Monday, August 2, 2021

Thinking Activity: Midnight's Children

 Hello Monks,
I am Riddhi Bhatt. You know...what is today's blog ?This blog is about Thinking Activity on Midnight's Children. This task is assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavsinhji Bhavnagar University (MKBU). As a part of the syllabus, students of English department are learning the paper Indian English Literature – Post-Independence (paper-202). So, let’s start making this wonderful blog task. But before we start I want to give short information about what kind of things we see here…
Salman Rushdie, in full Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie,Indian-born British writer whose allegorical novels examine historical and philosophical issues by means of surreal characters, brooding humour, and an effusive and melodramatic prose style. His treatment of sensitive religious and political subjects made him a controversial figure.His work, combining magical realism with historical fiction, is primarily concerned with the many connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, with much of his fiction being set on the Indian subcontinent. His second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize.Here we talk about 'Midnight's Children',
Saleem Sinai, the narrator of Midnight’s Children, opens the novel by explaining that he was born on midnight, August 15, 1947, at the exact moment India gained its independence from British rule. Now nearing his thirty-first birthday, Saleem believes that his body is beginning to crack and fall apart. Fearing that his death is imminent, he grows anxious to tell his life story. Padma, his loyal and loving companion, serves as his patient, often skeptical audience. Midnight's Children is a loose allegory for events in India both before and, primarily, after the independence and partition of India. The protagonist and narrator of the story is Saleem Sinai, born at the exact moment when India became an independent country. He was born with telepathic powers, as well as an enormous and constantly dripping nose with an extremely sensitive sense of smell. The novel is divided into three books.


1.First point to ponder upon is narrative technique. How was the narrative technique of the movie adaptation and in the novel ?

In the movie ‘ Midnight’s Children’ so many changes had been made by the director which not describing in novel.In 'Midnight's Children' Salman Rushdie  uses the first person narrative through Saleem Sinai, the protagonist of thenovel. Rushdie also makes good use of the device of Magic Realism in Midnight'sChildren. Further Rushdie's use of cinematic elements can clearly be seen inthe novel. All this shows Bombay Cinema's influence on Rushdie and Rushdie'suse of Indianized English is his biggest achievement. In the original text the story is told by the protagonist himself and the story is listened to by Padma.
The story wilfully defies description. Roughly speaking, it's the biography of Saleem Sinai, a child with unusual psychic and (later) olfactory powers, born on the stroke of midnight on August 15 1947. His destiny is inextricably linked with that of India, the country that came into independent being at the exact same time as he did. But the narrative is so jammed with contradictions, digressions, deliberate false steps and allegorical insinuations, that it's impossible to do it justice in the space of a short blog. Suffice to say that it's a heady ride through the first 31 years of Indian nationhood, taking in religious divisions, linguistic battles, Indira Gandhi's repression, the tragedies of partition, the painful birth of Bangladesh, the colourful career of the unique-yet-everyman narrator, as well as verrucas, jungles, chutneys, spices, snot, "soo-soos", 15-inch turds, eccentric Aunts, indulgent uncles, slums, palaces, snake charmers, werewolves, soldiers, cripples and more than 100 other variously mad, bad, dangerous and delightful characters.

2. Characters (how many included, how many left out - Why? What is your interpretation?)

Here are the Characters in the movie...


Here are the list of character from the novel who didn't appear in the film.
  • Padma
  • Sonny Ibrahim
  • Commander Sabarmati
  • Lila Sabarmati
  • Homy Carrack
  • Alice Pereira
  • Nalikar Women
  • Ramram Sheth
3. Themes and Symbols (if film adaptation able to capture themes and symbols?)

Themes :

1) British Colonialism and Postcolonialism

Born at exactly midnight on the eve of India’s independence from British colonialism, Saleem Sinai is the first free native citizen born on Indian soil in nearly a hundred years. After a century of British rule, in addition to a century of unofficial imperialism before that, Saleem’s birth marks the end of a two-hundred-year British presence in India. Using their considerable power and influence, the British impose their Western culture and customs onto the Indian…

2) Truth and Storytelling

Self-proclaimed writer and pickle-factory manager Saleem Sinai is dying—cracking and crumbling under the stress of a mysterious illness—but before he does, he is determined to tell his story. With the “grand hope of the pickling of time,” Saleem feverishly pens his autobiography, preserving his stories like jars of chutney, searching for truth and meaning within them. Born at the precise moment of India’s independence and endowed with magical powers Saleem’s remarkable story begins long

3) Sex and Gender

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is a harsh critique of the gender-related power struggles of postcolonial Indian society. After generations of purdah—the belief that Muslim and Hindu women should live separately from society, behind a curtain or veil, to stay out of the sight of men—postcolonial women are encouraged to become “modern Indian women” and remove their veils. Countless years in the domestic sphere has branded them as weak, demure, and dependent on men,

4) Identity and Nationality

From the moment Saleem Sinai is born on the eve of India’s independence from Great Britain, he becomes the living embodiment of his country. Saleem is India, and his identity metaphorically represents the identity of an entire nation; however, Saleem’s identity is complicated and conflicted. A nation, generally understood as the same people living in the same place, only loosely applies to India’s diverse population. Instead, multiple religions, languages, and political beliefs divide postcolonial India

5) Fragments and Partitioning

Following their 1947 independence from British rule, India begins to break up in a process known as partitioning. British India splits along religious lines, forming the Muslim nation of Pakistan and the secular, but mostly Hindu, nation of India. India continues to fracture even further, dividing itself based on language and class. Meanwhile, Saleem Sinai, the living embodiment of India, is also cracking—and dying. Saleem, 

6) Religion

Religion is at the forefront of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and it drives most of the narrative throughout the entire novel. Saleem Sinai, the narrator-protagonist, is born Muslim but lives most of his life in the Hindu-steeped culture of Bombay. His lifelong ayah, Mary Pereira, is a devout Catholic, and his sister, the Brass Monkey, ultimately joins a nunnery. In the religiously pluralistic backdrop of postcolonial India, Rushdie references several


Symbol :

1) Pickles
Pickles are repeatedly mentioned in Midnight’s Children, and while they are often viewed as a phallic symbol, they are generally representative of the power of preservation within Rushdie’s novel. Saleem is the manager of a pickle factory, and he preserves pickles and chutneys each day. He also attempts to preserve his own life story like the pickles in his factory. Saleem largely manages to preserve his life through storytelling, offering a bit of immortality to a dying man, and he also labels and stores each chapter he writes in a pickle jar, so that they may be read later, by his son for example. This connection between pickles and the preservation of stories endures until the very end of the book, when Saleem ceremoniously labels his very last pickle jar as a way of closing out his story and his life as a whole.

2) Spittoons
In Midnight’s Children, spittoons initially represent Old India but grow to also symbolize Saleem’s identity, which is intimately linked to his country given that he is one of the children of

midnight. Rani gives Mumtaz and Nadir a silver spittoon when they are married, and they frequently play hit-the-spittoon, an old-fashioned game in which they try to spit tobacco juice into a spittoon from various distances, similar to the old men in the town of Agra. After Saleem’s family is killed during the Indo-Pakistani war, he is hit in the head with the exact same silver spittoon, and he instantly forgets his name and his entire identity. However, even with amnesia, Saleem knows that the spittoon is important, and he carries it with him throughout the war. To Saleem, the spittoon represents his identity, and he carries it with him until it is lost in Indira Gandhi’s Emergency.

3) Noses
Saleem Sinai’s large, bulbous nose is a symbol of his power as the leader of the Midnight Children’s Conference, which is comprised of all children born on the moment of India’s independence from British rule. His nose makes his power of telepathy possible, and this is how he communicates with the other children of midnight (who all have varied powers of their own). Saleem inherits his rather large, and perpetually congested, nose from his grandfather, Aadam Aziz, who also uses his nose to sniff out trouble. Saleem’s nasal powers begin after an accident in his mother’s washing-chest, in which he sniffs a rogue pajama string up his nose, resulting in a deafening sneeze and the instant arrival of the voices in his head. Saleem’s power of telepathy remains until a sinus surgery clears out his nose “goo.” After his surgery, Saleem is unable to further commune with the other children. Ironically, after Saleem’s nasal congestion is gone, he gains the ability to smell emotions, and he spends much time categorizing all the smells he frequently encounters.

4. The texture of the novel (What is the texture of the novel? Well, it is the interconnectedness of narrative technique with the theme. Is it well captured?)



The film is not told in chronological order, but it is told in flashback. When Salim remembered something he told the audience and listener. And then come back to real life from that flashback. Whole story is told by Salim. And he described the things that he felt. This is my interpretation of the novel and film adaptation. 
 


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