The Republic of India is an extremely diverse country. The history of the
country has been turbulent with four wars since 1947, when it gained
sovereignty from the British Empire after an intense struggle for
independence. It is obvious that writing a novel about India and attempting
to describe the history and the people of such diverse country is a
complicated task. Rushdie has nevertheless done just that. In the novel
Midnight's children Saleem Sinai is telling the story of his life in order
to try to gain meaning with his life. He says himself that he is cracking
up and he thinks that he has to tell his story before his body
disintegrates. Saleem is of mixed origin: his biological father was a
British, and his mother a poor Indian woman. At the nursing home, the nurse
switches two babies, so that the baby of the poor Vanita, who dies while
giving birth, is raised by the wealthy Amina and Ahmed Sinai.
Saleem, who is born at the same instant as India gains independence from
the British, is just as the other one thousand and one children born in the
first hour of independence, given supernatural powers. The closer to
midnight they are born, the more extraordinary are their gifts. Saleem's
gift is telepathy and he can tune in the other midnight's children who do
not have telepathical powers, and he can also broadcast, almost as a radio.
The baby, who Saleem is switched with at the nursing home, is Shiva. As he
is also born at midnight, he also has a powerful gift: he has lethal knees
and after Saleem is informed of this switch, he lives in constant fear of
Shiva finding out about the fact that Saleem has lived the protected life
of a rich boy, which should have been Shiva's birthright, while Shiva had
to live in the ghetto with a poor street-musician as his father. Saleem
calls his meetings with the other children The Midnight's Children's
Conference. The midnight's children are heterogeneous and come from
different parts of the country. They argue and after a while they do not
come together anymore. In the end, the midnight's children are destroyed
before they had the chance to make a difference and Saleem is the one who
helps destroying them.
The novel shows that India cannot be understood as one whole, but a country
that multifaceted must be divided into many different fragments in order to
be understood. Saleem is writing the history of his life and the novel
contains a number of mistakes, which he notices and points out, but he
usually refuses to correct them. Saleem persists that things happened the
way they happened, and that the person who believes someone else's history
over his own is a fool indeed. The many cracks and falling apart can be
understood as entirely negative. But they have positive implications too.
When Saleem crashes with his bike he gets in touch with the other
midnight's children and after the operation of his sinuses he discovers his
supernatural olfactory sense. The story i...
