Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie : Summary and analysis

 

Salman Rushdie’s the most celebrated second novel Midnight’s children (1981) was hailed as a Postcolonial meta – fiction, a novel about third world novels’. It has been the major Postcolonial novel in English which fictionalizes the events of Indian history from the moment of the birth of nation in 1947 till the declaration of the emergency by the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1976. Thus, the novel is commonly read as a national allegory giving imaginative form to India and its history. The propensity of magical realism and other verbal experimentations (chutnification) are remarkable in Midnight’s Children.

 

The novel portrays  various political events of India such as struggle for Independence, the partition of India by focusing the protagonist Saleem  Sinai, the first of 1000 Midnight’s Children, born at the first hour of August 15, 1947, when India officially became independent of Britain. As Saleem grows, he finds his life is inseparable with his country’s history.His telepathic power enables him to communicate with all of the other Midnight’s children, each of whom had different super natural abilities. Saleem is the only one who can connect them, using his powers to create a sort of psychic conference call.

 

Saleem begins his tale nearly thirty years back to his birth. His grandfather Adam Aziz just circle back to India after becoming a doctor in Germany. He happens to fall in love with a patient named Naseem, the only daughter of a wealthy landlords, Ghani Saheb. He can only see one part of her body at a time due to her father’s strict rules about preserving her modesty. After their marriage they both so realized that they are bad match. Adam expresses his political attachment with Mian Abdullah, whose anti-partition stance eventually leads to his assassination. Adam conceals Abdullah’s assistant Nadir Khan in his house and he falls in love with Mumtaz and ultimately ends in their secret marriage. However, after two years of their marriage, Adam realizes the fact that his daughter is still a virgin. On knowing this secret hiding of Nadir Khan in Adam’s house, Emarald informs Major Zulfikar, but Nadir khan escapes from there.

On the other side, Mumtaz agrees to marry Ahmed Sinai, a young merchant who until then had been courting her sister. Mumtaz moves to Delhi with her new husband and gets her name changed to Amina Sinai. They move to Bombay after terrorist burns down Ahmed’s factory. Amina becomes pregnant and goes to the fortune teller to know about her forthcoming child. The prophecy made her highly confused. “The boy will never be older or younger than his country and claiming that he sees two heads, knees and a nose”

 

They buy a house from a departing English man, William Methwold. A poor man named We willy winky who entertains the families at the Methwold estate, say that Vanitha the wife of We willy winky is also expecting a child soon. Amina and Vanitha both go in to labour at the same time that is exactly at midnight of August 15, 1947,  each women delivered a son. Here a nurse, Marry Pereira, under the influence of her Marxist ideology switches these new born babies, in order to give the poor baby the life of privilege and the rich baby a life of poverty. Driven by a sense of guilt afterwards, she becomes an ayah to Saleem in trying to make amend of her guilty.

 

As his birth coincides with the independence of India, the then Prime minister and the press herald’s Salem’s birth highly significant. Young Saleem has enormous cucumber like nose and blue eyes like those of his grandfather Adam Aziz. He has a mischievous sister, Jamila, nick named as ‘Brass Monkey ‘  is born a few years later. Ridiculed by other children for his huge nose, Saleem hides in his mother’s large white washing chest. While hiding one day, he sees his mother siting down on the toilet, when Amina discovers him, she punishes Saleem to one day of silence. Unable to speak, he hears, for the first time, a chatter of voice in his head He realizes he has the power of telepathy and can enter anyone’s thoughts. Eventually, Saleem begins to hear the thoughts of the other children  born during the first hour of independence. The total number of children  reduced to 581 by their tenth  birthday  all have magical powers which vary based on how close to midnight they were born. Saleem discovers that Shiva, the boy with whom he was switched at birth,Was born with pair of enormous, powerful knees and a gift of war.

 

One day, Saleem loses a portion of his finger in an accident and is rushed to the hospital, where his parents learn that according Saleem’s blood type;he couldn’t possibly be their biological son. After he leaves the hospital, Saleem is sent to live with his uncle, Hanif and Aunt Pia for a while. Shortly after Saleem returns home to his parents, Hanif commits suicide. While the family mourns Hanif’s death, Mary confesses that she had switched Saleem and Shiva at the time of their birth. Ahmed is now turned to be an alcoholic , grows violent with Amina, prompting her to take Saleem and the Brass Monkey to Pakistan, where she moves in with Emerald.

 Four years  later, after Ahmed suffers a heart failure, Amina and the children move back to Bombay. India goes to war with China; while Salem’s perpetually congested nose undergoes a medical operation. As a result, he loses his telepathic powers, but, in return, gains an incredible sense of smell, with which he can detect emotions.

Saleem’s entire family moves to pakistani after India’s military loss to China. His younger sister, now known as Jamila Singer, becomes the most famous singer in Pakistan. Unfortunately, Saleem’s entire family dies in the span of a single day during the war between India and Pakistan. Saleem gets hit his  head by his grandfather’s silver spittoon, which erases his memory entirely. Relived of his memory, Saleem is reduced to a animalistic state. He finds himself  into military service, as his keen sense of smell makes him an excellent tracker. Though he doesn’t know exactly how he came to join the army.

  While in the army, Saleem helps crush the independence movement in Bangladesh. After witnessing a number of atrocities, however, he flees into the jungle with three of his fellow Soldiers. In the jungle of sunderbans, he regains all of his memory  except the knowledge of his name. After leaving the jungle, Saleem finds Parvathi , the witch, one of midnight’s children who reminds him of his name and helps him escape back to India. He lives with her in the magician’s ghetto, along with a snake charmer named picture Singh. Disappointed that Saleem will not marry her, Parvathi  has an affair with Shiva too, he is now a famous war hero.

Parvathi becomes pregnant on the one side and unmarried on the other. There, the ghetto residents shun Parvathi until Saleem agrees to marry her. Meanwhile, Indira Gandhi, the prime minister of India, begins a sterilization campaign. Shortly after the birth of Parvathi’s son, the government destroys the magician’s ghetto. Parvathi dies while Shiva captures Saleem and brings him to a forced sterilization camp. There, Saleem reveals the names of the other midnight’s children. One by one, the midnight’s children are rounded up and infertiled.

Later, however, Indira Gandhi loses the first election she holds. The midnight’s Children, including Saleem, are all free. Saleem goes in search of Parvathi’s son, Adam, who has been living with pictures Singh. The three take a trip to Bombay, so Pictures Singh can challenge a man who claims to be the world’s greatest snake charmer. While in Bombay, Saleem eats some chutneys factory that tastes exactly like the ones his ayah, Mary, used to make. He finds the chutney factory that Mary now owns. At which Padma stands guarding the gate. With this meeting, Saleem’s story comes full circle. His historical account finally completes, Saleem decides to marry Padma, his devoted lady love and listener, on his thirty-first birthday, which falls On the thirty-first anniversary of India’s independence. Saleem prophesies that he will die on that day, and shatter into dust.