Midnight's Children

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981)

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, Writing this blog as a thinking activity for the novel 'Midnight's Children' by Salman Rushdie. Which is assigned by Dr. Prof. Dilip Barad sir. You can visit the teacher's blog for the more information. Here we have to discuss the certain questions which are there to be discussed.

1.Narrative technique (changes made in film adaptation - for eg. absence of Padma, the Nati, the listener, the commenter - What is your interpretation?)

When we going to talk about Narrative technique of any text we first think about the concept of “HOW” rather than “WHAT”. How the story is told in the specific way. Not what has been told here.

When we see the text ‘Midnight’s Children’ we got the clue that here the author Salman Rushdie has used very unique style like Western Postmodern Devices And Indian (Eastern) Oral Narratological Methods.

There are many metaphors for it like,

Russian Dolls  

Russian Dolls we can see that these dolls are doll within the doll and it is going with like story within the story so it can be apt metaphor for it.

Chinese Boxes

This style is well known in literature to use in the story telling and it can help to find various perspective. It is called ‘A Chinese box Structure’. A novel or drama that is told the form of a narrative inside a narrative. We can find many stories in this structure like Plato’s dialogue Symposium, Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein. The core stuff is here that it is not used for telling the story but used for changing the perspective.

Indian Oral Narratological methods Panchatantra

In the Panchatantra, there are the stories of animals (Fables) to teach the princes of the King Sudarshan and Amarshakti like three sons named Bahushakti, Ugrashakti and Shakti.

Vishnu Sharma (Brahmin) is there to teach them the morals and lessons to helping them to build up the ability of ruling because they were the dumb by their early childhood. Here the story is told by in the frame and within the frame.

Kathasaritasagar

In Kathasaritasagar there are the stories in wide horizons and multiple layers of story within a story and it is said to have been adopted from Gunadhya’s Brhatkatha. It is by Somadeva in Sanskrit.

Baital Pachisi

Twenty-five stories are there. These are the stories of legends within the frame story, from India. Basically, this is the story of Vikram Aditya promises a sorcerer that he will capture the Vetala. And this story is going like Vetala tell to the king that I will tell the stories and an end of the story you have to answer to my question and if you will not know the answer then it is good but if you know the answer and though you are not giving the answer then I will fly away and at the twenty fifth’s story Vetala ask very hard question to the king and he is not able to answer and Vetala say that I will come with you to a sorcerer and tell him his story. And we feel story is going on with so many stories.

There is also the story of Sihasan Battisi and in that also many stories exist. As all thirty-two dolls tell the stories.

Alif Laila – Arabian Nights

In the novel there is the reference of the Arabian Nights that is one thousand and one. Here we can find the very apt example and connect it with our narrative because here the speaker Shahrazad is telling the stories to the listener Shahryar same like in Midnight’s Children, the speaker Saleem and the listener Padma.

There are the thousand stories which are told by Shahrazad to the king in nights. When we look at the outer frame, we can find the king is very evil in the sense of selfishness and full filling his own desires. Once the daughter of court man is getting her turn to be marry to the king and next morning, he would kill her so she was very intelligent and keep continue the act of telling the stories and in an exact manner she could change the perspective of the king towards the women afterwards.

Ramayana and Mahabharata

There are many references of Ramayana and Mahabharata. Valmiki’s Ramayana, when we see the Ramayana at very beginning of it, we can see that there are stories at a time. Main focus is to the Ram but excepting that there are other many stories revolves around it.

The same way in the Mahabharata, so many stories are there. This is the story which was going to mouth to mouth. And that is why the stories are within the story.

Hayavadana (A Man with Horse’s Face) by Girish Karnad

In this the same way the narrative technique going on and this story is at various places in the various texts. In this, two men are there named as Devadatta and Kapila. The Devadatta is a brahmin and he is powerful by mind. And another is Kapila, who is having body powerful. The same way the qualities we can find in our story in the characters of Saleem and Shiva like they have some qualities in special way.

And then story goes on with many stories by vivid characters. Like Padmini’s story is having hybridity of western and eastern.

Now, we come to the Midnight’s Children. Its use of pickle jars to get narrative style very uniquely. Let’s have a look to the original line from the novel,

Thirty jars stand upon a shelf, waiting to be unleashed upon the amnesiac nation. (And beside them, one jar stands empty.) pg.456

It means that thirty jars are ready with stories, with its history and this is for the people who are having amnesia of own nation. Last jar is empty. These are the names of the chapters and last is not there.

In the end, We can see that here the list of whole concepts which this novel contains. we can see the all shades of Western Postmodernist Devices and Eastern Narratological Devices.

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

Characters are the thing which we observe at the first sight. And also we always eager to see what is their stories. Let's have a look to the characters of the novel. You can have a look to the all characters of this novel.

Satya Bhabha as Saleem Sinai

Shriya Saran as Parvati

Siddharth Narayan as Shiva

Darsheel Safary as Saleem Sinai (as a child)

Anupam Kher as Ghani

Shabana Azmi as Naseem

Neha Mahajan as Young Naseem

Seema Biswas as Mary

Charles Dance as William Methwold

Samrat Chakrabarti as Wee Willie Winkie

Rajat Kapoor as Aadam Aziz

Soha Ali Khan as Jamila

Rahul Bose as Zulfikar

Anita Majumdar as Emerald

Shahana Goswami as Amina

Chandan Roy Sanyal as Joseph D'Costa

Ronit Roy as Ahmed Sinai

Kulbhushan Kharbanda as Picture Singh

Shikha Talsania as Alia

Zaib Shaikh as Nadir Khan

Sarita Choudhury as Indira Gandhi

Vinay Pathak as Hardy

Kapila Jayawardena as Governor

Ranvir Shorey as Laurel

Suresh Menon as Field Marshal

G.R Perera as Astrologer

Rajesh Khera

Salman Rushdie, narrator

The main thing we find is in the novel there is the character of Padma who is the Nati and listener wherein the movie there is the absence of this character. And the main focus is on the character of Parvati the witch.

Here is the list of the characters which are not in the movie,

-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?)

When we see the Indian English writers, we find such major names and how they have used such themes like Raja Rao's novels the usual theme is the superiority of vedantic, spiritual India over the materialistic west. In R. K. Narayan's novels, the clash is between the traditional Indian values and the values from the west, and the choice of the protagonist to modernize Indian values by borrowing eclectically from the west. In the novels of Anita Desai - the novelist who hit the Indian writing scene in the 1960s - the definition of a person's identity as an individual (not as an Indian) prevails.

HISTORY AND THE INDIVIDUAL

In Midnight's Children, Rushdie establishes a strong connection between the history of India and the life of Saleem. Saleem is described as being "mysteriously hand-cuffed to history, my destinies indissolubly chained to those of my country. For the next three decades, there was no escape." Rushdie sets the scene for us to believe a strange tale, if true, that Saleem Sinai by being born in Bombay on 15'th August 1947 at the stroke of midnight, becomes the first child born in independent India, and that his story is the history of free India.

COLONIALISM AND NEO-COLONIALISM IN INDIA

What has set apart writers from former colonies has been among other things a desire to set right the record of their country's history, traditions and cavillations ' through their work. This has been specially so in the case of migrant writers. Most Indian migrant writers - and Rushdie is one of them -are what I would like to call activist writers. They carry their political challenges to alithority into their books and simultaneously connect the books with the world outside. most migrant writers tend to write books which are political acts and constitute, in my view, true postcolonial works, if by postcolonialism one means the. ‘Decolonization of the mind". That's what freedom is and not just political independence - (which could be merely a physical gesture of handing over power to the original natives of that county). In Midnight's Children, Rushdie attacks British colonialism and its representatives symbolised in characters such as Methwold with a ruthless clarity and makes every attempt to link up many of the ills in independent India to the mischief played by the British during their reign. The moral of his representation is that had the foreigner never come here to plunder and colonize, India would have been a beautiful country. This is the typical migrant writer's standpoint.

FRAGMENTATION, MIGRANCY AND MEMORY

in Midnight's Children, Rushdie found himself writing "a novel of memory and about memory," which is why perhaps, he made Saleem into an unreliable narrator. Saleem make mistakes of memory, and his vision. which is affected by his personality and circumstances is fragmentary. Here we can see that migrant writers can justice much better to these kind of stories inventions.

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 texture of the novel is mainly going like “flashback” method. Because it has those different kinds of threads. Like the protagonist Saleem is telling the story to the Padma and it is not going on the one track but there are so many stories which are going on one track. When he remembers other things, he would add those even in the flow of story. In the film adaptation, also there is use of this technique to tell the story.

When we see the time line, we can find the outer frame of it like 1915 – 1978. But it jumps into the various times like 1915 – 1947, 1947 – 1965, 1965 – 1978.

5. What is your aesthetic experience after watching the screening?

We had a screening of the movie which is directed by Deepa Mehta and screen writing by Salman Rushdie. When we watch the movie, we can find it good and somehow it can justice to the novel even but there is the lack. That can be picturization not in a film but better if it can be in the web series. So, every incident can be capture in a better way. Although all characters played very good role individually in a movie. Movie is containing very significant point is that, it is not going in chronological way same like the novel.

In the movie, I like the performance of Jamila (Saleem’s sister). And there is the special jam of the story itself.

THANK YOU!

(1800 words)