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The Midnight’s Children Meander, Week Four

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Well, that was unexpected! šŸ™‚

I think I’ll follow the thread-lead (good instincts, Ute!) and not spoil, except to say that it was fun to find that the title doesn’t mean exactly/only what I always thought it meant.

I’m still taken by the way he uses and talks about time. Then there’s all those references to the color blue. And there’s the Venn diagram of these two topics, where you’ll find a paper I almost want to write about time, the color blue, and the many parallels between Midnight’s Children and Alan Moore’s immortal Watchmen.

But instead of focusing thence, I think I’ll just strongly agree with Jeff’s thread-comment that this is a book I wouldn’t make it through solo, and (imho) just the stuff Meanders are made for. Thank you to you all for charging forth! (And sympathy for those who’ve fallen a tad behind — not to worry — there’s plenty of time to rejoin the pack.)

I’ll also note that despite it’s (what the hell, I mean really) meandering trajectory, this book is also somehow weirdly/wonderfully efficient. It feels like every word I look up ends up getting used five times. (I’m talking to you, “tetrapod.”) It all contributes to the feeling that this is an exceptionally orderly chaos we’re making our way through…

Speaking of making our way through, where to next? Let’s meet at the end of “All-India Radio” (page 205 in the Random House paperback), where somebody (yikes!) “also met his death.”

And this? This is the post for comments on Book 2.2 through 2.4.

And lastly: “tetrapod” is “a vertebrate (such as an amphibian, a bird, or a mammal) with two pairs of limbs” (merriam webster).

MW adds: “The earliest tetrapods, or ‘four-footed animals,’ were mammal-like reptiles that evolved before the rise of the dinosaurs and ranged from mouse-sized to cow-sized. Today the tetrapods include the reptiles, the amphibians, the birds, and the mammals — including humans. Though the fish aren’t classified as tetrapods, it’s quite possible that our own limbs began as paired fins hundreds of millions of years ago.”

The more you know, about tetrapods!

Comments

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

  1. So-Called Bill Avatar
    So-Called Bill

    Every time I see the word “Fatbhoy” I giggle a little bit. It’s a great name for something – like, a curry burger joint or something?

    Reply
  2. GuzmƔn Huerta Avatar
    GuzmƔn Huerta

    Is this turning into The Umbrella Academy? Intrigue meets history meets social criticism:

    ā€œThe businessmen of India were turning whiteā€.

    Reply
  3. Ute Avatar
    Ute

    How great is the idea of “dishes imbued with the personality of their creator”!
    And how possibly true, because let’s be honest: sometimes dishes turn out differently from one time to the next. Until reading this I always thought it might be due to not having followed the recipe in exactly the same way, but now I’m wondering – maybe it wasn’t the recipe or the ingredients after all, might simply have been my mood! So let’s wait and see what kind of mood infused food we’ll be having for dinner tonight…

    And SR not only seems to believe in mood infused dishes, but also clothes (“Dressed in the bitter garments that arrived regularly from my headmistress aunt Alia…).

    Love the repetition of ideas, but linked to different concepts!

    Reply
  4. Itto Ogami Avatar
    Itto Ogami

    Spoiler alert just in case.

    Excited to enter the mind reading phase. The brief introduction was entertaining. Who among us has not wondered about or wanted mind reading powers, if only for a person or a time? Doesnā€™t seem all that easy now. Need a powerful filtration system. And translation.

    Reply
  5. Computilo Avatar
    Computilo

    Beginning of All India Radio: “Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems–but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.” And later, “it becomes clear that the illusion itself is reality.” This put me in mind of the the early days of this pandemic (when was that, exactly?), and the first time I drove past a usually very busy strip mall on a normal day and saw…..nothing. No cars, no people, no nothing. I think it was almost as surreal as in later days seeing everyone (well, mostly everyone) wearing masks. Incredible reality, indeed.

    Reply
  6. So-Called Bill Avatar
    So-Called Bill

    And “The Terrible Inevitability of Soap” is a great name for an album.

    Reply
  7. Just KT Avatar
    Just KT

    I miss Padma.

    I had to go back and read the prophesy a couple of times and Iā€™m intrigued to find out how they all come to life in the story. I keep wondering what the switched son/second head is up to and what parts of the prophesy belong to him instead of Saleem.

    Love love love the kid nicknames: Brass Monkey, Snotnose, Hairoil, Eyeslice…what would your childhood nickname have been in Rushdie format?

    Reply
  8. Peaseblossom Avatar
    Peaseblossom

    I hate to do this, but I must. This is my simple bookmark. It’s been a stressful week, and I work at 6am tomorrow. So I’ll have to double up on the insight next week. I apologize, my fellow meanderers.

    Reply
  9. Jim Compton Avatar
    Jim Compton

    I am running late on this section and checking in mostly to thank Cecil for the five-moons TBA magnet, which arrived from Vortex Industries today. After looking at the postage alone, I think everyone who got one owes him a beer. At some point.
    I can report that the banded krait now has an antivenin, and its fatality rate is not much worse than our local northern Pacific rattler, 1-10%. Surprising, as it is a neurotoxic elapid and gets to 7 or 8 feet. Needless to say, I love the description of the snake doctor’s tongue flicking in and out.

    Reply
  10. Furiosa Avatar
    Furiosa

    My thoughts are more random this week than usual, although I must say the sense of simmering anything-can-happen-at-any-moment tension in Saleem’s circuitous storytelling, as well as that on point chapter opening about reality being illusion continue to speak loudly to the state of 2020. A few other moments that stood out:

    “But something was given in exchange for what was lost: life, and an early awareness of the ambiguity of snakes.” I suppose Mary Pereira would be rather horrified if she knew I thought that sums up the Biblical story of Adam and Eve as neatly as Baby Saleem’s life lesson. If that was SR’s intention, gold star.

    Also, as a little sister, I can relate to the Brass Monkey learning on the eventful day of her birth that “if she was going to get any attention in her life, she would have to make plenty of noise.”

    Finally, “oaths were oathed” made me laugh out loud.

    Reply
  11. Lydia Avatar
    Lydia

    I did not think that it would be so easy to fetch up – but I let myself be so captivated by the events in the narrative that it was easy to catch up. “Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible ist seems – but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.”

    What a fulminant start into a new chapter!! And it left me thinking about my relation to this sentences. It is not only our interesting time we go through at the moment. Doesn’t it also have something to do with the way we encounter our own past and the narrated past of our grandparents and parents? Are their stories less true just because they sometimes don’t match the common historiography?

    And I am with Ute: I am caught by the idea, that the taste of a meal also reflects the mood of the cook. That might be true in my case. šŸ˜‰

    Reply
  12. Amanda Avatar
    Amanda

    Last week, I was thinking about the divisions and simplifications of nationalism, the bureaucratic and political systems that create and reinforce us/them and me/you binaries. Specifically, I wondered what is antidote to people viewing one another in a reductive way? As I read it seemed like Saleem’s gift could be one way, giving as it does access to the interiority and experience of others, their emotions, hopes, thoughts. Gee, I thought, if only we mortals not born at midnight had that same power. Then I realized that we do — by creating and consuming literature; I haven’t found a better medium to be inside the “thought stream” and full complexity of other subjectivities.

    Reply
  13. Alyssa Avatar
    Alyssa

    A little behind this week but determined to catch up. Iā€™m finding the reading to be, if not easier, less brow-furrowing as I go along. Now off to finish the last seven pages of this section…

    Reply
  14. Jeff Avatar
    Jeff

    Still hanging tough with the book, and enjoying it, despite the many different Internet rabbit holes I keep going down to fill in gaps in my knowledge. The one that really hit me this time–which my eyes just glided by at first until I had to double back for a second reading–was the parenthetical comment about radio on p. 190 “(which will never cease, in our part of the world, to symbolize impotence–ever since the notorious free-transistor sterilization bribe…”). Turns out that was neither made up or exaggerated, as I was completely unaware of India’s forced sterilization programs of the 1970s, which had followed the govt’s attempt to get men to voluntarily submit to vasectomies in exchange for a free radio. Good god.

    Still, there was much to enjoy and appreciate in this section–we finally we learn the origin of “the Brass Monkey! And the utter awkwardness of his misadventure in the washing basket was as memorable a depiction of innocence lost as I can recall reading. But like KT, I too miss Padma and hope she returns to keep Saleem’s head in the game. He seems unmoored without her.

    Reply
  15. Noodle Avatar
    Noodle

    I also like the quote you led with, Computilo. In addition, I was glad to discover in this section that there were indeed going to be more than just two “midnight’s children.” Had not anticipated the mind-reading capabilities, so it will be interesting to learn how these play into the plot. But — to carp just a little — wish SR would have moved the story along a little faster.

    Reply
  16. Pete Avatar
    Pete

    well, I can say I read it. Had a little trouble sticking with it in parts. Really unsure what the obsession with his nose is all about. Enjoying the way the mind-reading led to more narrative about actual events after the initial pretty far-flung descriptions of what he learned with his new abilities.

    Reply
  17. Computilo Avatar
    Computilo

    Playlist suggestion: “Telepathy” by Christina Aguilera. Like some others on the meander this week, I’m feeling like I need some telepathy to get through some of the more dense portions of this tome. Thanks to Jeff and others for all their Internet rabbit-hole research.

    Reply
  18. Susan C Avatar
    Susan C

    I was also going to comment on women who infuse their creations with emotion (wasn’t that in Like Water for Chocolate)? Instead, I’ll just call out the notable figurative language that takes me back to my days as a high school teacher trying to explain metaphor. “A thyroid balloon of a child,” “baby-things of bitterness…rompers of resentment,” “sandbagging down the floods of tears lurking just beneath my eyes,” “the tower of crippled hours.” And I hear Rushdie here: “I had entered into the illusion of the artist, and thought of the multitudinous realities of the land as the raw unshaped material of my gift.”

    Reply
  19. Cecil Vortex Avatar
    Cecil Vortex

    Well put re repetition. Love that too!

    Reply
  20. Cecil Vortex Avatar
    Cecil Vortex

    Not to worry PB!

    Reply
  21. Barbara B Avatar
    Barbara B

    I read along, a bit out of time with the thread…but perhaps that’s in the spirit of this prism’d plot line. I liked the way houses form their inhabitants. I wonder about the importance of lips.

    Reply
  22. Willem Avatar
    Willem

    OK I’m closing my eyes and plugging my ears as I have fallen a bit behind but will catch up shortly. See/read you all soon!

    Reply
  23. Clort Avatar
    Clort

    California peoples, I’m really dismayed to witness the ongoing catastrophe of the fires. Evidently the haze we are now getting here on the east coast is a result of them. I can only imagine how disconcerting it must be to be there, this on top of everything else. The sadness of it though comes through pretty clearly over here. At least for me. I guess that must mean I still think of Cali as home.

    On the topic of MC, I continue to enjoy the book, though at times Saleem still seems to be working a little too hard to make himself an allegory or prophet; there are plenty of other times where the self-historicizing mode works seamlessly. I know that he may have bacteriological reasons for trying so hard (i.e., issues) (the editor prefers bacteria to character, so what the hell) and if that’s the case I’m interested to see how that bends his arc in the book. My trailer remains hitched!

    Reply

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