Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" and an Alternate Genesis

Author(s): Indira Karamcheti

Source: Pacific Coast Philology, Vol. 21, No. 1/2 (Nov., 1986), pp. 81-84
Published by: Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1316415
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Salman Rushdie's
Midnight's
Children
and an Alternate Genesis
Indira Karamcheti
Salman Rushdie's
Midnight's
Children is a book obsessed
by beginnings:
of a
life,
of a
nation,
and of a national
mythology.
Its own
beginning coyly
but
insistently foregrounds
the
importance
of
beginnings:
I was born in the
city
of
Bombay
. . . once
upon
a time.
No,
that won't
do,
there's no
getting away
from the date: I was born ... on
August 15th,
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
joined palms
in
respectful beginning
as I came.
Oh, spell
it
out,
spell
it out:
at the
precise
moment of India's arrival at
independence,
I tumbled forth into
the world.
(p. 3)
As Rushdie's narrator
demonstrates,
the obsession with
beginnings
is also the
obsession with
identity.
It takes as its
premise
the conflation of what with
when,
that
is,
we
are, literally,
when we
begin.
In the case of Rushdie's
hero,
this is
more than a
literary
conceit. Saleem
Sinai,
yoked by
his birth to India's
fate,
becomes the
living
embodiment of his
nation,
and
finally
its voice.
He,
along
with one thousand and one other children born between
midnight
and 1 a.m.
on the
day
of India's
independence (midnight's children),
is
gifted by
virtue of
his birth-hour with
magical powers.
But
Saleem,
born on the stroke of
midnight,
occupies
a
special position.
His
identity
embodies the
identity
of his collective
group
and of his nation. He
is,
he
says, "mysteriously
handcuffed to
history,
[his]
destinies
indissolubly
chained to those of
[his] country" (p. 3).
Saleem seeks the
identity
of
himself,
his
group,
and his nation in their
begin-
nings.
As Edward Said has
shown,
beginnings
can be
approached
in two
ways.
To seek
only chronological
time as one's
beginning
and
identity
is to seek
chronological priority.
Like Saleem in this
passage,
we can
attempt
to fasten
identity
to the
instant,
to the
first,
the
initial,
to initiative. Saleem's
gift
is
greatest
of all the
children's,
and he is the most
truly
identical to
India,
because
of the
priority
of his birth to theirs. But we can also seek
beginning
and
identity
in
origins;
that
is,
we can seek the cause and
significance
of
beginning
or
becoming,
rather than
only chronology.
And to seek
origins, then,
is also to
seek the author of our
being,
and the source of our own
authority.
The search for
origins
is
especially important
for Saleem Sinai because of the
nature of his
particular gift:
communication. As a
child,
he becomes
(or
more
precisely
his sinuses
become)
radio receiver and forum for all the
midnight's
children.
Later,
denuded of
magical powers,
he becomes
transmitter,
a
storyteller
chronicling
his nation's
identity,
and so
inventing
its national
mythology,
that
81
Indira Karamcheti
is,
its causes and
significance.
Saleem creates
literary identity
out of
time,
which
is his embroilment in
history,
and out of
origins,
which embroil him in causes
and
mythology.
Saleem's
position
as India's
chronicler,
and so as the creator of India's
identity,
raises the issue of his
literary authority.
What validates his
mythmaking
above
other
mythmaking?
The fictional
autobiography urges
his
priority.
He ends his
story
in a
Bombay pickle factory.
In an obvious
analogue
to the
magic
of fictional
creation,
he
pickles
and
preserves
-
and
spices
and flavors
-
his fruits and
vegetables.
His
literary
material
undergoes
a similar
pickling, preserving,
and
flavoring.
And he
protests
his desire to create
identity by creating
stories. He
seeks to tell the
truth,
to reveal
significance.
He announces his task at the
beginning
of the book: "I must work
fast,
faster than
Scheherazade,
if I am to
end
up meaning
-
yes, meaning
-
something" (p. 4).
His work is to reveal
not
only
his own
significance
but also that of his nation
by
the stories he tells
about both.
Rushdie here
suggests that,
in
fact, identity
is
discourse,
that we are the stories
told about us. And this has
important implications
for the national literature
-
and so
identity
-
of a
country
like India.
Rushdie,
writing
in
English
and
for a
predominantly European audience,
writes within a tradition which denies
his
literary authority. European
literature has
chronological priority
over Indian
(English) mythmaking.
In the historical time
scheme, England
has
already
created India's
mythological identity.
But
India,
like most
independent entities,
wishes to create its own
identity.
Thus
Rushdie,
like other Third World
authors,
is in the
position
of
needing
to use the
existing
stories while
correcting
or
modifying
them.
Saleem,
like
Rushdie,
is
engaged
in
creating
an alternative
and
competitive mythology
for India and its literature. This is a new
genesis
of India and its
identity, requiring
a new
mythology.
Rushdie
appropriately
uses and misuses the biblical
genesis
as one of his subtexts.
In his
quest
for individual and national
identity,
Saleem
goes beyond
his own
beginnings
to the birth of
humanity.
Rushdie has created an
analogous
Garden
of Eden for the
opening setting
of the novel. The Vale of Kashmir is the cradle
of Saleem's
ancestors,
but Rushdie dislocates
enough
of the details to
prevent
the biblical subtext from
overpowering
the Indian text. The novel
opens
in
Spring,
at dawn. But the narrator reminds us of the winter that lies behind the
Spring.
The Garden of Eden is a walled
Paradise;
the Vale of Kashmir in
winter,
according
to
Rushdie,
more
closely
resembles an
open
mouth with teeth:
"In the
winter,
. . . the mountains closed in and snarled like
angry jaws
. ..
"
It is a
"tiny valley
circled
by giant
teeth"
(p. 5).
But Kashmir in
Spring
is
described in
fittingly generative imagery.
In
fact,
the
imagery
is
generative
in
an overblown
way,
almost
inviting laughter.
Kashmir is described as if it were
a
farmyard egg
or fowl rather than a
paradise:
"The world was new
again.
After a winter's
gestation
in its
eggshell
of
ice,
the
valley
had beaked its
way
out into the
open,
moist and
yellow" (p. 4).
And the
valley
itself is no
gentle
cradle. Far from
nurturing
Saleem's
ancestor,
it rises
up
and
punches
him on
the nose.
Yet it
is,
like
Eden,
the
place
of ultimate
origin
within this novel. It is the
cradle of modern
India,
and the
paradise
lost
by
Saleem's
progenitor,
the novel's
82
Salman Rushdie's
Midnight's
Children
Adam. Saleem's
grandfather,
the
patriarch
of the clan and so of
India,
is Aadam
Aziz,
a name which
again
evokes but distorts the biblical subtext. He
is,
not
Adam,
but
"Aadam,"
and his last name continues the distortion. It is both
suitably
inclusive
-
A to Z- and
deprecatingly
inconclusive- "as is." Aadam
Aziz
is,
we are
assured,
the
patriarch
-
but not
by
divine
right.
Rather,
his
prodigiously large
nose establishes that
right.
We are told "There are
dynasties
waiting
inside it ... like snot"
(p. 8).
To insure further that the biblical subtext cannot become
central,
Rushdie
weaves the
fairy
tale of Snow White into the Edenic Vale of Kashmir.
Specifically,
he uses the
portion
of Snow White that details her
origins.
In this
part
of the
fairy tale,
the
Queen,
Snow White's real
mother,
sits beside a
snow-covered,
ebony-framed window, sewing.
She
pricks
her
finger,
and three
drops
of red
blood fall and freeze
upon
the snow. The
Queen
wishes that her
daughter
shall
have skin as white as
snow,
hair as black as
ebony, lips
and cheeks as red as
blood. In Rushdie's
hands,
the
fairy tale,
like the biblical
story,
is trivialized
and made to
verge upon
the ludicrous. Snow White's
coloring
becomes,
on
Aadam
Aziz,
a
startling symphony
of color run riot: red
beard,
dark
hair,
sky-blue eyes.
The three red
drops
of blood
falling
and
freezing
on snow
reappear
in Rushdie's
novel,
but in
quite
a different
light.
Aadam Aziz
spreads
his mat
to
pray
at
dawn;
the earth rises
up
and strikes him on the nose. Three
drops
of blood fall from his
nose;
tears come to his
eyes.
Both freeze and "There were
rubies and diamonds"
(p. 6). Despite
the
beauty
of the
image,
it leads nowhere.
The three
drops
of blood
reappear
later on a white
sheet,
as witnesses of the
virginity
of
Naseem,
Aadam Aziz's wife. Rushdie here discards the
seeming
innocence of the
fairy tale,
and stresses its
underlying sexuality.
Rushdie has
accomplished something very important
with his use of the
biblical
story
and the
fairy
tale. He
gives
his reader a
double-edged
invitation:
he
simultaneously
asks us to
recall,
then to
reject,
both subtexts.
Recalling
them
transfers them
by
association to Rushdie's
genesis.
Their
rejection
is also a
rejection
of their
hegemony
over Rushdie's
newly invented, Indian,
genesis
myth.
To insure that we
do,
in
fact, reject
their
possible hegemony,
Rushdie
juxtaposes
these two
stories,
which
occupy greatly discrepant positions
in the
European literary hierarchy:
the sacred text of Genesis and the folk-text of Snow
White. Their
contiguity
in Rushdie's Kashmir
equalizes
their
positions,
and
enables Rushdie to advance his Indian
genesis
on at least an
equal
basis.
Of
course,
Rushdie is concerned with
subverting European literary hegemony
for more than the sake of subversion alone. He subverts in order to
legitimize
his
own,
specifically
Indian
mythologies.
And his central
myth
in
Midnight's
Children is a
myth
about India's
genealogy,
which includes its
genesis
and its
identity.
Both are a
product
of immense
diversity,
one
might
almost
say
of
confusion. India is a
"many-headed monster,"
thinks Saleem's
mother,
Amina
Sinai,
once Mumtaz
Khan,
born Mumtaz Aziz. Her
multiplicity
of names and
identities illustrates India's diverse selves in small. This is the Indian
mythology
that Rushdie wishes to establish: India's self lies in its
magical,
inclusive mul-
tiplicity
of selves and
origins.
Rushdie's
story
shows this
through
Saleem's
genesis
and
genealogy.
Aadam
Azis,
the
patriarch,
marries Naseem and
begets, among
other
children,
Mumtaz. Mumtaz marries then is divorced
by
Nadir Khan. She remarries
83
Indira Karamcheti
Ahmend Sinai and is renamed Amina Sinai. The
couple
moves to
Bombay
and
prepares
for the birth of
Saleem,
who is
anticipated,
as all
epic
heroes
are,
with
great
and
cryptic prophecies, among
them: "'He will have sons without
having
sons! He will be old before he is old! And he will die ...
before
he is dead!"
(p.99).
On the eve of India's
independence, they
move into a
housing development
being
sold
by
a
departing Englishman,
William
Methwold,
a man with a center-
parting
in his hair that is
fatally
attractive to women. One woman in
particular,
Vanita,
the wife of Wee Willie
Winkie,
a street
musician,
has succumbed to
Methwold's
center-part,
and awaits the birth of their child. Both Amina Sinai
and Vanita deliver their sons at the same
midnight
instant. The maid
servant,
in true
legendary
fashion,
switches the two
boys.
The
illicit, Anglo-Indian
son
of Vanita and the
blue-eyed, large-
nosed
Englishman
Methwold becomes Sa-
leem
Sinai,
the "chosen child of
midnight,"
tied to
history, greeted by
a new
nation. The true son of Amina and Ahmed Sinai is raised as
Shiva,
the son of
Wee Willie
Winkie,
part
of the
"many
headed
monster,"
India's
poor.
But it
is Shiva who is the
progenitor
of the sons of
history,
and a link to India's
pre-colonial mythological past.
All of
midnight's
children are castrated
by
the
Widow
(a
character
transparently
modeled after Indira
Gandhi).
But
Shiva,
like the Hindu
god
of
procreation
and
destruction,
leaves a number of bastard
children all over India. The most
important
of these is the child of Saleem
Sinai's sorceress-
wife, Parvati,
in Hindu
mythology,
Shiva's consort. This child
is a son named Aadam. So Rushdie's
genealogy
takes us full circle: from Aadam
Aziz in Kashmir
through
the
displaced
Saleem and Shiva to Aadam in
Bombay,
the true
great-grandson
of his
great-grandfather.
No one is who or what
they
claim to
be,
and
yet,
at the
last, they
are
exactly
where and who
they
should
be. The new Aadam is the new
epic hero,
the
motley
and
confusing
embodiment
of his nation: "He was the child of a father who was not his father ... 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 true son of Shiva-
and-Parvati;
he was
elephant-headed
Ganesh"
(p. 500).
So he is the
continuing
link between India's
pre-colonial mythological past
and its unknown future
myths.
And if the
way
to this new Aadam is
confusing,
it is no more
confusing
than the
diverse, motley country
which he embodies. In its
diversity, confusion,
and eventual
rightness,
Rushdie's Indian
genesis successfully challenges
the
European
subtexts it subverts.
84