Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

Stream of consciousness, phantasmogorical, and magical realism, terms that I had never come across before I started exploring different styles of writing. My introduction to James Joyce’s Ulysses was from this scene in the Rodney Dangerfield movie, Old School. I tried reading Ulysses a couple of times but failed to comprehend the chaotic structure of the narration. Then I tried Moby Dick, supposedly an easier read. Call me a failure. I tried. Many times. Moby Dick, the book, is MY white whale.

Then, during a trip to India, a sidewalk bookwalla had a used paperback copy of Midnight’s Children. Propped up above a stack of old Feminas. Rs. 45. I remembered it mentioned in the same breath as Ulysses. I was hesitant. But I needed something to read during my vacation so it came home with me.

The depressing familiarity of losing the plot occurred twice. The crows in my balcony and their incessant cawing were squarely blamed. I persisted. And one day, one glorious day, the breakthrough.

It was like perfectly timing a jump through an open door of a fast-moving train. I don’t know how it happened, but when I brushed the dust off my clothes from the filmi stunt roll that followed my successful jump, I looked around to see a surrealist portrait of recent Indian history. It was magnificent. The scenes, the characters, the breathless pace, all told in a style I had never read before. I was IN those scenes. Like a story from an uncle that everyone thinks is crazy, but one day you latch on to his way of thinking, and his world suddenly made sense and it is beautiful in a way you could never have comprehended until that final jump through the open door.