Midnight’s Children
I completed this book on April 24th but did not get time to complete this post...so finally decided its time. :)
Well every time I finish a novel (read as a non detective or non adventurous book), I feel like writing or saying “Finally I completed it”, as somehow I had stopped reading that in between or just wasn’t interested in completing but anyways had to. But this time although Midnight’s children took me almost 25-30 days to complete (In my defence :) its 645 page book with some heavy English and I also have other businesses to attend too :)) but the routine of reading it daily from 10.30 to 12 at night and then in the morning while travelling in bus till it starts giving a headache (again in my defence :) its tough to read such small characters in a shaking bus), in short the effort I had put to complete it never made me feel that I am doing it uninterested, although I was under pressure to finish it asap as I had to return it. But nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
Most of the people with whom I talked, have dropped it after scrapping through the initial few pages, this gave me the further motivation to read it.
The preface has a write up from Salman Rushdie where he talks about the inspiration behind the various characters and the story, which indeed generates a lot of interest about the book.
Well alike everyone, reading through the initial pages was quite tough owing to the use of language and also the build up that he used, it was difficult to understand what he is trying to say, what relation each incident had with the previous one but once you are done through that you find the story quite intriguing.
Well Midnight’s Children is the story of a person who is born at the stroke of Midnight and that too not an ordinary midnight, it’s the midnight of August 15th, 1947 when India got its independence, a child who is as old as the Indian subcontinent. It’s a story of Saleem Sinai and his family. Its traces his journey starting from that minute of 00:00 of 15th August 1947 till the time this book is written, infact even before that, covering every significant incident that shaped the history of Indian subcontinent in those 30 odd years.
And believe me, for a guy who was not there when all this happened (I was born in the year 1984) to get to know about his country's past and that too a fictional first hand account of those incidents although in an unconventional way was really quite interesting and binding.
It touches the Jalianwala Massacre from a person's point who was not part of the procession but who was there and survived that event, thus making you think about that evil event but at the same time make you think over it from a perspective of a person who was not effected by it. (difficult for me to put in words)
It traces the journey of Saleem Sinhai from the time when he was not even conceived. It talks about the freedom movement of India from a perspective which is so different from the one told in History books, as if giving you a first hand account but at the same time giving you the impression that as if its an event associated with a small bunch of person and not the whole country, how it shaped few individuals life and how their personal events influenced the whole country.
It talks about thousand odd children who were born in that hour of midnight , all of whom had special powers. Powers like reading people's mind, changing form freely from man to woman or vice versa, making things invisible, moving from one place to another through any medium,having a face thats brighter than sun and many more.
But Saleem who had the power to read people's mind was more special as he wanted to use all these midnight's children's power for the betterment of the scoiety, who was special because he was the eldest, born at the stoke of midnight, who received a letter of congratulation from Pandit Nehru, whose photo was published in newspaper. He was the Choosen One but ironically all the prophecy was not at all meant for him.
The story is so full of turns and twists. Incidents which you want to believe and at the same time you think this can't be real.
It talks of the formation of Maharastra and Gujurat and at the same time associated Saleem, the child, with giving the slogan for that. It talks of the biggest extra maritial scandal to hit India in that time when the navy officer who was slated to be the Admiral of Indian Navy found out about his wife's adultery and how he was led to her and her lover's murder again by Saleem Sinhai.
It talks of the first military coup of Pakistan and how Saleem was again associated with that incident, gave a first hand account of all that happened on the eve and again from a very different perspective.
It talks about the war of 1971, when Bangladesh came into existence and how again Saleem was there at the time of its creation, fighting on behalf of Pakistan.
Then I guess the boldest part was the account of Emergency that hit India when Indira Gandhi goverened everything with an iron hand plunging India into emergency. OMG, wish I was there to see the reactions of Indira Gandhi when this book was published. In the preface Salman says that Mrs Gandhi only objected to one para where he talks about Sanjay Gandhi blaming Indira Gandhi for her father's death apart from that she din't object to anything else, thats pretty hard to digest. This book really showed her as a very dark character.
This book again talks about how Saleem was there when Sanjay Gandhi did all that he did i.e. the cleaning of all the slums.
In all when the book finished, it made me wish that how good it had been had Salman Rushdie continued it to the present year, covering every incident that happened from 1984 till date, so that I can also participate in them. How I should have exclaimed at knowing, Oh so this is the inside story....
Hats off to Salman Rushdie..He is indeed a bold and quite an intelligent and knowledgable writer.... Wish I could take out time to read Satanic Verses (I have many other books to read, I have already completed Love Story by Eric Segal, Godfather by Mario Puzo and Angels & Demons by Dan Brown..will write about those in other posts) which got him the fatwa..I have a pdf version which is difficult to read and the book is banned from being sold/published in Indian sub continent.
I wanted to write a lot about this book Midnight's Children but I guess it has so many twists and secrets that I don't want to give away anything..so do read it...I won't say it deserves the Best of Booker Prize or not before I happen to read all the other Booker Prize winners but its indeed a must read book.
