s children, including Saleem, are all set free. Saleem goes in search
of Parvati’s son, Aadam, who has been living with Picture Singh. The three take a trip to
Bombay, so Picture Singh can challenge a man who claims to be the world’s greatest snake
charmer. While in Bombay, Saleem eats some chutney that tastes exactly like the ones his
ayah, Mary, used to make. He finds the chutney factory that Mary now owns, at which
Padma stands guarding the gate. With this meeting, Saleem’s story comes full circle. His
historical account finally completes, Saleem decides to marry Padma, his steadfast lover
and listener, on his thirty-first birthday, which falls on the thirty-first anniversary of India’s
independence. Saleem prophesies that he will die on that day, disintegrating in to millions
of specks of dust.

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2.3 Manifestation of Magic Realism in the novel:-

To evaluate any literary work with a particular genre or mode of writing, it becomes
utmost essential to study that literary work under the light of different characteristics of the
claimed genre of narrative mode. Henceforth, to establish Midnight’s Children as a work
of magic realism, it becomes necessary to find out with analytical study whether the
characteristics of magic realism are imbibed in the novel. Its characteristics have already
been discussed in detail in the first chapter of this dissertation. They are – fantasy,
hybridity, fragmentation, historical reference, etc.

Now, each of these characteristics will be taken up to study and verify whether they
are used suitably in the novel. Therefore, it would be more suitable to consider first the
most important and essential feature of magic realism, that is to say, the combination of
magical elements with the normal, unusual with the common i.e. fantasy with the fact. The
whole novel is marked with such incidents. In fact, the fascination of Midnight’s Children
lies not only in the way it is grounded in realistic details, but also in the way it takes off
from the real world.

2.3.1 Fantasy and Fiction:-

Fantasy is an inseparable element of magic realism. In fact, it has always been an

important part of literature. Without fantasy, literature is unimaginable. The great epics
like – The Ramayana, The Mahabharata, The Odyssey, The Iliad, The Aeneid, etc. are all
fantasies. Rushdie has used fantasy as a literary device in Midnight’s Children. He has
mixed and woven fantasy to the very fabric and texture of his novel.

From the very beginning, the fantastic nature of the novel becomes evident when
the narrator, Saleem Sinai, informs about his birth in the following words;

I was born in the city of Bombay…once upon a time. No that won’t

do, there is no getting away from the date, I was born in Doctor
Narlikar’s nursing home on August 15, 1947. And the time? The
time matters, too. Well, then: at night. No it’s important to be
more…On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands

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 joined palms in respectful greetings as I came. Oh, spell it out, spell
it out: at the precise instant of India’s arrival at independence, I
tumbled forth in to the world. (MC: 3)

With this fairy-tale type of narrative, the narrator alerts the readers that fantasy
awaits them ahead. Thus, Saleem and the new state of India become symbolic counter
parts; both are born on 15th August, 1947 along with one thousand other children born in
the first hour of independence. They turn out to have miraculous powers of transmutation,
flight, prophesy, wizardry, etc. “as though history arriving at a point of 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.” (M.C.-271)

Every child born between midnight and 1.00 a.m. is endowed with some special
power. The closer to midnight their births are, the greater are their gifts. This is really
something very much fantastic interwoven with the thematic structure of the novel. It has
been presented elaborately by the novelist. Even the narrator is not certain about the
mystery behind this phenomenon of magical gifts to the newly born midnight children. His
confusion to account for this fantasy reflects in his following words;

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 state of India…what made the event
noteworthy 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, endowed with features, talents or faculties which can
only be described as miraculous. (M.C.-271)

It is one of the best examples of co-mingling of extra-ordinary with the mundane

which instantly puts the novel in to the category of magic realism. Here, the narrator also
sites a few examples of other midnight children’s gifts which are really noteworthy to get
over all impact of fantasy. They are as under;

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 1. A pair of twin sisters, in Orissa, possesses the ability of making everyone
who sees them fall hopelessly and often suicidally in love with them.
2. A boy from Kerala has got the ability of stepping in to mirrors and re-
emerging through any reflective surface.
3. A Goanese girl can multiply fish, and a werewolf from the Nilgiri Hills, and
then, a boy in Vindhyas can increase of reduce his size at will.
4. From Kashmir, a blue eyed child can change his/her sex by immersing in
water.
5. Outside Calcutta, a sharp tongued girl whose words have the power of
inflicting physical wounds to others.
6. A boy can eat metals and a girl whose fingers are so green that she can grow
prize aubergines in Thar desert.
7. In the Gir Forest, a witch girl with the power of healing by the laying-on of
hands, and a wealthy tea-planter’s son gets the blessings (or possibly the
curse) of being incapable of forgetting anything he ever sees or hears.
8. A boy from Lucknow has mastered the lost art of alchemy, and a washer
man’s daughter from Madras, can fly higher than any bird simply by closing
her eyes.
9. A Benarsi silversmith’s son is bestowed with the gift of travelling in time
and thus prophesying the future as well as clarifying the past.
10. Parvati-the-witch, born in the slums of Old-Delhi, has been gifted with the
powers of the true adept, the illuminates, the genuine gifts of conjuration
and sorcery, the art which requires no artifice.

After citing the above instances, Saleem informs us about his most remarkable
magical gift and that of Shiva in the following words;

…But two of us were born on the stroke of midnight. Saleem and

Shiva, Shiva and Saleem, nose and knees, knees and nose…to Shiva,
the hour had given the gift of war…and to me, the greatest talent of
all-the ability to look in to the hearts and minds of man. (M.C.-277)

41
 With this, the narrator also informs us that all the midnight’s children have not got
the desirable gifts or gifts desired by them; and in some cases, the children survive, but
deprived of their midnight-given qualities. For example, a beggar girl called Sundari, born
in Delhi, her beauty is so intense that within moments of her birth, it succeeds in blinding
her mother and the neighboring women. Then after, to make her look like a beggar, a rag
is placed across her face and after some time, an old and ruthless aunt slashes her face nine
times with a kitchen knife.

Apart from this, there are also some midnight’s children born in the last seconds of
the hour. They are not gifted with anything noteworthy, instead they are little more than
circus freaks; in fact, unfortunates. The narrator throws light on this fact by the following
statement;

Midnight has many children; the offspring of Independence were

not all human. Violence, corruption, poverty, generals, chaos, greed
and pepper pots… (M.C.-291)

At the age of nine years, Saleem realizes about his telepathic powers-a miraculous
gift of the midnight. When he complains his parents about hearing voices in his head, his
father hits him in the ear. Thus, his ‘stupid cracks’ are literalized in to physical cracks.
Then after, Saleem begins to enjoy his special power secretly. To begin with, he cheats at
school by reading the thoughts of his teachers and in that way he begins to score good
marks. Gradually, he moves further and farther. Here, through the lens of magic realism,
the writer discloses the bitter reality of the nation. During his journey through telepathic
powers, Saleem states;

At one time I was a landlord in Uttar Pradesh, my belly rolling over

my pajama cord as I ordered serfs to set my surplus grain on fire…at
another moment I was starving to death in Orissa where there was
food shortage as usual…I occupied, briefly, the mind of Congress
Party worker, bribing a village school teacher to throw his weight
behind the party of Gandhi and Nehru in the coming election
campaign. [M.C.-240-41]

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 Then, the narrator and protagonist of the novel, Saleem, also shares unhappy
information that all the one thousand and one midnight children do not survive. In fact, 420
out of them die on account of malnutrition, disease and misfortunes of everyday life. Here,
the novelist points out that the number of death-420 has been the number associated with
fraud, deception, and trickery. After the death of 420 midnight’s children, only 581
continue to exist with their miraculous gifts. Here again, the number of survived midnight
children-581-has symbolic importance. It so happens that there is precisely 581 seats in
India’s Lower House of Parliament, the Lok Sabha. These 581 remain as a parliament in
Saleem’s brain. Thus, Midnight Children’s Conference takes on a symbolic importance.
Saleem further probes in to the matter and gives the detailed fact that out of 581 midnight’s
children, 266 are boys and 315 girls. Saleem comes to know about all of them on the day
of his tenth birthday. It is remarkably presented in the text as;

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 is 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 eyebrows.
[M.C.-287]

It is entitled as M.C.C. – Midnight Children’s Conference. Thus, Saleem uses his

magical power to organize this conference where all the midnight’s children get connected
to talk, discuss, quarrel in myriad languages. Saleem is the spokesman of these children
whom he unites in the parliament of his mind. The Midnight Children’s Conference is a
metaphor of heterogeneous Indian society, its very essence of multiplicity.

The conference, in many ways, reflects the issues faced by India in its early
statehood concerning the cultural, linguistic, religious and political differences. Saleem
acts as a telepathic conduit, bringing hundred of geographically disparate children in to
contact. Shiva and Parvati-the-witch are two of these children with notable gifts and roles
in Saleem’s story. Saleem’s magic skills do not force a withdrawal in to fantasy. As a

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matter of fact, the ten years old, middle-class boy discovers various aspects of reality of
his country precisely through his magical powers.

Young Saleem discovers the discrepancy in the experiences of the multitudes

peopling the country through a magic realist device. Thanks to “mind-hopping” that allows
him to “invade” people’s mind, the narrator captures the opportunity to explore a variety
of social and political issues besides the major themes and characters of the novel. Saleem’s
autobiography is, in fact, the story of these children who are privileged to be both masters
and victims of their time: “The children of midnight were also the children of the time:
fathered…by history”. [M.C.-118]

2.3.2 Historical References:-

Historic sense is one of the main components of magic realism. In fact, there are a
number of historical references in Midnight’s Children where every personal event in the
life of Saleem and his family is inextricably linked to the historical and political events in
India.
There are as many as fifty five direct references to the history of the Indian sub-
continent. The first direct reference is found on the page 32 of the novel, where Gandhiji’s
‘hartal’ on 7th Apr., 1919 against the constant presence of the British, is referred to.
Saleem’s grandfather, Adam Aziz, with his wife Naseem, was on the way to Agra; their
train was stopped by the agitators in Amritsar.
The other important historical events are – the passing of the Rowlatt Act, General
Dyer’s large scale massacre, known as Jallianwallah Baugh massacre. Then, Quit India
Movement of 1942, references to Viceroy Wavell and Atlee, transfer of power and Nehru’s
famous speech on declaration of Independence, the assassination of Gandhi, introduction
of the first Five Year Plan, All India Congress Party elections and advent of communism
in India and so on.
Some references pertaining to external affairs are also interwoven in the texture of
the novel. In fact, Rushdie has unique capacity of linking events at personal as well as
public level. For example, Jallianwallah Baugh massacre is presented in a grotesque way;
As Brigadier Dyer issues a command, the sneeze hits my
grandfather full in the face, ‘Yaaaakh-thoooo!’. He sneezes and falls

44
 forward, losing his balance following his nose and thereby saving
his life. [M.C.-35]
However, the serious undertone of such episodes satirizes the tragedies of history,
in the same way, he links Brass Monkey’s habit of burning shoes with Nassar’s sinking of
ships in the Suez Canal. The narrative also takes the events like the announcement of a
coup in Pakistan, occupation of Goa and tension of the China-Indian border followed by
the 1962 defeat and the Kashmir issue and the 1965 war with Pakistan in to its fold. General
Sam Manekshaw and Tikka Khan, two war time celebrities, are also referred to and the
story is dovetailed towards Indira Gandhi’s handling of war, which is followed by Sheikh
Mujib’s arrest, formation of Muktivahini, massive infiltration of Bangladeshi refugees in
India, and finally, the birth of Bangladesh, the American intervention which was ultimately
precluded by Indira’s glorious role in handling the war; almost all the major landmarks of
the history of sub-continent ‘literally or metaphorically’ appear on the pages of the novel.
Rushdie can be very precise at times, if he chooses to be so. He mentions particular
dates on some occasions. For instance, he refers to one of the most crucial historical event,
History books newspapers radio programs tell us that at 2.00 p.m.
on June 12th, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was found guilty by Jag
Mohanlal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court, of two counts of
campaign malpractice during the election campaign of 1971…
[M.C.-497]
And interestingly enough Parvati-the-witch entered labour at that very moment. As
the story proceeds, having history as his milestone, one comes across references like the
death of Rail Minister, L.N.Mishra in a bomb-blast, formation of Janta Party by joint efforts
of Jayprakash Narayana and Morarjee Desai, the historical judgement of Allahabad High-
court against Indira Gandhi on 12th June, 1972 and Morarjee Desai’s demand of sacking
her. The narrator despises the declaration of the Internal Emergency and becomes a victim
of Sanjay Gandhi’s forced sterilization drive.
The history of post-independent India seems to be the chosen territory of Rushdie.
He has cleverly used the selected episodes and events of history to match his fictional
requirements.

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 Magic realism upholds the view that no one version of history can actually present
the whole picture. In this sense, magic realist style does have ideological implications for
an Indian novelist writing in English. In the novel, Midnight’s Children, the co-existence
of multiple realities within the same space, becomes a metaphor for the multi-faceted
aspect of history, and provides the propitious ground for Rushdie to present sharp criticism
of the political life in the country.
2.3.3 Mythological References:-
The very concept of the Midnight’s Children being born with miraculous powers is
a myth. The title itself suggests (Devi) something made of myths and miracles. The
important characters in Midnight’s Children- Saleem, Shiva and Parvati are all names
derived from mythology. Sinai is associated with Mt. Sinai and Moses, Lord Shiva is the
Indian mythological God of destruction and Parvati, his wife. Saleem’s sister is nick named
‘Brass Monkey’ which reminds us of Hanuman whose feet of setting fire to Lanka, the
capital of Ravana, finds a comic parallel in the brass monkey’s habit of setting fire to shoes.
For a long time, brass monkey is loyal to Saleem as Hanuman was to Rama, but there is an
inversion, because soon after leaving the country, both tread different paths and brass
monkey or Zamila becomes a singer to benefit her country, Pakistan and she betrays him,
while Saleem returns to India.
Shiva is an example of mythological history and alter ego of Saleem Sinai. The
reference to the alter ego also reminds us of the two brothers from the epic Ramayana,
Ravana and Vibhishana, who stand opposite in the war in which Rama kills Ravana. Here
Saleem’s intention of linking Shiva not only with God but also with epic hero is evident.
Shiva’s fecundity and destructive powers are never in question and he has uncountable
illegitimate children also. Being a destroyer links him to Lord Shiva but unlike the Hindu
God, Shiva destroys good but not evil and is determined to destroy Saleem.
Rushdie uses the word Kali-Yuga to refer to the present era as an epoch of evil. The
motif of betrayal constantly appears in the novel. Amina, Pia, Leela Sabarmathi, Parvati,
Vanita and Indira Gandhi are guilty of betrayal. All these failures are seen in relation to the
epic Ramayana, which exalts the virtues of loyalty.
Not only the midnight’s children, even the outsider Padma, the listener, has some
power,

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 Padma the Lotus Calyx, which grew out of Vishnu’s naval, and from
which Brahma himself was born: Padma the source, the mother of
time! [M.C.-192]
Another reference to mythology can be found in the text where Saleem gets lost in
the Sunderbans in Bangladesh and becomes Buddha. This lost period in Saleem’s case can
be considered enlightenment. The jungle can also refer to the Muslim Paradise. From
another perspective, Saleem’s sojourn in the Sunderbans jungle is like the period of exile
of Pandavas in the Mahabharatha. Shiva’s trials to trace out Saleem resemble the efforts
of Kauravas to spot the Pandavas before the allotted time and consign them to a further
period of exile.
Rushdie has also made use of prophesies which are basically connected with the
realm of mythology. Amina Sinai goes to a soothsayer named Ramram Seth to know about
the future of her unborn son, Saleem. It is highly fantastic and confusing reflecting the
novel’s mode of writing – magic realism;
A son, Sahiba, who will never be older than his motherland- neither
older nor younger…There will be two heads-but you shall see only
one-there will be knees and a nose, a nose and knees…Newspaper
praises him, two mothers raise him! Bicyclists love him-but, crowds
will shove him! Sisters will weep; cobra will creep…Washing will
hide him-voices will guide him! Friends mutilate him – blood will
betray him! …Spittoons will brain him – doctors will drain him –
the jungle will claim him – wizards reclaim him! Soldiers will try
him – tyrants will fry him…He will have sons without having sons!
He will be old before he is old! And he will die…before he is dead.
[M.C. – 114-15]
A similar prophesy is made by Saleem himself for his own son, who is not his son,
in what can also be seen as optimistic foretelling of the fate of the “New India” born out of
the Emergency, personified by Adam Sinai;
We, the children of independence, rushed wildly and too fast in to
our future; he, Emergency-born, will be is already more cautious,
biding his time; but when he acts, he will be impossible to resist.

47
 Already he is stronger, harder and more resolute than I; when he
sleeps, his eyeballs are immobile beneath their lids. Adam Sinai,
child of knees and – nose, does not surrender to dreams. (594)
The use of myth is persistent in the novel that Rushdie uses this technique in ironic
and playful manner for recording his narrative in mythical terms that surfaces in his
metafictional observations. Mythology is one of the most important components of the
mode – magic realism.
Thus, using Hindu myth, as the most satisfactory mode of expressing ideas about
the contemporary reality and the world, Rushdie has enriched realism and made the English
literature up to date. He has created the alternative version of reality – magic realism – to
delineate all that is invisible, suppressed, unsaid and unofficial.

2.3.4 Socio – Political References:-

Magic Realism contains an implicit criticism of society and particularly that of

political atmosphere of the country. Generally, a magic realist text has a specific historical,
political and cultural setting.
Midnight’s Children deals with socio-political realities with a fictional treatment.
Politics is an important theme Rushdie likes to present and expose evils inherent in it
through his sharp satire. He makes a parallel between the action of the book and what
happens in the history. For example; when Mahatma Gandhi is killed, the radio announces
the assassin’s name as Nathuram Godse, and every Muslim in India feels relieved. It is
remarkably echoed in the words of Ameena Sinai;
…finally the radio gave us a name. Nathuram Godse. ‘Thank God’.
Its not a Muslim name!...after all, by being Godse he has saved our
lives. (M.C. – 197)
Indian political environment depends on the political consciousness of people; the
literacy rate decides the election results. Saleem argues, there was no development in the
literacy rate of the country as the Congress Party’s success depended on the literacy rate of
Indians, so they had to keep it low.
The war of 1971 saw the ultimate degradation of man. Saleem, in his amnesia, is
chosen as a man-dog by the Pakistani troops. When the war is over, Saleem finds himself

48
in India, and finds the unscrupulous politicians degrading the values and ethics. Mrs. Indira
Gandhi, the then Prime-Minister of India, declares a state of Emergency and people are
forcefully castrated. All the midnight children are arrested and tortured; the failure of all
midnight’s children and the victory of Shiva, the most evil amongst them, symbolizes the
ultimate defeat of the human spirit by the cruel and dehumanizing forces of politics of India
and Pakistan.
The denunciation of the practices of the Indian government during the period of
Emergency is rendered through the technique of magic realism, which highlights not only
the injustices of the regime, but also manipulation of facts through national discourse
whereby abuse of power is masked as a measure for the sake of population. During the
Emergency that lasted from 1974 to 1977, oppressive measures and suspension of certain
rights were thus declared in the name of the nation. In Rushdie’s fictionalization of those
events, the criticism of the national discourse of the regime is promoted through the magic
realist multi- layering of perspectives.
Unafraid either of public censure or government censures, Rushdie sought to
embrace the sights, sounds and smells of the Indian politics in all its multiplicity, and was
determined to leave nothing out.
2.3.5 Use of Language:-
To discuss about Rushdie’s use of language in the novel, it would be worthwhile to
begin with the quotation of M.L Raina;
No Indian novelist has had the courage to handle English language
with the gaiety and joyousness as Rushdie. [Raina: 172]
Magic realist novelists use heightened language in their works. Rushdie’s mastery
of language is more effective than most of the Indian novelists in English. To make his
language more effective in the novel, he employs certain linguistic devices which make the
novel more appealing and powerful. It gets reflected in the statement by Agnes Scot, quoted
by Dr. P. Indira Devi in her book, Salman Rushdie and Magic Realism in the following
words;
The total effect of Rushdie’s linguistics techniques is to mould a
vibrant prose whose positive tone makes language a bridge between

49
 cultures, enabling a new process of enculturation to take place in the
west. (Indira Devi: 86-87)
Salman Rushdie has created a craze with the publication of his novel, Midnight’s
Children. Its popularity rests on two things: the innovative use of English as a language,
and the fantastic representation of history. While Rushdie resorts to the use of magic
realism, to oppose the Euro-centrism of master discourses, the innovativeness of Rushdie’s
English is prompted by a desire to capture the spirit of Indian culture with all its multiplicity
and diversity. Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children best illustrates his strategy of ‘Indianising,
revitalising, and decolonising the English language’.
In fact, he employs a hybrid form of post colonial and post modernist narrative
discourses and has established a style of language that can only be labeled as
‘Rushdiesque’.
In a sense, it can be said that Rushdie has established a wider ethnocentric base for
the English language by creating a magical and humorous Indian blend of English. It takes
the form of ‘chutnification’ of the English language using several devices such as the use
of Hindi, Urdu and Hindustani words, phrases, and expressions in Midnight’s Children.
Such words, phrases and expressions form a long list, including, “O baba”, “funtoosh”,
ekdum, angrez, phut-a-phut, nasbandhi, dhoban, feringee, garam masala, rakshas, fauz,
badmas, jailkhana, baap-re-baap, sab kuch, yaar, gora, pyar kiya to darna kya, goondas,
hubshee, ooper niche, sarpanch, bhai-bhai, crorepatis, ayah, nimbu-pani, khichri, bhel-puri,
rasgullas, gulabjamuns, barfi and many others. Then, bilingual echoic formations –
“writing-shiting”, again bilingual puns like, “ladies and ladas” and dovetailing words –
“ononon”. The use of such expressions provides an amount of authenticity and credibility
to the novel. It also enhances the quantum of reality which is so much needed in an
historical novel like Midnight’s Children.
Though the novel abounds in Hindi and Urdu words, Rushdie has added no
notes or glossary to explain them fully to Western readers, as Raja Rao has done at the end
of his monumental novel, Kanthapura. Rushdie does not think it necessary to provide
explanations. He rather thinks that the text of the novel should be self-explanatory and
absorbing in itself. In her Introduction to Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children: A Book of
Critical Readings (2003), Meenakshi Mukherjee mentions,

50
 Linguistics risks that Rushdie took with utter abandon, defining
them as getting away with the use of the mongrel street language of
cities, daring to translate idioms and puns mediated by no apology,
no footnote, no glossary. (Mukherjee: 45)
The English of Rushdie is certainly postcolonial and postmodern. It gives us
glimpses in to his conscious craftsmanship, which aims at decentring and hybridity. And
his skill at ‘decentring’ and ‘hybridity’ is best seen when he, at the lexical level, employs
some Latin and Arabic words. Some of the outstanding examples of this are: ‘mucuna
pruritis’, ‘feronia elephanticus’, ‘sunt lacrimae rerum’ (all Latin), ‘kam ma kam’, ‘fiqadin
azzaman’, ‘tilk al-gharaniq al’, and ‘ula wa inna shafa ata-hunna la-turtaja’ (all Arabic).
Sometimes Rushdie combines words and phrases to make compounds, a style later
imitated by Arundhti Roy in her The God of Small Things (1997). Such compounds are
galore in Midnight’s Children, such as ‘overandover’, ‘updownup’, ‘downdowndown’,
‘suchandsuch’, ‘noseholes’, ‘birthanddeath’, ‘blackasnight’
‘whatdoyoumeanhowcanyousaythat’, ‘nearlynineyearold’, ‘almostseven’, ‘whatsitsname’
‘godknowswhat’ and ‘talldarkandhandsome’. These compounds display the extent of
Rushdie’s inventiveness and show his mastery of the English language. He employs it as
he wishes it to suit his purpose.
Rushdie also makes use of slang – mostly Indian – very often in the text of
Midnight’s Children; for example, ‘funtoos’, ‘gora’, ‘zenana’, ‘hubsee’, etc. He does not
stop here and proceeds to create new slang words like ‘other pencil’, ‘cucumber’, ‘soo
soos’ and ‘spitoon’. Thus, Padma (the listener and heroine of the novel) says to Saleem
Sinai (the hero and narrator in the novel);
Now that the writery is done, let’s see if we can make your other
pencil work! [M.C.-39].
Here ‘writery’ is used for ‘writing’ and ‘your other pencil’ for male sex organ. The
language has become both inventive and suggestive here. Similarly, ‘cucumber’ also refers
to the male generative organ, as in the expression, ‘the useless cucumber hidden in my
pants’ [M.C.-141]. It is quite imagistic and suggestive. Rushdie is fond of using such
suggestive words and phrases. In his playfulness with words, he does not spare even the
female sex organ, for which he uses the word, ‘spittoon’, as it is found in Saleem Sinai’s

51
frank confession: “…despite everything she tries, I cannot hit her spittoon” [M.C.-39].
Thus, through these examples we discover that nothing is inviolable for Rushdie when he
is involved in gimmickry with words, phrases and expressions.
Occasionally, Rushdie resorts to deliberate misspellings of words, for example –
‘unquestionabel’, ‘straaange’, ‘existance’, ‘ees’, etc. He also uses some incorrect words
such as, ‘mens’, ‘lifeliness’ and ‘informations’. All these deliberate mistakes point to the
use of English by Indians in their daily lives. In Midnight’s Children, Rushdie tries to
destroy the notion of the purity and centrality of English by inventing new forms of existing
English words or by effecting ‘creative hybridization’. Some of the examples include –
‘dislikeable’, ‘doctori’, ‘unbeautiful’, ‘sonship’, ‘memoryless’, ‘historyless’, ‘dupatta-
less’, ‘chutnification’, etc.
In her critical work, Meenakshi Mukherjee has stated;
The most significant challenge is the task of using the English
language in a way that will be distinctively Indian and still remain
English. [Mukherjee: 165]
Here it can be said that Rushdie has faced this challenge and churned out an Indian
English that is particularly a mixture tasty and spicy. In fact, Rushdie’s numerous
experiments with the English language have made Midnight’s Children a highly
challenging and complex work of fiction. Along with the content and its marvelous
treatment, these linguistics experiments have enabled Rushdie to capture the top most
position among the winners of the Booker Prize over the past twenty five years. His
linguistics experiments, strange and startling at times, have attracted readers and reviewers
all over the world and have placed Indian English fiction on a sound footing in the present-
day highly competitive literary scene.
This type of linguistic presentation tends to put the novel in the realm of magic
realism.
2.3.6 Theme of Alienation:-
The theme of alienation is one of the important manifestations of magic realism.
There are two types of alienations – social alienation and self alienation. Here, in this novel,
Salman Rushdie has used both the types of alienations. The narrator and protagonist of the

52
novel, Saleem Sinai is shown suffering from inner isolation and meaninglessness in his
very existence.
In fact, Rushdie himself feels alienated like his protagonist; always finds himself
haunted by a sense of loss and estrangement. As he has stated in his Imaginary Homelands;
I’ve been in a minority group all my life, as a member of an Indian
Muslim family in Bombay, then of a mohajir – migrant – family in
Pakistan, and now as a British Asian. [Rushdie: 4]
For Rushdie, such a condition of exile is symbolic and his particular background
has produced in him a state of mind where issues of alienation, identity and belonging are
central. Therefore, he considers himself in a position to speak with authority on behalf of
the postmodern condition. He further states in his Imaginary Homelands;
It may be that writers in my position, exiles or emigrants or
expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim,
to look back. This alienation…means that we will not be capable of
reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will, in short,
create fictions. [Rushdie: 10]
The theme of alienation can also be seen from an artist’s perspective, seeking to
preserve the ‘truth’ from being muddled up by politicians and history being rewritten for
their own selfish purposes. It has also been commented about Rushdie’s treatment of the
theme of alienation in the book edited by R.S.Pathak in following words;
Rushdie’s alienated characters convey, in varying degrees, a sense
of unhappy frustration resulting mainly from their social milieu. He
has ruthlessly presented their social tragedy and psychological
trauma… As a creative historian of the contemporary socio-
psychological ethos, Rushdie is concerned with an impassioned
portrayal of the problem of alienation and does not bother to suggest
any solution to it. (Pathak: 167)
From the very beginning of life, Saleem, the protagonist of the novel, is switched
over with another infant at the hospital by the nurse, Mary Pereira. As a result, he grows
up in the wrong family, a household of wealthy postcolonial Anglophiles, and is thus exiled
from his true parents and alienated from his traditional culture. Besides, on account of

53
cradle-switching and certain philandering by his likely parents, the “child of midnight” has
four possible fathers [Ahmed Sinai, Nadir Khan, Wee Willie Winkie and William
Methwold] and three mothers [Vanita, Amina Sinai and Mary Periera]
The protagonist who stands at the centre of Midnight’s Children is a Muslim and,
is illegitimate son of a Hindu woman and an Englishman. Thus the hero is a child of Hindu
British parentage and grows up as the son of a Muslim couple. He is destined to have more
than two mothers and several fathers as well the timing of his birth subjects Saleem to an
even more difficult fate by giving his personal identity a larger dimension.
Saleem Sinai sustains so many simultaneous identities. He is by turns defiant,
modest, strident, subtle, fatalistic, recalcitrant, fastidious, bawdy, flippant and solemn but
seldom composed and never in tune with his inner self. Always divided from within, he
leads a breathless and desultory life. He has no stable identity, but he assumes many
identities. For instance, at one moment; he is at the crease with Polly Umrigar at the
Brabourn Stadium, and the next, he unravels in the seamy gossip in Filmfare about the
dancer, Vaijantimala, then, he is a Congress Party worker, a Kerala peasant who votes for
the Communists, a landlord in Uttar Pradesh ordering his peasants to set his surplus grain
on fire and starve to death. But as a fragment also, he is complete. Rushdie’s intricate
narrative technique enables him to sustain the simultaneous identities he has to assume as
a human being and a narrator – capturing within his self, the euphoria, expectations,
tensions and traumas of independence.
Saleem is doomed to lead the life of social outcast, and exile: “at every turn I am
thwarted, a prophet in the wilderness, like Maslama (…); no matter how I try, the desert is
my lot (M.C.-471).
2.3.7 Hybridity:-
Hybridity is one of the most eminent components of magic realism. The term,
‘hybridity’ is defined as the combination and mixing of multiple, seemingly opposing
elements in a manner that maintains the various elements’ characteristics. However,
through this mixing, the various elements’ characteristics subvert and alter the
characteristics of the other elements. Through this subversion, the characteristics meld
together to create some new element, which shares characteristics with the various

54
elements it was formed from, but maintains its own separate identity from those various
elements.
Midnight’s Children remains the embodiment of hybridity, because every aspect of
the novel is imbued with this mixing and melding of various elements and characteristics.
The novel employs the formal technique of magic realism which is in itself a “hybrid” of
realism and the supernatural through myth and historical events, and Rushdie
simultaneously represents ordinary events along with fantastic elements. The common
reading of Midnight’s Children regards the ‘magic’ in ‘magic realism’ as indigenous and
realism as Western.
Amina, the daughter of a superstitious mother, and a skeptical modernizing father,
finds herself thinking, “this is still India, and people like Ramram Seth know what they
know”(100). Her father, Adam Aziz imagines that, “the hegemony of superstition, the
mumbo-jumbo and all things magical would never be broken in India”. (67)
The novel often pairs characters that reinforce this binary: Aziz, the Western-
educated doctor, and Tai, the oral story teller, together are “Tai-for-changelessness
opposed to Adam for progress” (107). Aziz the modernizer is married to Reverend Mother,
the formidable bulwark of tradition; and Saleem, the English language writer, reads his
narrative aloud to Padma, his illiterate female companion who connects him “with that
world of ancient learning and sorcerers’ lore so despised by most of us nowadays”.(191).
Shiva and Parvati are both Hindus, while Saleem is Muslim, and their relationship
demonstrate the mixing of religious and cultural mythologies present within India. The
novel presents us with a hybrid version of history in which it is clearly impossible to discern
a ‘total’ truth, since history can only be accessed imperfectly, through an unreliable
memory, in fragments, bits and pieces. It can also be said that Saleem Sinai’s inability to
survive is tied to his inseparable and exclusive connection to the past and his son, Adam
Sinai is a symbol of hope because he is not tied down by history the way his father is.
An important aspect of Rushdie’s narration is his unveiling of the story in
fragments, with a view of exposing “history” as a hybrid construct. The Midnight’s
Children’s Club (MCC) is composed of varied participants, many evildoers and monsters
among talented and gifted children. It is also expressed by Saleem when he says;

55
 Midnight has many children; the offspring of Independence were
not all human. Violence, corruption, poverty, generals, chaos, greed
and pepper pots…I had to go in to exile to learn that the children of
midnight were more varied than I-even I- had dreamed. [M.C.-333]
Hybridity as a concept also presents itself in the novel when Saleem contrasts
Bombay with Karachi. Saleem views Bombay as a hybrid space, with its kaleidoscopic
mixture of factors whereas he is forced to view Karachi only as a heterogeneous entity,
“the land of the pure”. To him, Pakistan represents a repressed, “pure” and closed space;
something he could never associated himself with.
Bombay has been used as the setting of the novel. In fact, Bombay represents its
religious diversity, social cast differences and multiplicity. In this way, Bombay, itself
becomes a solid example of hybridity as it is a hybrid, of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian;
of young and old; of the past and the present moment and etc.
Another hybridity in the text is the coinage of the word “Abracadabra”, as the word
that is first spoken by Saleem’s son, Aadam. It is a word that combines both ancient Greek
and Oriental concepts, thus symbolizing an east-west fusion of cultures. Both Saleem and
Aadam is a conglomeration of the history of Indian colonials as well as contemporary India.
2.3.8 Fragmentation:-
Fragmentation is celebrated in Midnight’s Children. For example, the manner in
which Adam Aziz falls in love with Naseem, bit by bit through the perforated sheet. It can
be seen as a celebration of it. He loves her in parts but when gets to know her in the
“whole”, their relationship declines. The same happens with Amina who falls in love with
parts of Ahmed’s body. Lifafa Das’s attempt to enclose the whole of India in to a peepshow
is another example of Rushdie’s view point that nothing in reality can be known in its
entirety, it can only be accessed in pieces.
Fragmentation is an indivisible part of the structure of the text. The fragmentations
perpetrated by history like the partition of India and Pakistan, and the further partition of
Pakistan in to Bangladesh find parallels in the physical fragmentation suffered by Saleem,
from fingers to sexual organs. Saleem’s parentage is fragmented, spread across various
families which by themselves are fragmented.

56
 We see the fragmentation of India at various level; on the social level there is
disintegration of the extended family of Saleem; on the cultural level we see the conflict
between acquired and inherited values, experienced by Methwold, Adam Aziz, the Brass
Monkey and the convert Mary; in the realm of politics there is the Jallianwallah Bagh
massacre, the non-violent struggle of Gandhiji, the strife between the Muslims and the
Hindus, the Partition, the political intrigue in Pakistan, the creation of Bangladesh, and the
events leading to the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi. The divisive force gradually
encroaching in to Indian life and culminating in the 1970s when there is a frightening
degree of dislocation and fragmentation in social and political life. It gets echoed in the
words of Saleem when he says;
One day, perhaps, the world may taste the pickles of history. They
may be too strong for some palates, their smell may be
overpowering, tears may rise to eyes; I hope nevertheless that it will
be possible to say of them that they possess the authentic taste of
truth…that they are, despite everything, acts of love. (MC: 644)
Midnight’s Children is a novel that is fragmented, making frequent and abrupt
transitions of place, time and character. Far from being a careless mistake of the author,
the fragmentation in this novel serves vital psychological functions, reflecting the divisive
experiences of colonialism and post-colonialism. The extreme fragmentation may cause
difficulty for the reader, thrusting him or her in to the same feeling experienced by exiles
and the characters Rushdie portrays.
The whole household was very often torn by the conflict between grand paternal
skepticism and grand maternal credulity. Saleem’s father was “unnerved, adrift,
unmanned” [M.C.397] and his mother became the victim of the “Spirit of detached fatigue”
[M.C.392] and, eventually “fell apart” [M.C.393]. His sister Jamila was filled with “the
pain of exile” and “the lovelessness of life” [M.C.472]. Hence, he has the sensation of
being “pulled up by his roots to be flung unceremoniously across the years, (and) fated to
be flung memoryless in to an adulthood whose every aspect grew daily more grotesque”.
[M.C.414] He meanders through his existential predicament “like a puppet with broken
strings”. [M.C.509]. He had “more mothers than most mothers have children” [M.C.243]
and all his life he says, “consciously or unconsciously I have sought out fathers”

57
[M.C.426]. All this testifies to Saleem’s lack of roots and the connected fragmentation of
personality. Prof. R.S.Pathak rightly observes;
The motif of fragmentation is present throughout the novel. But in
no case it is prominent as it is in the case of Saleem. He is fully
aware of his problems and plights, misfortunes and discordances, so
typical of a rootless person. [Pathak: 163]
At the height of self-estrangement, Saleem looks at himself as only the broken bits
and fragments of his former self;
I am tearing myself apart, can’t even agree with myself talking and
arguing like a wild fellow, cracking up, memory going, yes, memory
plunging in to chasms and being swallowed by the dark only
fragments remain, none of it makes sense anymore. [M.C.503]
2.3.9 Narrative Technique:-
Rushdie has introduced innovatory narrative techniques in his novel, Midnight’s
Children. In fact, he has set the trend for experimentation with narrative technique and
usage of the English language. The complexity of his narrative technique has attracted the
attention of the critics world over. Regarding this, William Walsh has stated;
Combining the elements of magic and fantasy, the grimmest
realism, extravagant farce, multi-mirrored analogy and a potent
symbolical structure, Salman Rushdie has captured the astonishing
energy of the novel unprecedented in scope, manner and
achievement in the hundred and fifty-year-old tradition of the Indian
novel in English. [Walsh: 158]
What make Midnight’s Children so compelling and convincing to the reader are
Rushdie’s unparalleled narrative technique and his crafty presentation of a linear story in
the form of non-linear narrative. He establishes interesting relationship between the
narrator and the reader, illustrates exemplarily with the use of illiterate Padma as the
listener-questioner in Midnight’s Children.
The narrative frame-work of Midnight’s Children consists of a tale Saleem Sinai
recounts orally, in a tradition similar to the oral traditions in the culture of India. This
narrative from a first person’s perspective recalls indigenous Indian culture, particularly

58
the similarly orally depicted The Arabian Nights. The events narrated in the text also have
a parallel in the magical nature of the narratives the reader encounters in The Arabian
Nights.
Within the larger frame of the novel’s narrative, there are many smaller stories that
are told, a technique that Rushdie uses time and again in his fictional works. Stories are
culturally important, but they are also deployed here for specific purposes, intended to
convey particular lessons, through metaphor, symbol, and image. Rushdie generously
mixes personal intimacy, gossip and autobiography with self-mockery and irony,
maintaining a comic stance even in the course of narration of tragic or significantly serious
events. Saleem’s description of the incident that led to his mother announcing to the world
of his conception is a classic example of irony tinged with tragedy. It happens when Amina
Sinai tries to protect Lifafa Das from the rioting mob with the following words;
Listen well, I am with child. I am a mother who will have a child,
and I am giving this man my shelter. Come on now, if you want to
kill, kill a mother also and show the world what men you are! [M.C.
100]
Here, in such a serious event, Saleem points out humorously;
… my arrival - the coming of Saleem Sinai – was announced to the
assembled masses of the people before my father had heard about it.
From the moment of my conception, it seems, I have been public
property. [M.C. 100]
About Rushdie’s narrative technique, Syed Amanuddin has stated;
The story is the thing, but behind it lie hidden the thought and design
of the artist giving it shape, courting the reader to see bit by bit the
subtle experiences, thoughts, and people, and establishing
connections between fact and fantasy. (Amanuddin: 43)
Rushdie is a master craftsman who knows how to combine fact with fantasy and
present linear stories disguised as nonlinear narration. He consciously uses ingredients of
fiction that interest readers everywhere: mythical and grotesque characters, vampires,
demons and witches, magic and miracles, murders and suicides, physical fights and
bloodshed and satirical treatment of historical personages familiar to readers.

59
 However, keeping in point of view the split self of the narrator, Saleem Sinai,
Rushdie’s narrative technique defies clear outlines. The unity of time and place are not
uniformly adhered to throughout the novel. The wavering and shaky nature of Saleem
chimes with the unstable and slippy narrative technique of the novel, Saleem adopts various
narrative modes to convey experience. He is yet to attain adequacy, wholeness and
stability. He feels urgency to finish his story as he fears that his death is quite close. So, he
asserts;
There are many stories to tell … such an excess of intertwined lives,
events, miracles, places, rumours, so dense a comingling of the
improbable and the mundane. I have been a swallower of lives; and
to know me, just the one of me, you will have to swallow the lot as
well. (M.C.4)
Saleem, the self-conscious narrator oscillates between the past and the present, the
historical and the personal, the apocalyptic and the expansive. There are some mistakes in
the narration of the novel towards which much criticism is drawn. Some negative reactions
to the novel stemmed from a misunderstanding of Rushdie’s deliberate inclusion of
mistakes at the level of historical events. In an article entitled, Imaginary Homelands
‘Errata’ The Riddle of Midnight, Salman Rushdie refers to this criticism and replies that,
My India was just that, ‘my’ India, a version and no more than one
version of all the hundreds of millions of possible versions. I tried
to make it as imaginatively true as I could, but imaginative truth is
simultaneously true and suspect. (10)
In the novel as well as in this quotation, Rushdie consciously subjects historical
facts to what he calls “imaginative truth”. These mistakes do not result from Rushdie’s
being more interested in developing the magic aspects of the novel to the detriment of the
“realist” side; they are meant to disrupt the world of facts and the pretense of accuracy in
realm of history. Saleem’s narrative, by exhibiting its own fallacies, also becomes a
comment on what he perceives as the Widow’s megalomaniac attempt to be at the centre
of the country and its history. Here, the perspective of the narrator completely takes over
the narrative. Saleem happens to be at the center of some of the major events that occur not

60
only in India but also Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is nicely presented by Saleem through
the following words;
Who 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…To understand me you
have to swallow a world. (MC: 380)
During his narration, Saleem becomes doubtful, at times, about the accuracy and
truthfulness of his presentation. He even starts questioning the accuracy of what he is
“recording” in writing;
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. (MC: 229-30)
Saleem is now aware of the mistakes that he has recorded, but despite his efforts,
“[his] memory refuses, stubbornly, to alter the sequence of events”. (MC: 254). The line
between rational world and the magical one is blurred to the point that the two become
inseparable; likewise, here history, memory and imagination are all shown to contribute to
the writing of Saleem’s narrative. Thus, the novel constantly provides the readers with
clues as to the unreliability of the narrator. It casts doubt upon other versions of truth while
allowing Saleem to give a personal, hence openly subjective, interpretation of the events
that take place in the region. He points out;
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 it
creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent
version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone
else’s version more than his own. (MC: 292)

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 Thus, the problem faced by Saleem is that if nothing can be true absolutely, then
how can meaning be created? As the story progresses and his memory errors become
increasingly obvious, Saleem himself becomes more and more unsure of the truth of his
narrative and of his own perceived personality, his very selfhood. He wonders aloud;
Does one error invalidate the entire fabric? Am I so far gone in my
desperate need for meaning that I’m prepared to distort everything
– to rewrite the whole history of my times purely in order to place
myself in a central role? (MC: 230)
2.3.10 Uncertain Endings:-
Uncertainty is one of the important characteristics of magic realism. Magic realist
novels leave the readers in uncertainty. In Midnight’s Children once Saleem’s historical
account is finally complete, Saleem decides to marry Padma his steadfast lover and listener,
on his thirty-first birthday, which falls on the thirty-first anniversary of India’s
independence. Saleem prophesies that he will die on that day, disintegrating in to millions
of specks of dust.
Yes, they will trample me underfoot, the numbers marching one two
three, four hundred million five hundred six, reducing me to specks
of voiceless dust…the curse of midnight’s children to be both
masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sacked
in to the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable
to live or die in peace. (MC: 647)
In the true magic realist tradition, the novel ends on an uncertain note, without a
definite end in sight. There is a suggestion of a cyclical repetition of fates of the midnight’s
children, and the subsequent generations, leading us to believe that the world is a part of a
cycle which we may never be able to escape.
2.4 Scattered incidents signifying Magic Realism.

Apart from all these characteristics, the whole novel is peppered with the incidents
which are obviously magical or supernatural. It would be interesting enough to have a
glimpse of such events for better understanding of the nature of the novel. All these

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incidents, marking the fusion of common and extra-ordinary or supernatural, easily
categorize the novel as a magic realist text.

1. At the very beginning of the novel, Adam Aziz’s father becomes the victim of
the stroke which has paralyzed his brain and some parts of his body. Here,
Saleem states;
…in a wooden chair, in a darkened room, he sat and made
the bird-noises. Thirty different species of birds visited
him…conversing this and that. He seemed happy enough.
(7-8)
The event of talking to birds is itself a fantastic and beyond natural
phenomenon.
2. The Reverend Mother, Naseem Aziz could dream her daughters’ dreams just to
know what they were up to.
… so, then: asleep in her bed at night, Reverend Mother
visited Emerald’s dream, and found another dream within
them… (69)
3. The concept of midnight’s children being born with miraculous powers is really
supernatural. Then after, the narration of Midnight’s Children’s Conference in
the brain of the narrator is purely unearthly.
… as my mental facility increased, I found that it was
possible not only to pick-up the children’s transmissions;
only to broadcast my own messages; but also […] to act as a
sort of national network, so that by opening my transformed
mind to all the children, I could turn it in to a kind of forum
in which they could talk to one another, through me. So, in
the early days of 1958, the five hundred and eighty- one
children would assemble, for one hour between midnight
and one a.m. in the lok sabha or parliament of my brain.
(314)
4. The character of Dr. Schaapsteker seems quite mysterious and supernatural. It
is said about him that;

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 He had the capacity of dreaming every night about being
bitten by snakes, and thus remained immune to their bites.
(188)

It is also spoken about him that he was half-snake himself, the child of an
unnatural union between a woman and a cobra.

5. When Saleem was suffering from typhoid, Dr. Aziz declared at night; “There is
nothing more I can do. He will be dead by morning.” (204). Then, Dr.
Schaapsteker gave him a small bottle of cobra-poison and asked to use only
two-drops to save Saleem. Aziz, knowing Saleem would die anyway,
administered cobra-poison. Within six hours, Saleem got back his normal
temperature and thus, saved by cobra-poison.
Baby Saleem’s illness cured by cobra-poison. It is really marvelous.
6. Saleem’s sister, Jamila, nick-named as Brass Monkey had the gift of talking to
birds, cats, and dogs, too. (209)
7. Whenever Mary and Amina prepare chutneys, their feelings (Mary’s guilt and
Amina’s disappointment) sip in to the chutneys. (236/242)
8. Mary is haunted by the ghost of Joseph D’Costa. Under the spell of the ghost,
Mary reveals supernatural happenings. She points out to Saleem;
Yes, baba, they say in Kurukshetra an old Sikh woman woke
up in her hut and saw the old time war of the Kurus and
Pandavas…Baap-re-baap, such so-bad things: at Gwalior
they have seen the ghost of Rani of Jhansi; rakshasas have
been seen many headed like Ravana,…pulling down trees
with one finger….tomb of Lord Jesus is found in Kashmir…
(340)
9. It is quite surprising to note that the servant of Ahmed Sinai, named Musa swore
that he was innocent and called down upon himself the curse of leprosy if he
should be proved a liar;
It was not me, Sahib. If I have robbed you, may I be turned
in to a leper! May my old skin run with sores! (200)

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 And, then he was proved to be lying when he contracted leprosy. Thus, self-
inflicted curse really seems to be supernatural.
10. Then, the description of Tai Bibi who is described as the oldest whore in the
world and as the whore of whores. She is five hundred and twelve years old.
Besides this mysterious thing, she had the gift of changing the smell of her
body. Saleem says;
My ancient prostitute possessed a mastery over her glands
so total that she could alter her bodily odours to match those
of anyone on earth. (443)
11. Saleem’s aunt Alia, during the years of her frustration of losing a possible
husband to her sister, acquired the art of impregnating the food with emotions.
Saleem points out;
While we lived in her Guru Mandir mansion, she fed us with
the birianis of dissension and the nargisi koftas of discord;
and little by little, even the harmonies of my parents’
autumnal love went out of tune. (459)
Then, he further states about the impact of Alia’s food on Amina when she was
pregnant;
What she stirred in to her cooking must remain a matter for
conjecture; but the effect on Amina was devastating. She
was plagued by dreams of a monster child with a cauliflower
instead of a brain… (461)
12. The complete narration of the forest Sunderban is highly mysterious as well as
marvelous. Saleem as a man-dog in the state of Buddha enters in to the jungle
with his three fellow soldiers. That jungle was gaining in size, power and
ferocity. There the nipa-fruits, larger than any coconut on earth, were full of
liquid the colour of blood, red milk. Transparent flies reddened as they filled up
with the milk of the fruit. The trees of Sundari were so high that could prevent
the sunrays to reach in the jungle. Scorpions were pink and all the snakes
translucent and blind.

65
 That magical jungle began to play tricks with these four and every night it
sent them new-punishment for their evil deeds.
A translucent serpent bit the Buddha and poured venom in to his heel. Here,
the poison instead of killing him killed his forgetfulness and he got back his
memory and joined with his past. He remembered everything except his own
name. This incident is really magical or mysterious in nature.
The magical jungle, having tormented them with their misdeeds, was
leading them by their hand towards a new adulthood. When the four were
sleeping in the temple of the goddess Kali, the four young beautiful girls, the
daughter of the jungle, appeared there at midnight and had sex with them. It
continued for a few nights. None of them knew how long this period lasted as
in the Sunderbans time followed unknown laws, but at last the day came when
they looked at each other and realized;
They were becoming transparent, that it was possible to see
through their bodies, not clearly as yet, but cloudily… (512)
Finally, the jungle having tired of its playthings ejected them
unceremoniously from its territory.
13. The reference to the illusive philosophy for Jihad also represents the tone of
magic realism. Saleem informs Padma how Pakistanis were motivated for Jehad
and great sacrifice;
- promised us that anyone who died in battle went straight to
the camphor garden. The mujahid philosophy of Syed
Ahmed Barilwi ruled the air; we were invited to make
sacrifices ‘as never before’. (471)

He further states;

Martyrs, Padma! Heroes, bound for the perfumed garden!

Where the men would be given four beauteous houries,
untouched by men or djinn; and the women, four equally
virile males! (472)

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 14. The very description of Saleem’s losing memory and his state of the Buddha is
really wonderful. He is described as, “anesthetisized against feelings as well as
memory.” Moreover, he was completely electric-shock proof. He is used as a
man-dog by Pakistani army due to his smelling sense.
15. Parvati-the-witch brings Saleem back to India from Bangladesh in her basket
of invisibility. Its description also seems quite magical when Saleem states;
Memories of invisibility; in the basket, I learned what it was
like, will be like, to be dead. I had acquired the
characteristics of the ghosts! Present, but insubstantial;
actual, but without or being weight…I discovered, in the
basket, how ghosts see the world. (532)
16. Spurned by Saleem, Parvati remembered Shiva. Taking a bamboo stick with
seven knots in it, and an improvised metal hook attached to one end, she recited;
with the Hook of Indra in her right hand and Shiva’s lock of hair in her left, she
summoned him to her, and Shiva appeared. It is really marvelous thing to note.
(568)
Thus, it is evident from the above cited miraculous incidents of the novel and
previously discussed characteristics of magic realism that Rushdie has profusely used
magic realism in the novel, Midnight’s Children and with the help of this technique,
Rushdie has tried to present the utmost reality of the subcontinent. About the use of magic
realism by Rushdie, Dr. P. Indira Devi has observed;
Though Rushdie has drawn influences significantly from both
Gunter Grass and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, he has a stark originality
of his own that can be clearly discerned by the critics. By displaying
a skillful mastery over his craft and employing it to critical acclaim,
Rushdie has emerged from the shadows of those two giants of
twentieth century literature and became a trendsetter and master
stylist in his own right. Though he hasn’t used Magic Realism much
in his works after Midnight’s Children, Shame and Satanic Verses,
his name is so established in connection with the genre that he is
considered one of its major proponents. He has made a strong name

67
 for himself in the genre of Magic Realism and almost become a
synonymous with the genre in the post-colonial regions of the world
and influenced a generation of writing in Indian English Literature.
(Indira: 115)

Thus, through a detailed analysis, it becomes quite clear that the novel, Midnight’s
Children is profusely loaded with the essential features of Magic Realism. A new trend of
writing is initiated with the publication of this novel. Rushdie has used a hybrid language
– English peppered with Indian terms. The novel is stuffed with the elements like Sexual
Frankness, frequent references to Bollywood, Unconventional Narrative Technique,
Fusion of Realism and Fantasy and Contemporary Socio-Political Critique. Besides this,
the novel is found to be an excellent blending of history, political allegory, fantasy and
linguistic inventiveness. Use of Mythology, a salient feature of Magic Realism, is found in
abundance in the novel. The concept of Fragmentation is also celebrated in the novel. All
these features undoubtedly categorize the novel, Midnight’s Children as a work of Magic
Realism.

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