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By Root 20275 0

’s breath, the dream of an alternative (but impossible) future; ignoring the implacable finalities of inner fissures, she has begun to exude the bitter-sweet fragrance of hope-for-marriage. My dunglotus, who remained impervious for so long to the sneer-lipped barbs hurled by our workforce of downy-forearmed women; who placed her cohabitation with me outside and above all codes of social propriety, has seemingly succumbed to a desire for legitimacy … in short, although she has not said a word on the subject, she is waiting for me to make an honest woman of her. The perfume of her sad hopefulness permeates her most innocently solicitous remarks—even at this very moment, as she, “Hey, mister, why not—finish your writery and then take rest; go to Kashmir, sit quietly for some time—and maybe you will take your Padma also, and she can look after …?” Behind this burgeoning dream of a Kashmiri holiday (which was once also the dream of Jehangir, the Mughal Emperor; of poor forgotten Ilse Lubin; and, perhaps, of Christ himself), I nose out the presence of another dream; but neither this nor that can be fulfilled. Because now the cracks, the cracks and always the cracks are narrowing my future towards its single inescapable fullpoint; and even Padma must take a back seat if I’m to finish my tales.

Today, the papers are talking about the supposed political rebirth of Mrs. Indira Gandhi; but when I returned to India, concealed in a wicker basket, “The Madam” was basking in the fullness of her glory. Today, perhaps, we are already forgetting, sinking willingly into the insidious clouds of amnesia; but I remember, and will set down, how I—how she—how it happened that—no, I can’t say it, I must tell it in the proper order, until there is no option but to reveal … On December 16th, 1971, I tumbled out of a basket into an India in which Mrs. Gandhi’s New Congress Party held a more-than-two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.

In the basket of invisibility, a sense of unfairness turned into anger; and something else besides—transformed by rage, I had also been overwhelmed by an agonizing feeling of sympathy for the country which was not only my twin-in-birth but also joined to me (so to speak) at the hip, so that what happened to either of us, happened to us both. If I, snot-nosed stain-faced etcetera, had had a hard time of it, then so had she, my subcontinental twin sister; and now that I had given myself the right to choose a better future, I was resolved that the nation should share it, too. I think that when I tumbled out into dust, shadow and amused cheers, I had already decided to save the country.

(But there are cracks and gaps … had I, by then, begun to see that my love for Jamila Singer had been, in a sense, a mistake? Had I already understood how I had simply transferred on to her shoulders the adoration which I now perceived to be a vaulting, all-encompassing love of country? When was it that I realized that my truly-incestuous feelings were for my true birth-sister, India herself, and not for that trollop of a crooner who had so callously shed me, like a used snake-skin, and dropped me into the metaphorical waste-basket of Army life? When when when? … Admitting defeat, I am forced to record that I cannot remember for sure.)

… Saleem sat blinking in the dust in the shadow of the mosque. A giant was standing over him, grinning hugely, asking, “Achha, captain, have a good trip?” And Parvati, with huge excited eyes, pouring water from a lotah into his cracked, salty mouth … Feeling! The icy touch of water kept cool in earthenware surahis, the cracked soreness of parched-raw lips, silver-and-lapis clenched in a fist … “I can feel!” Saleem cried to the good-natured crowd.

It was the time of afternoon called the chaya, when the shadow of the tall red-brick-and-marble Friday Mosque fell across the higgledy shacks of the slum clustered at its feet, that slum whose ramshackle tin roofs created such a swelter of heat that it was insupportable to be inside the fragile shacks except during the chaya and at night … but now conjurers and contortionists and jugglers and fakirs had gathered in the shade around the solitary stand-pipe to greet the new arrival.