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The Midnight’s Children Meander, Week Three

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Wonderful section, wonderful thread…!

I agreed with just about all the comments this week.

Like Furiosa, I’m hoping to use “funtoosh” in a sentence soon. Like just about everyone, I’m still swirling from the cinematic mashup of the monkeys, the money, and the man who prophesied too much.

Like Computillo I was thinking of Vonnegut — not so much Mother Night (love it tho I do), but more Billy Pilgrim, as I often felt a little bit unstuck in time.

And like many, I kept finding myself reaching for my phone to look up “reccine” and dive down a wiki-rabbit hole populated by Pakistan’s parade of power brokers.

But cinema, spittoons, and sometimes sideways citations aside, more than anything I just loved the music of it all. The repetition of phrases — themes and variations. The mythic overtones.

Sure it can be a bit of work (per So-Called Bill), but a little bit work is at least part of what these Meanders are all about (per Jim C). Otherwise, why even funtoosh?

So where to next? Let’s meet up at the end of “The Fisherman’s Pointing Finger” (pg. 154 in the Random House paperback) where something floats “belly-side-up, like scaly fingers in to shore.” So that’s exciting.

And this? This is the post for comments on Book 1.7 through 2.1.

And lastly: “assiduity” (yes, yes, I’m embarrassed; honest, but embarrassed) is “the quality or state of being assiduous” or, more helpfully, “persistent personal attention.” (Merriam-Webster).

Noses forward, on we go!

Comments

23 responses to “The Midnight’s Children Meander, Week Three”

  1. Ute Avatar
    Ute

    Loved to learn that Bombay has to thank her “beautiful bay” and the Portuguese for her name.
    Didn’t enjoy the typo in “Escorital Villa” as much (my guess is it should be “Escorial Villa” as in “Monasterio del Escorial”, the historic residence of the King of Spain north of Madrid).
    Loved again “com-for-table” vs “come-for-tea” as well as how SR interweaves the celebration of independence with the colors saffron and green.

    And lastly: I won’t be commenting here on what transpires at the end of book one (and what I feel sets the entire train in motion) so as not to spoil the story for anyone who decides to read the comment section before the book!
    Although the scene in question (which I actually re-read 3 times to make sure I got it all) would definitely merit loads of commenting…

    Reply
  2. Itto Ogami Avatar
    Itto Ogami

    Elegant juxtaposition in SR’s writing of the hours leading up to the child births and the births of India and Pakistan. On a light note, I was reading about other key events on that day (August 14, 1947) – Danielle Steele (romance novelist) was born that day — and perhaps this was the first time in history (and future) that a person (me) would link Danielle Steele with a Salman Rushdie book reading.

    On a serious note, I read Nehru’s “Tryst with Destiny” speech given on August 14th eve, considered “one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century.” This beginning passage really resonated, and echoes USA (in need):
    “A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new – when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.” Speech recommended reading, could (should) be repeated today (https://www.freepressjournal.in/india/pandit-jawaharlal-nehru-death-anniversary-full-text-of-tryst-with-destiny-speech-by-indias-first-pm). Nehru incredibly prescient on “And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for anyone of them to imagine that it can live apart.” So closely knit.

    I enjoyed the passage: “although [India] had five thousand years of history…[it] was nevertheless quite imaginary; into a mythical land, a country which would never exist except by the efforts of a phenomenal collective will—except in a dream a we all agreed to dream; it was a mass fantasy…India, the new myth-a collective fiction in which anything was possible, a fable rivaled only by the two other mighty fantasies: money and God.” Echoes Yuval Noah Harari’s point in Sapiens about faith in nations, currency, religion.

    And, Padma is a joy.

    Reply
  3. Peaseblossom Avatar
    Peaseblossom

    “In a kind of collective failure of imagination, we learned that we simply could not think our way out of our pasts…” I just love the way SR links words, phrases, and images.

    Are we clever enough to think our way out of our pasts, to overcome regrets in our lives? Even with the aid of all our modern technologies? …things that make you go Hmm….

    Reply
  4. Furiosa Avatar
    Furiosa

    The idea of “a country which is itself a sort of dream” struck me as well, along with “an approaching, inevitable midnight.” I’m really enjoying the fact that a novel written four decades ago about another country, and that is so specifically about the history and mythology of that country, feels so immediate to this moment in this particular dubashed corner of the globe. As for the celebrated poster child for the new India, I love that Baby Saleem is in so many ways the anathema of the new India (I’ll leave it at that). Finally, this first lesson of Saleem’s life: “Nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time.”

    Reply
  5. Susan C Avatar
    Susan C

    While Itto was looking up Nehru’s speech, I looked for Saleem’s childhood picture of Walter Raleigh and the fisherman and found it on the Tate’s site, titled “The Boyhood of Raleigh.” The text there reads “Sir Walter Raleigh was one of the most celebrated explorers of the Elizabethan age. In Millais’s famous painting he is shown as a boy listening with rapt attention to ‘tales of wonder on sea and land’ told by a Genoese sailor. The toy ship in the foreground suggests Raleigh’s future adventures….” Raleigh wears the most ridiculous foppish costume while seated on the beach, and contemplates centuries of exploration/exploitation and colonization ahead.

    Reply
  6. Alyssa Avatar
    Alyssa

    Oh, to read this section in one’s eighth month of pregnancy. The leaden balloon analogy ringing all too true, as is the description of being “trapped beneath her growing child.” Rest assured I’ll be keeping a close eye on this one at the hospital to avoid any shifty midwives named Mary.

    Reply
  7. Jennifer E Avatar
    Jennifer E

    Definitely enjoying the vividness of the writing, captures the chaos I’ve encountered in India-the juxtaposition of comfortable lifestyles with unimaginable suffering. In contrast to the last meander, am finding I have to read in short stints to be able to stay on top of all the characters and comings and goings!

    Reply
  8. Computilo Avatar
    Computilo

    Alyssa: As this group will probably still be meandering while you are delivering your child, please note that we will all want details! Size of head! Nose! Center-part or bald? Bigger than normal toe? (Of course, we will also want the usual information, such as weight, length, sex, mother and baby doing fine, etc.) Good luck!

    Reply
  9. Computilo Avatar
    Computilo

    Alyssa’s comment and all of the childbirth hullabaloo made me think about my very own “ten-chip pomfret.” Despite her birth size (ten-chip, causing our doctor to exclaim in his Texas drawl, “well, y’all got yourselves a heifer!”), my grown daughter has always been the tiniest “slip of a thing.” As SR says, “…all over the new India, the dream we all shared, children were being born who were only partially the offspring of their parents–the children of midnight were also the children of the time: fathered, you understand, by history. It can happen. Especially in a country which is itself a sort of dream.” Truer words were never spoken, Mr. Rushdie. Just substitute the name of the country. And the moment in history.

    Reply
  10. Just KT Avatar
    Just KT

    Behind in reading this week, but I shall sprint a bit next week so I can resume meander pace…

    Reply
  11. Jeff G Avatar
    Jeff G

    I too will avoid any spoilers, because of That Big Reveal, and I have to admit it threw me for the same kind of loop that it threw Padma—but the quote that Computilo cites above helped me understand and process why the story has taken the turn it has, and actually deepened my appreciation of Rushdie’s insane ambition. On a practical level, I’m finding it impossible to read this book without an accompanying phone/iPad to keep looking up words, places, events…and yet I don’t mind it at all. I continue to marvel at Rushdie’s ability to toy with time and place, at an often frantic pace, and how it creates this rich, panorama without leaving us totally bewildered as to what is going on. He is constantly dropping intriguing bits of foreshadowing that make no sense in the moment, but then pay off so satisfyingly further down the road.

    The book definitely is “work,” and there are times, especially give everything we’re living through right now,that I long for easier-to-read entertainment. But when I’m in the right mood (that is, caffinated), I find myself totally transported by Rushdie’s writing, his ability to capture these micro-moments of human frailty and imperfectness and pettiness and ambition, while also providing this sweeping overview, with all the sights and sounds and colors, of two countries being born.

    I don’t know if I would have tackled this solo, so I am very grateful to Cecil and the group for this meander!

    Reply
  12. Noodle Avatar
    Noodle

    I, too, liked his characterization of India as “sort of a dream.” Speaking only for myself, it’s easy to forget how many different languages, customs and loyalties have been amalgamated into this giant democracy, which now – perhaps – seems on the verge of autocracy of even theocracy.

    Like Padma, I’m rather impatient with the narrator’s ruminations, but then a turn of phrase will grab me — for example, when describing Ahmed Sinai’s efforts to access alcohol: “The poor, having little else to peddle, sold their identities on little pieces of pink paper; and my father turned them into liquid and drank them down.

    Reply
  13. pete Avatar
    pete

    this book perfect fits the task at hand – it is quite the “meander” but definitely getting to the point and drawing me in. i assume the babies represent india and pakistan to some extent but i don’t not really understanding why the (India?) baby has photographic memory, although it does help him a great deal in his later life as a narrator. This one struck me as plagiarism proof: “I have sniffed out a strange discontent in Padma, extruding its enigmatic spoor from her eccrine (or apocrine) glands.”

    Reply
  14. Michael Brodnitz Avatar
    Michael Brodnitz

    Now that all the major stars of the show have arrived on stage, what is going to happen next? Probably nothing good will come to Ahmed Sinai and his family…
    I was surprised to find a few words, that I thought were unique to the Hebrew language, used in this text, For example, when he refers to his Father (line 6 , page 149) as “Abba”. Can someone shed some light on this similarity?

    Reply
  15. Barbara B Avatar
    Barbara B

    I am catching up! I like the different ways of living in fragments, whether views thru a sheet or bits of time bopping against each other. Well… “like” may not be the right word… but it’s the word I’ve got for now, in this time of heat…

    Reply
  16. blue_f Avatar
    blue_f

    Leaving my mark here but I’m not a worthy meanderer this time… I shall catch up some day…

    Reply
  17. Lydia Avatar
    Lydia

    My book and I were separated for the last week 🙁 (I forgot it in my sister’s car. It went 800km north and was sent back). I am sure I will catch up for next week.

    Reply
  18. So-Called Bill Avatar
    So-Called Bill

    Behind but still alive. This will be a week of catching up.

    Reply
  19. Amanda Avatar
    Amanda

    Hahahaha

    Reply
  20. Amanda Avatar
    Amanda

    This week got me thinking of people and nations. Watching a nation blink into existence is a reminder that nationalism is a construction, a false bifurcation, a narrative borne of geographical circumscription. For a nation isn’t so much a place as that collective dream held by human beings, each living at the nexus of countless experiences, stories, each life but a node in a circuity forward, backward, and sideways inside something that feels much more complex than the word time. This book gets me thinking about my forebears more than I typically do, and I don’t just mean the generation or two back of which I know some names and a few stories, but rather millennia of human experience preceding and forming my own. Makes me think of Whitman:

    “The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them.
    And proceed to fill my next fold of the future. […]

    Do I contradict myself?
    Very well then I contradict myself,
    (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

    Reply
  21. Cecil Vortex Avatar
    Cecil Vortex

    hi! I asked a co-worker who’s from India, and he wrote: “That’s really interesting! It’s what all my Muslim friends call their dad/grandad so I’m sure it’s Urdu (which is a combination of Arabic, Farsi, Sanskrit etc. spoken mainly in Pakistan/India). In Marathi, Tamil, and some other Indian languages the word for dad is ‘Appa’ – which I just looked up, and it’s also the word for dad in Korean!” Great stuff! 🙂

    Reply
  22. Clort Avatar
    Clort

    I did the week 3 reading early in the week and then seemed to be unable to find the thread…. My general impression though was that the narrative was starting to wear on me a little bit. What had seemed like an effortless and inspired large-bandwidth storytelling started to feel a little forced as SR worked to arrange all the synchronous auspiciousnesses (?) of Saleem’s birth. But on the other hand, I’m not always able to to tell these days if my disenchantment is the book seeping out or the world outside seeping in…

    Maybe now that I’m behind in the reading as usual I’ll manage to post on time?

    Reply
  23. Willem Avatar
    Willem

    Here’s to Padma! Every time she appears I know I’m going to lol.

    Reply

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