Summary of Midnight's Children

 

Midnight’s Children is a magic realism novel revolving around independence of India,written in Indian taste, by Salman Rushdie. The novel is semi autobiographical, though, Rushdie stands with magical powers. Midnight’s Children was critically acclaimed and won many literary awards including the Booker Prize. London Review of Books quoted "A brilliant and endearing novel, the latest of India's many contributions to English fiction and most remarkable of them all. "The protagonist of the novel,Saleem Sinai, born on 15th of August,1947, at the exact moment when India gets independence from Britain. Thirty years later, Saleem feels as if he is dying so he decides to tell the story of his life to his lover, Padma. Saleem begins the story of his grandfather, Aadam Aziz who lived in Kashmir, India. In Saleem’s story, Aadam is a doctor caring for a woman named Naseem who becomes Saleem’s grandmother. The sheet was also a trick used by Naseem’s father who wanted Aadam to fall in love with his daughter. He finally gets to see her face when she has a headache. Naseem and Aadam marry each other. They move to Amritsar where Aadam witnesses for Indian independence from British rule. These protests are violently suppressed and end with the protesters being massacred. That time situation was very worse, not easy to analyze freely,After having three daughters and two sons, Aadam becomes a follower of an activist named Mian Abdullah. Abdullah is assassinated for his beliefs and Aadam agrees to take in his assistant as Nadir Khan. Naseem labels Nadir as cowardly and protests his staying in their house. Then Nadir Khan and Aadam’s daughter Mumtaz fall in love. They marry willingly but even after two years, fail to consummate their marriage. Nadir Khan is found to be hiding at Aadam’s and flees, leaving his wife behind. Mumtaz  remarries Ahmed Sinai who was a merchant. Mumtaz decides to change her name to Amina then she and her husband like to move to the city of Delhi. Amina becomes soon pregnant and visits a fortune teller to learn about her child's future. The prophecy about her child states that he will never be older or younger than his country because of some complications with Ahmed’s factory being burned down by terrorists then after failing down he decides to move them to Bombay for peace.

         In Bombay, both Mumtaz and Ahmed buy a house from an Englishman named William Methwold. One of their neighbors is an entertainer named Wee Willie Winkie,having cooperative mind lives with his pregnant wife, Vanita. There is an irony that Vanita had an affair with Methwold and he is the father of her child. Both Vanita and Mumtaz go into labor and have their children at midnight, though Vanita does not survive childbirth. The midwife who has recently had an affair with a socialist who decides to switch the babies so that the poor baby can live a life of privilege and vice versa. Saleem is not truly a biological child of Mumtaz and Ahmed but of Vanita and Methwold. The midwife becomes Saleem’s nanny out of guilt clearly there. 

                        Here, Saleem’s birth is given large press coverage,since it coincided with Indian independence. Saleem is a  child having strange looking,cucumber-shaped nose and blue eyes. One day, Saleem is punished for hiding out in the bathroom where he accidentally witnesses his mother using the toilet. She forces him to be silent for a day,wherein he notices he can hear the thoughts of others without knowing right or wrong. Finally, he realizes he can also hear the thoughts of those children born in the same hour as him. He also got out that they all have powers; the strongest ones being born closest to midnight. Shiva,fortunately the child with whom he was switched at birth, is physically strong and gifted in fighting having blessings.

               Another vital point is that Saleem loses a part of his finger and is rushed to the hospital. When the doctors obtain his blood type and diogonized then it is revealed that Saleem cannot be Ahmed and Mumtaz’s biological son. Saleem’s nanny admits there but switched the two boys at birth. Ahmed, now an alcoholic boy and becomes violent at hearing the news which prompts Amina to take Saleem and his sister to the recently established nation as Pakistan to live with her sister.After that Ahmed dies there, the family moves back to Bombay city. At this time, India is embroiled in a war with China. Saleem’s large nose has been giving him trouble all his life,  therefore he gets an operation to fix it comfortable. After the operation,he is no longer telepathic but he has an improved sense of smell and he can sense people’s emotions easily. After India losing to China,the family moves back to Pakistan again. There, his entire family is killed and his sister Jamila left during a war between India and Pakistan.Saleem loses his memory after being hit on the head. He ends up in the army,although he is not quite sure how he ended up there. Saleem witnesses many war crimes and barbarisms and he try to escape into the Bangladesh jungle. Saleem recovers there some of his memory but does not recover his name until he meets Parvati-the-witch who is another one of midnight’s children. She helps him for recalling his name. They retreat to a magician's ghetto.

Parvati wants Saleem to marry her but refused to do by him. She then has an affair with Shiva who is now a famous war hero. Shiva and Parvati have relationship troubles and Parvati returns to the magicians’ ghetto,but irony, pregnant and unmarried. Saleem agrees to marry her. Indira Gandhi who was the prime minister of India that-time, has begun sterilization camps to decrease the  population India. She also destroys the magicians’ ghetto. Parvati dies after her childbirth and Shiva captures Saleem to take him to a sterilization camp. All of midnight’s children are sterilized there as to protect the prime minister from their powers. Gandhi did not win her first election.

           All midnight’s children are set free there and Saleem heads out to find Aadam, Parvati’s son. He finds him with a snake charmer they knew in the ghetto and they travel to Bombay. Saleem eats some chutney there which reminds him of his nanny. He tracks down the chutney factory where his former nanny owns and there he meets Padma. He decides to marry her but certain that on his thirty-first birthday,the anniversary of India’s independence,but unfortunately he will die and explode into dust there but all have happened in this story might be a magic. Rushdie's thoughts proved here magic with realism.