Rushdie’s Invention of Modern India/ 拉什迪“创作”的印度现代史

Ralph J. Crane, Inventing India: A History of India in English-Language Fiction (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 172.

The sense of timelessness which was so evident in the opening paragraphs of The Siege of Krishnapur and A Passage to India is noticeably absent in Midnight’s Children:

I was born in the city of Bombay… once upon a time. No, that won’t do, there’s no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home on August 15^th, 1947. And the time? The time matters, too. Well then: at night. No, it’s important to be more… On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came. Oh, spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of India’s arrival at independence, I tumbled forth into the world. (p. 9)

The fairy-tale opening ‘once upon a time…’ is rejected, and in these opening lines Saleem Sinai’s fate is tied to the fate of India, as Nehru forecasts in his congratulatory letter which defines Saleem’s own tryst with destiny:

Dear Baby Saleem, My belated congratulations on the happy accident of your moment of birth! You are the newest bearer of that ancient face of India which is also eternally young. We shall be watching over your life with the closest attention; it will be, in a sense, the mirror of our own. (p. 122)

* Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children, (1981; rpt, London: Picador, 1982)/ 拉什迪，《午夜的孩子》

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