Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

This book by Salman Rushdie is my first book by this author. Obviously having heard so much about the author n the book, I had to give it a try out of curiosity. However a bestseller need not be the “best read” for everybody. This one wasn’t for me.

The book is told in first person by the protagonist Saleem Sinai who happens to have born at the stroke of midnight the moment India got its independence. So the moment India and Pakistan were born, Saleem was also born. And his growth & destiny is entangled with that of the newly born nations.

Now having born at such a momentous moment, he was empowered with special powers, and so were all those kids who were born during the first hour after midnight. Hence forming the Midnight’s children group. Saleem possessed the power to read people’s mind, to talk to them through their minds. Later on in the story he lost that power, and instead gained the power of immensely sensitive olfactory sense. So he could smell not only the regular smells or fruits and flowers, but also the smell of human nature, the deceit, truth, hatred etc.

The story starts with Saleem’s grandfather’s life in Kashmir, then his parents and their siblings. Finally, story moves on to Saleem and people in his life: his family, friends, enemies, relatives etc. He seems to be a self obsessed with that “me me and me” going about in the whole book. Kind of expected actually when the book is his life story and all the events and happenings are from his point of view, how his life was affected by them. At points he seems deranged, completely obsessed with his life, that he feels everything that is happening is to directly impact his life for better or worse. For instance the 1965 war between India and Pakistan was according to him fought so that his entire family could be annihilated and thus purified.

The story telling by the author is intense and writing style commendable, but it has a lingering aura of hopelessness and futility. The protagonist impresses upon as a disgusting self deprecating, abominable character, who does not even, incites pity for his wretched life.

Actually I don’t know what I was expecting out of the book, but there was nothing that I got out of it. For people completely into fictions and intense stories, this might be an enjoyable read.