Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [256]
And Alia, with the bitterness of ages, who clothed me in the babythings impregnated with her old-maid fury; and Emerald, who laid a table on which I made pepperpots march;
There was the Rani of Cooch Naheen, whose money, placed at the disposal of a humming man, gave birth to the optimism disease, which has recurred, at intervals, ever since; and, in the Muslim quarter of Old Delhi, a distant relative called Zohra whose flirtations gave birth, in my father, to that later weakness for Fernandas and Florys;
So to Bombay. Where Winkie’s Vanita could not resist the center-parting of William Methwold, and Nussie-the-duck lost a baby-race; while Mary Pereira, in the name of love, changed the baby-tags of history and became a second mother to me …
Women and women and women: Toxy Catrack, nudging open the door which would later let in the children of midnight; the terrors of her nurse Bi-Appah; the competitive love of Amina and Mary, and what my mother showed me while I lay concealed in a washing-chest; yes, the Black Mango, which forced me to sniff, and unleashed what-were-not-Archangels! … And Evelyn Lilith Burns, cause of a bicycle-accident, who pushed me down a two-storey hillock into the midst of history.
And the Monkey. I mustn’t forget the Monkey.
But also, also, there was Masha Miovic, goading me into finger-loss, and my aunty Pia, filling my heart with revenge-lust, and Lila Sabarmati, whose indiscretions made possible my terrible, manipulating, newspaper-cut-out revenge;
And Mrs. Dubash, who found my gift of a Superman comic and built it, with the help of her son, into Lord Khusro Khusrovand;
And Mary, seeing a ghost.
In Pakistan, the land of submission, the home of purity, I watched the transformation of Monkey-into-Singer, and fetched bread, and fell in love; it was a woman, Tai Bibi, who told me the truth about myself. And in the heart of my inner darkness, I turned to the Puffias, and was only narrowly saved from the threat of a golden-dentured bride.
Beginning again, as the buddha, I lay with a latrine-cleaner and was subjected to electrified urinals as a result; in the East, a farmer’s wife tempted me, and Time was assassinated in consequence; and there were houris in a temple, and we only just escaped in time.
In the shadow of a mosque, Resham Bibi issued a warning.
And I married Parvati-the-Witch.
“Oof, mister,” Padma exclaims, “that’s too much women!”
I do not disagree; because I have not even included her, whose dreams of marriage and Kashmir have inevitably been leaking into me, making me wish, if-only, if-only, so that, having once resigned myself to the cracks, I am not assailed by pangs of discontent, anger, fear and regret.
But above all, the Widow.
“I swear!” Padma slaps her knee, “Too much, mister; too much.”
How are we to understand my too-many women? As the multiple faces of Bharat-Mata? Or as even more … as the dynamic aspect of maya, as cosmic energy, which is represented as the female organ?
Maya, in its dynamic aspect, is called Shakti; perhaps it is no accident that, in the Hindu pantheon, the active power of a deity is contained within his queen! Maya-Shakti mothers, but also “muffles consciousness in its dream-web.” Too-many-women: are they all aspects of Devi, the goddess—who is Shakti, who slew the buffalo-demon, who defeated the ogre Mahisha, who is Kali Durga Chandi Chamunda Uma Sati and Parvati … and who, when active, is colored red?
“I don’t know about that,” Padma brings me down to earth, “They are just women, that’s all.”
Descending from my flight of fancy, I am reminded of the importance of speed; driven on by the imperatives of rip tear crack, I abandon reflections; and begin.
This is how it came about; how Parvati took her destiny into her own hands; how a lie, issuing from my lips, brought her to the desperate condition in which, one night, she extracted from her shabby garments a lock of hero’s hair, and began to speak sonorous words.
Spurned by Saleem, Parvati remembered who had once been his arch-enemy; and, taking a bamboo stick with seven knots in it, and an improvised metal hook attached to one end, she squatted in her shack and recited; with the Hook of Indra in her right hand, and a lock of hair in her left, she summoned him to her. Parvati called to Shiva; believe don