Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [140]
A momentary pause; then puzzlement—no anger now—and Shiva, “Lissen, yaar, this is damn good—how you doin’ it?” I launched into my standard explanation, but after a few instants he interrupted, “So! Lissen, my father said I got born at exactly midnight also—so don’t you see, that makes us joint bosses of this gang of yours! Midnight is best, agreed? So—those other kids gotta do like we tell them!” There rose before my eyes the image of a second, and more potent, Evelyn Lilith Burns … dismissing this unkind notion, I explained, “That wasn’t exactly my idea for the Conference; I had in mind something more like a, you know, sort of loose federation of equals, all points of view given free expression …” Something resembling a violent snort echoed around the walls of my head. “That, man, that’s only rubbish. What we ever goin’ to do with a gang like that? Gangs gotta have gang bosses. You take me—” (the puff of pride again) “I been running a gang up here in Matunga for two years now. Since I was eight. Older kids and all. What d’you think of that?” And I, without meaning to, “What’s it do, your gang—does it have rules and all?” Shiva laughter in my ears … “Yah, little rich boy: one rule. Everybody does what I say or I squeeze the shit outa them with my knees!” Desperately, I continued to try and win Shiva round to my point of view: “The thing is, we must be here for a purpose, don’t you think? I mean, there has to be a reason, you must agree? So what I thought, we should try and work out what it is, and then, you know, sort of dedicate our lives to …” “Rich kid,” Shiva yelled, “you don’t know one damn thing! What purpose, man? What thing in the whole sister-sleeping world got reason, yara? For what reason you’re rich and I’m poor? Where’s the reason in starving, man? God knows how many millions of damn fools living in this country, man, and you think there’s a purpose! Man, I’ll tell you—you got to get what you can, do what you can with it, and then you got to die. That’s reason, rich boy. Everything else is only mother-sleeping wind!”
And now I, in my midnight bed, begin to shake … “But history,” I say, “and the Prime Minister wrote me a letter … and don’t you even believe in … who knows what we might …” He, my alter ego, Shiva, butted in: “Lissen, little boy—you’re so full of crazy stuff, I can see I’m going to have to take this thing over. You tell that to all these other freak kids!”
Nose and knees and knees and nose … the rivalry that began that night would never be ended, until two knives slashed, downdowndown … whether the spirits of Mian Abdullah, whom knives killed years before, had leaked into me, imbuing me with the notion of loose federalism and making me vulnerable to knives, I cannot say; but at that point I found a measure of courage and told Shiva, “You can’t run the Conference; without me, they won’t even be able to listen to you!”
And he, confirming the declaration of war: “Rich kid, they’ll want to know about me; you just try and stop me!”
“Yes,” I told him, “I’ll try.”
Shiva, the god of destruction, who is also most potent of deities; Shiva, greatest of dancers; who rides on a bull; whom no force can resist … the boy Shiva, he told us, had to fight for survival from his earliest days. And when his father had, about a year previously, completely lost his singing voice, Shiva had had to defend himself against Wee Willie Winkie’s parental zeal. “He blindfolded me, man! He wrapped a rag around my eyes an’ took me to the roof of the chawl, man! You know what was in his hand? A sister-sleeping hammer, man! A hammer! Bastard was going to smash my legs up, man—it happens, you know, rich boy, they do it to kids so they can always earn money begging—you get more if you’re all broken up, man! So I’m pushed over till I