Thinking Activity on Midnight's Children

This Blog-post is a response to a thinking activity on Midnight's Children given by our professor Dr.Dilip Barad Sir. To know more about this task, CLICK HERE.

Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British American author who is widely talked about by people nowadays because he suffered a terrible attack. Rushdie, the author of thirteen novels including Midnight’s Children, was awarded the Booker Prize in 1981. 

• Midnight's Children : 

The novel is divided into three sections:

Book I:1915-1947

Book II: 1947-1965

Book III: 1965-1978

Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts.

This novel is a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Midnight’s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.

(From: Salmanrushdie.com)

• Film Adaptation: 

Midnight's Children's same name adaptation of the film, directed by Indian-born Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta. The film was released on 9 September 2012 (Toronto International Film Festival) on 26 October 2012 (India).

• Narrative technique:

The narrative technique is like the soul of the novel or story. The story is like nothing without a narrator. In the novel, the story is going through the first-person narrator, Saleem Sinai. In the novel, the speaker is Saleem while the listener is Padma. She is Saleem's loving companion and caretaker, and she will become his fiancée at the end of the novel. In the novel, Padma comes in the first book, the second part, Mercurochrome and her name comes 223 times as per what we can find in the e-text. 

"Padma-our plump Padma-is sulking magnificently. (She can't read

and, like all fish-lovers, dislikes other people knowing anything she doesn't.

Padma: strong, jolly, a consolation for my last days. But definitely a

bitch-in-the-manger.)"

While in the movie, there is no audience or listener even nothing mentioned Padma by Saleem. However later on she becomes his fiance. The text leads the voice of the speaker through the essence of the listener. As Saleem mentioned, 

"I have been interrupted by Padma, who brought me my dinner and

then withheld it, blackmailing me: 'So if you're going to spend all your time

wrecking your eyes with that scribbling, at least you must read it to me.' I

have been singing for my supper-but perhaps our Padma will be useful,

because it's impossible to stop her from being a critic."

The film is a modern and technical way to give the story to the audience. Here, the audience is the viewers who are seeing the film but Padma in the novel is not like only the viewer or listener. She is only the character who remains in the story who is female and thinks critically and also we can read the feminist reading that she has only the ability to ask questions to the man. Even, Saleem himself in the novel tells that, 

Women have always been the ones to change my life: Mary Pereira, Evie Burns, Jamila Singer, Parvati-the-witch must answer for who I am; and the Widow, who I’m keeping for the end; and after the end, Padma, my goddess of dung. Women have fixed me all right, but perhaps they were never central—perhaps the place which they should have filled, the hole in the center of me which was my inheritance from grandfather Aadam Aziz, was occupied for too long by my voices. Or perhaps—one must consider all possibilities—they always made me a little afraid.

Character:

The storyline of the film seems the same as the novel, but while reading some parts of the novel, we can see that there are some changes done by the creators.

• Characters are not in the film:

1. Sonny Ibrahim :

One of the children living on Methwold’s Estate. Sonny is Saleem’s best friend. He is also in love with Saleem’s sister, the Brass Monkey. (From Spark Notes.) Sonny is Saleem's childhood friend. His childhood events are much important to grasp the dark event of the history of Emergency. His character is also connected with the mechanism. 

A true fact about Sonny Ibrahim: despite all his bullfighting dreams, his genius lay in the realm of mechanical things. For some time now, he had taken on the job of maintaining all the bikes on Methwold's Estate in return for gifts of comic-books and a free supply of fizzy drinks. Even Evelyn Lilith Burns gave her beloved India bike into his care. All machines, it seemed, were won over by the innocent delight with which he caressed their moving parts; no contraption could resist his ministrations. To put it another way: Sonny Ibrahim had become (out of a spirit of pure inquiry) an expert at picking locks.

2. Commander Sabarmati and Laila Sabarmati:

Sabarmati couple is a real couple and their story which Rushdie mentioned in the book is also a real one that is missing in the film. Here is Saleem's narration which is in the text, 

And, finally, on the top floor, were Commander Sabarmati and Lila-Sabarmati who was one of the highest flyers in the Navy, and his wife with her expensive tastes; he hadn't been able to believe his luck in getting her a home so cheaply. They had two sons, aged eighteen months and four months, who would grow up to be slow and boisterous and to be nicknamed Eyeslice and Hairoil.

Commander Sabarmati (Kawas Manekshaw Nanavati) murdered his wife's lover named Prem Ahuja. While in the novel Homi Catrack(Saleem's neighbor and racecourse owner) had an affair with Lila Sabarmati. As in the second Book, the event is coming about the murder, 

"When Commander Sabarmati's wife Lila answered the door, he shot her twice in the stomach at point-blank range. She fell backwards; he marched past her and found Mr. Homi Catrack rising from the toilet, his bottom unwiped, pulling frantically at his trousers. Commander Vinoo Sabarmati shot him once in the genitals, once in the 

heart, and once through the right eye. The gun was not silenced; but when it had finished speaking, there was an enormous silence in the apartment. Mr. Catrack sat down on the toilet after he was shot and seemed to be smiling."

"A newspaper said of the Sabarmati affair: 'It is a theatre in which India 

will discover who she was, what she is, and what she might become.'… But Commander Sabarmati was only a puppet; I was the puppet-master, and the nation performed my play-only I hadn't meant it! I didn't think he'd… I only wanted to… a scandal, yes, a scare, a lesson to all unfaithful wives and mothers, but not that, never, no."

Saleem himself confesses that he becomes a layer of the event. In the novel, Commander shoots both, his wide Laila and his lover(also his neighbour, Homi Catrack). While in history, the Commander shot only the man, not his wife. Rather, the main thing which I observed is Saleem's learning of how to watch enemies from Dr.Schaapsteker and his first experiment on Homi Carrack as he sees the affair of his mother. His enemy might be strong after seeing extramarital affairs. This part is missing in the film. 

• Themes and Symbols:

The film adaptation captured themes like Hybridity in the language (Chatanification and other words) and culture (swapping the children). Another and main concern of the novel which Rushdie probably remains as it is in the film also is about History (Emergency 1975) and the individual ( India - Saleem himself). Magic realism is more effectively presented in the film, however, the concern of showing the history is somewhere dull also. Because we already studied the major concern of the text before the screening.

Midnight itself shows the symbol of the dark episode of independent India in Emergency 1975. The Silver Spittoon is very well captured in the film as we can see through the cinematography the loss of memory and source of amnesia. The very first frame in the film is about The Perforated Sheet is also captured in the film and becomes an important event in Aziz's life, through it he met Amina. During Jamila's performance, a perforated sheet again comes and in the film, it is quite beautiful to present her purity. Saleem's Nose and Shiva's Knees symbolize oppositely. Bothe characters' plus points are captured well in the film.