Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [86]
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Our lives, at this period, were shaped by correspondence. The Prime Minister wrote to me when I was just seven days old—before I could even wipe my own nose I was receiving fan letters from Times of India readers; and one morning in January Ahmed Sinai, too, received a letter he would never forget.
Red eyes at breakfast were followed by the shaven chin of the working day; footsteps down the stairs; alarmed giggles of Coca-Cola girl. The squeak of a chair drawn up to a desk topped with green leathercloth. Metallic noise of a metal paper-cutter being lifted, colliding momentarily with telephone. The brief rasp of metal slicing envelope; and one minute later, Ahmed was running back up the stairs, yelling for my mother, shouting:
“Amina! Come here, wife! The bastards have shoved my balls in an ice-bucket!”
In the days after Ahmed received the formal letter informing him of the freezing of all his assets, the whole world was talking at once … “For pity’s sake, janum, such language!” Amina is saying—and is it my imagination, or does a baby blush in a sky-blue crib?
And Narlikar, arriving in a lather of perspiration, “I blame myself entirely; we made ourselves too public. These are bad times, Sinai bhai—freeze a Muslim’s assets, they say, and you make him run to Pakistan, leaving all his wealth behind him. Catch the lizard’s tail and he’ll snap it off! This so-called secular state gets some damn clever ideas.”
“Everything,” Ahmed Sinai is saying, “bank account; savings bonds; the rents from the Kurla properties—all blocked, frozen. By order, the letter says. By order they will not let me have four annas, wife—not a chavanni to see the peepshow!”
“It’s those photos in the paper,” Amina decides. “Otherwise how could those jumped-up clever dicks know whom to prosecute? My God, janum, it’s my fault …”
“Not ten pice for a twist of channa,” Ahmed Sinai adds, “not one anna to give alms to a beggar. Frozen—like in the fridge!”
“It’s my fault,” Ismail Ibrahim is saying, “I should have warned you, Sinai bhai. I have heard about these freezings—only well-off Muslims are selected, naturally. You must fight …”
“… Tooth and nail!” Homi Catrack insists, “Like a lion! Like Aurangzeb—your ancestor, isn’t it?—like the Rani of Jhansi! Then let’s see what kind of country we’ve ended up in!”
“There are lawcourts in this State,” Ismail Ibrahim adds; Nussie-the-duck smiles a bovine smile as she suckles Sonny; her fingers move, absently stroking his hollows, up and around, down and about, in a steady, unchanging rhythm … “You must accept my legal services,” Ismail tells Ahmed, “absolutely free, my good friend. No, no I won’t hear of it. How can it be? We are neighbors.”
“Broke,” Ahmed is saying, “Frozen, like water.”
“Come on now,” Amina interrupts him; her dedication rising to new heights, she leads him towards her bedroom … “Janum, you need to lie for some time.” And Ahmed: “What’s this, wife? A time like this—cleaned out; finished; crushed like ice—and you think about …” But she has closed the door; slippers have been kicked off; arms are reaching towards him; and some moments later her hands are stretching down down down; and then, “Oh my goodness, janum, I thought you were just talking dirty but it