MIDNIGHT’S

CHILDREN
BY SALMAN RUSHDIE
SRUTHI S KUMAR
I MA ENGLISH
 SALMAN RUSHDIE
Born: June 19, 1947 in Bombay, India
Studied in Cathedral School, Bombay
Left for England in 1961
well-educated parents.
His father was a Cambridge
educated lawyer turned
businessmen and his mother was a
teacher.
Educated at:
Cathedral and John Connon School in
Mumbai,
1961 King’s College, Cambridge.
1964 moved with his family from Bombay to Pakistan
1989 had a fatwa declared on him by Iran’s Ayatollah
Khomeni for his writing of the book “The Satanic
Verses”.
Has expressed need to:
• “move beyond tradition”
• Muslim Reformation : “bring the core concepts of
• Islam into the modern age”
•traditionalists
Combat jihadist ideologues/challenge
Study religion as an event inside history, not
supernaturally above it.
• “Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance”
• “open-mindedness is the sibling of peace.”
 MARRIAGES
 Personal Life: Is known for his multiple marriages :
 Clarissa Luard: (1976-1987).
 Rushdie and Luard had a son, Zafar
Rushdie

 Marianne Wiggins: (1988-1993).

 Wiggins was an American novelist.
 Elizabeth West: ( 1997-2004).
 Rushdie and West had a son, Milan
Rushdie
 Padma Lakshmi: (2004-2007).
 Indian actress and model . Currently the
host of Top Chef. Lakshmi and Rushdi
announced their divorce in July of 2007.
 Romantically linked to Riya Sen
OTHER WORKS
• Grimus (1975) –A Science Fiction
• Shame (1983)
• The Observer
• The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey (1987)
• The Satanic Verses(1988)
• Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1989)
• The Moor’s Last Sigh
• The Ground Beneath her feet
• Fury
• Shalimar the clown
• The Enchantress of Florence
• Luka and the Fire of Life
• Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights,
• The Golden House
CRITICAL AWARD
Won Booker prize in 1981 for Midnight’s Children
 1981: Received Booker McConnell Prize for Fiction
for Midnight’s Children
 1981: Received literary award from English
Speaking Union for Midnight’s Children
 1982: Received James Tait Black Memorial Prize for
Midnight’s Children
• A Fellow of the British Royal Society of Literature, Salman Rushdie has received, among other honours, the
Whitbread Prize for Best Novel (twice), the Writers’ Guild Award, the James Tait Black Prize, the European
Union’s Aristeion Prize for Literature, Author of the Year Prizes in both Britain and Germany, the French Prix du
Meilleur Livre Étranger, the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature, the Premio Grinzane Cavour in Italy, the
Crossword Book Award in India, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, the London International
Writers’ Award, the James Joyce award of University College Dublin, the St Louis Literary Prize, the Carl
Sandburg Prize of the Chicago Public Library, and a U.S. National Arts Award.
• He holds honorary doctorates and fellowships at six European and six American universities, is an Honorary
Professor in the Humanities at M.I.T, and University Distinguished Professor at Emory University. Currently,
Rushdie is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.
• . Between 2004 and 2006 he served as President of PEN American Center and for ten years served as
the Chairman of the PEN World Voices International Literary Festival, which he helped to create. In June 2007 he
received a Knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. In 2008 he became a member of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters and was named a Library Lion of the New York Public Library. In
addition, Midnight’s Children was named the Best of the Booker – the best winner in the award’s 40 year history
– by a public vote
• Midnight's Children won both the Booker
Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial
Prize in 1981.
• It was awarded the "Booker of Bookers" Prize
and the best all-time prize winners in 1993 and
2008 to celebrate the Booker Prize 25th and
40th anniversary.[
• In 2003, the novel was listed on
the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's
"best-loved novels".
• It was also added to the list of Great Books of
the 20th Century, published by Penguin
Books.
 "Midnight’s
children" was
Salman Rushdie’s
second novel
published in 1981.
 For its unique
matter and manner
this novel won him
the Bookers Prize
1981.
A fantastic movie
directed by
Deepa Mehta
was made on it
released in 2012.
 “Midnight’s Children traces the grotesque
destiny of a Muslim Indian family from 1915
to 1977, when Indira Gandhi’s Emergency
rule was about to end in a general election”
(Towers, 1981).
RUSHDIE AS A NOVELIST
• Salman Rushdie has established himself as one of the most powerful
modern writers. With four novels Grimus, Midnight’s Children, Shame
and Satanic Verses, he has emerged as a novelist of repute
• The theme in his novel is fairly varied: “It is neither stereotyped nor
predictable. There is nothing like consistent theme. There are signs,
however of certain key ideas shaping up of a perspective developing in
his writing.”
• The novelist in Rushdie has transformed story into political history
giving it a comic strain.
• Rushdie takes up in the Indian traditional narrative technique as
used in The Ramayana, Mahabharta, The Panchatantra and
Kathasaritasagara. It is as good as the tales of The Arabian
Nights.
• In most of his novels the theme is of fragmented identity in a
hostile world.
• Rushdie makes an effort to emphasise the influence on his writing
of Indian oral tradition.
• Time is the central theme in Rushdie’s fiction.
 Salman and Saleem
• Saleem Sinai born on 15th August 1947; Salman
Rushdie born on 19th June, 1947

• “It was a family joke that the British left only two
months after my arrival”

• Very similar parent profiles

• Like Saleem, Rushdie's maternal grandfather

was officially Muslim, but was an agnostic
• When Salman was a child, the Rushdie family
lived in a colonialist estate called Windsor Villa – which
probably served as a model for Methwold's Estate
• Like Saleem, Salman had a nanny called Mary.
• The young Salman Rushdie also believed was the center of
the universe.
“Being the only son and eldest child in a middle-class Indian
family does make you tend to think that the world revolved
around
• One major difference – Rushdie was sent England at the age
of 14 and has lived in England ever since
• Saleem Sinai lived all his life in the sub- continent.
• Saleem's Indianness is a function of Rushdie's Britishness
• Previous political novels Waiting for the Saleem's Indianness
is a function of Rushdie's Britishness
• Previous political novels Waiting for the Mahatma and
Kanthapura were focussed on the village/town than the
nation
647 PAGES
Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947,
the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks
displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself,
Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this
coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that
sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are
inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at
times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps
most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s
1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and
endowed with magical gifts.
This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing
evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the
universal human comedy. Midnight’s Children stands apart as both
an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the
great literary voices of our time.
• Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is
commonly read as a national allegory giving
imaginative form to India and its history. As such, it
becomes the central text in Indian literature in
English.
• The novel does expose the fictionality of the nation
and of its history, but the denial of the possibility of
literal truth does not deny the nation. Where there is
no literal truth we must put out faith in fictions.
• Rushdie’s novel explodes the notion of the nation
having a stable identity and a single history, then
invites a sceptical, provisional faith in the nation
that it has exploded.
• The novel rode a crest of popularity in the early
eighties in India as well as in other English
knowing countries aided undoubtedly by the
booker prize, but unlike most such award induced
successes, Rushdie’s book continued to be read and
discussed long after it disappeared from the best
sellers list
• Initially seen as merely a comic, irrelevant and high
spirited novel about a fantastic protagonist whose
birth coincided with the independence of India,
Midnight’s Children was gradually appropriated
into a theoretical discourse about nation, history,
and their narrativity.
The very first opening paragraph of Midnight’s Children sets up
three levels of narration :
1. fairy tale (“once upon a time”)
2. autobiography (“I was born in Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing
Home”)
3. and history (“India’s arrival at independence”)
 BOOK 3
• The Buddha-
BOOK 2
Abracadabra
• The fisherman’s
pointing finger
– How Saleem • 7 Parts
BOOK 1 achieved purity
• The perforated
sheet- Tick, • 15 Parts
tock

• 8 Parts
CHARACTERS
• SALEEM SINAI
• Main Character
• AADAM AZIZ
• Saleem’s Grandfather, Doctor
• AHEMED SINAI
• Saleem’s Father, Businessman
• MUMTAZ (AMINA SINAI)
• Saleem’s Mother, Always remembers her first husband NADIR KHAN
• MARY PEREIRA
• Saleem’s Ayah, Surrogate mother
• SHIVA
• Saleem’s Archival, Born together, named on God Shiva
• PARVATHY
• Closest ally of Saleem, Wife
• PADMA
• Saleem’s Companion
• NASEEM GHANI
• Saleems Grandmother, a Reverend mother
• 25 OTHER CHARACTERS
Book One

1. The Perforated Sheet

• Saleem Sinai begins by mentioning his date of birth: August
15th, 1947. This is the same day that India gained its
independence from the British Empire.
• Even though this story is his autobiography, Saleem begins his
tale in earnest nearly thirty one years prior to his birth.
• His grandfather Aadam Aziz just returned to India after
becoming a doctor in Germany. He falls in love with a patient
named Naseem.
• He can only see one part of her body at a time due to her
father's strict rules about preserving her modesty.
2. Mercurochrome
• Aadam and Naseem fall in love and are soon married. They
soon realize that they are a bad match, but they remain together.
• Aadam begins to wither away while Naseem, who now goes by
Reverend Mother, gets more robust and powerful with each
child she bears.

3. Hit-the-Spittoon
• Reverend Mother continues to become more angry and
resolved, and Aadam falls in line politically behind Mian
Abdullah. (Humming Bird)

• He and his personal assistant Nadir are the victims of an

assassination attack, though Nadir is able to get away. He is
permitted to hide in Aadam's basement.
4. Under the Carpet
• Three sisters- “Teen Batti”
• Naseem was not happy with the decision of Aadam.
• Aadam's second child, Mumtaz, falls in love with
Nadir. He calls her as “Taj Mahal”
• Because Nadir is hiding under the carpet, though,
he and Mumtaz have a secret marriage.
• They live together in the Aziz household's basement
until Mumtaz becomes ill.
• Her father does a physical and discovers that she is
still a virgin even after two years of marriage. Nadir
runs away and divorces Mumtaz, but she soon
becomes interested in Ahmed Sinai. The two get
married, and Ahmed changes Mumtaz's name to
"Amina.“
5. A Public Announcement
• History news- Mountbatten will partition it into three nations: Pakistan,
Bangladesh and India
• Like her parents, Amina does not have a healthy marriage with Ahmed.
• She still thinks about her love Nadir.
• Zohra (Cousin) – who talk about Aminas dark skin-gets little upset
• Still, she tries to make herself fall in love with her husband. She soon becomes pregnant.
• One day, she saves a man from being killed by a Muslim-hating crowd, and he tells her that his cousin
will tell her son's future.

6. Many-headed Monsters
• Anima follows the man she saved to his cousin, and the mystic prophesies that Amina's son will be the
same age as his homeland, and that noses and knees will be important.
• He also vaguely details different events in the child's life that will be significant.
• There will be two heads-but you shall see only one- there will be knees and a nose, a nose and knees
• The couple left for Bombay from Delhi- partition of India
• Amina still puzzled with the prophecy.
7. Methwold
• Amina and Ahmed move into a grand estate owned by William Methwold.
• He instructs that his Indian tenants use proper English manners and habits. Though the
tenants are angry about having to use Western customs, things like kitchen appliances and
cocktail hour become second nature to them.
• Introduced Wee Willie Winkie and Vanitha.
• Amina feel that she is going to win the prize for having a baby born at the midnight. At the
same time we can see that Vanitha is also pregnant and will be delivering a pre mature
baby.
• Enters Joseph D’Costa
8. Tick, Tock
• Pakistan was being born to the north and west of Bombay
• Unproductive labour for eight hours now-Vanita
• Amina goes into labor and has her son at midnight on August 15th, 1947.
• In the next room, another woman has a child at the exact same moment.
• Vanita passed away -haemorrhage to death
• Mary Pereira, a midwife at the clinic, sees a chance
to impress her revolutionary lover and switches
the name tags on the two baskets.
• Amina and Ahmed leave the hospital with Saleem,
the narrator, while their true biological child, Shiva,
is raised in the slums by a poor singer.
“ON THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT,
AS A MATTER OF FACT, CLOCK
HANDS JOINED PALMS IN
RESPECTFUL GREETING AS A I
CAME. OH, SPELL IT OUT, SPELL
IT OUT; AT THE PRECISE
INSTANT OF INDIA’S ARRIVAL
AT INDEPENDENCE, I TUMBLED
FORTH INTO WORLD. THERE
WERE GASPS. AND OUTSIDE
THE WINDOW FIRE WORKS AND
CROWDS”
TRYST WITH DESTINY
“THE RICH MUST BE POOR AND
LET THE POOR BE RICH”
Book Two
1. The Fisherman's Pointed Finger
• The title refers to a painting on the wall over his crib.
• Letter from Nehru
• Saleem was not a normal baby:- he doesn’t cry and doesn’t blink his eyes.
• Mary, feeling guilt about her sin and devotes herself to be Saleem's nanny for
the rest of her life. She is like a mother to him.
• Amina starts to think about Nadir.
• Shiva starts growing up and gets angrier and angrier
• Ahmed, though, makes some bad investments, and the government freezes his
assets. Saleem's sister, Brass Monkey, is conceived during this time before
Ahmed becomes too cold and distant for Amina to reach.
2. Snakes and Ladders
• The title teaches him about life’s persistent ups and downs. He also learned
was that the game lacked a crucial dimension, that of ambiguity
• Bad omens are appearing
• Though Mary is devoted to raising Saleem, she is still in love with her.
revolutionary lover. However, he is murdered by the police while trying to
blow up a nearby clock tower.
• Brass Monkey was born- his sister Jamila

3. Accident in a Washing-chest
• Saleem, feeling the pressure of being the first-born son, begins to hide in the
washroom when he gets older. One day, he accidentally sees his mother
undress while hiding and she was enjoying the sexual pleasures calling by
Nadir. She catches him and punishes Saleem to one day of silence.
• It is during that day that Saleem begins to hear thousands of voices in his
head. When he tells his family that the voices are divine, ie archangels are
talking to him.
4. All-India Radio
• Saleem realizes that the voices belong to every person in India.
When he focuses, Saleem can narrow in on the children who were
born in the first hour of India's independence -- the children of
midnight. They also have magical powers that vary in strength based
on how close they were born to midnight.
• He also learns that Amina and Ahmed's biological son, Shiva, has
powerful knees that are able to kill humans with their strength.

5. Love in Bombay
• Saleem falls in love with an American girl, but she doesn't pay him
any attention. He tries to impress her with his newly-found bicycle
skills, but she is more interested in a riot that is occurring nearby.
• Saleem becomes angry, so he uses his mental powers to push into
the girl's mind to try and find out why she doesn't like him. She can
feel him intruding, and Saleem discovers that he can dig deep into
people's minds.
6. My Tenth Birthday
• Padma is back.
• Saleem laments his birthday. He knows that 1,001 children were
born at midnight ten years earlier, but only 581 children lived to see
their tenth birthday with him.
• Every child have strange super powers
• One girl is so beautiful that anyone who looks at her goes blind.
• One boy can eat metal, and another can grow or shrink to any size
etc.
• All the children who born closest to midnight have the greatest ones.
Parvathi the witch who was born 7 seconds after midnight, can
perform real magic.
• Ahmed is becoming more despondent as he continues to lose money,
regardless of how hard he tries.
• Mary starts to see the ghost of Joseph she falls in love with him again
but this time the ghost doesn’t love her.
7. At the Pioneer Cafe
• Saleem uses his mental abilities to follow Amina
around the town. He discovers that she is having an
affair with Nadir. He also introduces himself to Shiva,
the boy whose life he was supposed to have.
• Shiva is angry and aggressive, and he wants to rule
the children of midnight with an iron fist, though
Saleem wants to do otherwise.

8. Alpha and Omega

• Zangallo
• At a school dance, Saleem gets the tip of his finger cut
off. His parents race him to the hospital for surgery.
• When the doctors ask for blood, Amina and Ahmed
try to donate theirs. But the doctor informs them that
Saleem is not a match for either parent.
9. The Kolynos Kid
• Ahmed was angry with the revelation that Saleem is
not his, he sends Saleem away for a few months.
• He lives with his film maker uncle Hanif and
movie-star aunt Piya.
• Since they don’t have kids and, so they are excited
for him to be around.
• One day with the power of his mind he find out that
she’s being cheating Hanif with her neighbour Homi
Catrack who breaks up with her.
• He starts plotting his revenge against his mom and
Homi for hurting the two woman
• He is attracted to his aunt, and he gropes her one
day while she is crying.
10. Commander Sabaarmati's Baton
• When he comes back, Saleem's little sister, Brass Monkey, is
the new favorite of the family. Saleem then learns that his
neighbor's wife is having an affair. He feels betrayed since
his mother was having an affair, so he arranges things such
that the affair would be discovered. The neighbor shoots and
kills his wife and her lover.

11. Revelations
• Talks about the myth of Lord Khusro a.k.a. Cyrus the great
who was popular and rich and owns a plane
• Saleem was jealous
• Mary saw God-Joseph D’Costa but a ghost who is falling
apart a nightmare.
• President of India dies. As his uncle Hanif had died.
Coincident?
• Everything is fine until Mary, still grieving about her actions,
admits to switching the children at birth.
• She runs away from the family and leaves their lives in ruins.
12. Movements Performed by Pepperpots

• Now that he knows that Shiva is the real Saleem Sinai, Saleem decides that
he will never communicate with Shiva through telepathy again. He cant find
out the secret
• Amina, Saleem, and Brass Monkey move to Pakistan after Ahmed becomes a
violent drunk. They live with Amina's sister Emerald, and they are the poor
disgrace of the family.
• At Brass Monkey's fourteen birthday party, she sings for her guests. They are
amazed at her voice, and everybody starts to call her "Jamila Singer," her real
name
13. Drainage and the Desert
• Amina, Saleem, and Brass Monkey are called back
to India four years later. Saleem then gets a serious
sinus infection, and his parents make him undergo
surgery to get them cleared.
• He realizes that he has lost his power of telepathy,
but in its place is a powerful sense of smell. Smell
of joy, sad, anger…..now he can smell the emotions
of people.

14. Jamila Singer

• All four family members move to Pakistan to start
a new life.
• Jamila becomes famous as a singer behind the
perforated sheet-being a Muslim
• Ahmed enjoys moderate success making bath
linens.
15. How Saleem Achieved Purity
•
•
Aadam Aziz died
Saleem still in love with Jamila. Purity
• Amina is pregnant again after 17 years.
• Zafar became a lieutenant in the military – he finds
that his father was behind a massacre he kills him
and goes to jail, Emerald moved to England
• The Sinais' happiness in Pakistan is short-lived.
India invades Pakistan and begins to bomb the city
where the Sinais live. Indo-Pakistan war of 1965
• All of Saleem's family is killed except for Saleem
and his sister during an air raid.
• A spittoon flies through the air and hits Saleem on
the head, and he loses all of his memory.
• On September 23, the war was officially over.
Book Three
1. The Buddha
• After a time jump, Saleem is in the Pakistani army. His
memory and identity are still lost.
• Ayoobah Baloch, Farooq Rashid and Shaheed Dar -assigned
Saleem instead of dog.
• The army uses his super sense of smell like they would a
dog's, and Saleem becomes disillusioned with his orders to
constantly kill Indians.
.
2. In the Sundarbans
• Saleem leads a group of young soldiers to the jungle. The trip is harrowing
as they nearly die and come into contact with ghostly spirits. However,
Saleem finds his identity in the forest. But not his name.
• He tells his entire life story to his four young companions. Their attempt to
escape the jungle leaves the other four members of his group dead
3. Sam and the Tiger
• The war was over.
• The Indian army comes into Dacca with a
triumphant parade
• Saleem meets Parvati-the-witch, one of the
children of midnight whom he knew when he
was younger. She reminds him of his name
• Using her magic, Parvati smuggles Saleem back
into India.
• While he is in the basket he realizes that he is
angry.
• He understand that how people treated him.
• Now it was his turn to choose his destiny.
• Picture Sing.
4. The Shadow of the Mosque
• Padma wants to get married. Saleem knows it is
impossible.
• Once back in India, Saleem goes to live with his
one remaining uncle Musthapha. His uncle, who
works for the Indian government, receives a
folder that looks suspicious to Saleem.
• He is soon kicked out for not being devout
enough, so he returns to the slums and lives with
Parvati and her father figure, Picture Singh.
• Joins the communist party.
• Parvati urges Saleem to marry her, but he refuses
constantly.
• He reveals to them that he is impotent, but no one
trust him.
Who what am I?
My answer: I am the sum total of
everything that went before me, of
all I have been seen done, of
everything done-to-me.
BOOK 3
5. A Wedding
• In retaliation to Saleem's rejection, Parvati uses her magic to
summon Shiva, Saleem's midnight twin, and becomes pregnant
with Shiva's child.
• Shiva, who is violent to begin with, becomes even more violent
until Parvati breaks the curse she has over him. He leaves
immediately, and
• Parvati converts to islam and changes her name to Laylah.
• Saleem marries Parvati so her child is not raised without a father.
• Now its time for Parvati-Laylah Sinai to have her son. The labour
lasts 18 days.
• The state of Emergency Act declared
• The son was born – Aadam Sinai he arrived at a night shadowed
slum on june 25th,1975. “On the stroke of midnight, as
a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms. Oh,
spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of
India’s arrival at Emergency, he emerged.”
6. Midnight
• The prime minister of India, who believes in magic and
mysticism, has heard about the children of midnight.
• She uses Shiva to capture and torture Saleem into telling
the government the names of all the children of midnight.
Once they are all compounded, the prime minister has all
the young men and women sterilized.
• She knows surgery will cause them to lose their powers.
She also doesn't want any of their children rising up and
trying to take her down with their own powers.
• Parvaty was dead
• After capturing the children, they were sterilized, she was
getting rid of their future children but forgets that Shiva
already has thousands of children.
• When Saleem was released he find that Picture Sing and
his son is still alive.
7. Abracadabra
• Because Parvati had died when Saleem was captured, he and Picture begin raising Parvati's son by themselves. He
made up the death of Shiva but he has no idea. They make a trip to Bombay and visit a nightclub so Picture can
challenge a snake charmer to a match.
• Saleem finds out that the food he's eating is made locally, so he goes to the pickle factory. When he arrives, he is
greeted by his nanny, Mary Pereira. She takes care of him and his son while the sickly Saleem writes his memoirs.
• Saleems son is saying his first words
“abracadabra”
• Saleem finally explains that the pickles are
a way to preserve memories and time.
• It end like Saleem and Padma get married.
• She changes her name to Naseem
• They are moving to South, Since it is an
Independence day they attempt to go on
foot, but they get separated.
• Saleem looks into the crowd and everyone
is there, even the dead people. But then he
gets crushed into dust, just like his son will
and all the future Midnight’s Children.
THANK YOU