Midnight's Children

We can never experience history. Sure, we can learn it, but for the very reasons that we cannot alter our past, we cannot experience our history. Salman does not try to make you experience history, but he tries to put you in a fictional, magical-realist world that would bring you closest to experiencing the history of a baby India born at midnight on 15th August 1947.

You will walk out disappointed from a theater if you can predict the plot of the movie. You will be satisfied or mildly amused if you fail to predict the plot. But you will be astonished if you already know the plot but cannot anticipate how the movie will connect the dots and make you reach the conclusion. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie is one such book.

The plot revolves around the life of Saleem Sinai and how his story is itself intertwined with the plot of the young nation sharing the same birthday. The idea of such a diverse nation would have been a very chaotic dream for the freedom fighters and nation-builders of the baby nation of India. And that dream is bound to be chaotic, just like how the story of Saleem is filled with circular arcs, repeating history, drama and chaos.

While Salman is taking us through the story of Saleem Sinai, a reader like me would want to constantly predict the plot of his life and story, and often I would feel frustration as the story does not follow the traditional “hero’s journey” arc but yet keeps you hooked. And while the book was nearing its end, I ended up realizing that it was the story of the young nation through the point of view of the protagonist rather than the story of the protagonist himself.

Oftentimes, we see everything happening around us through our own perspective. I think Salman Rushdie has done a great job of making Saleem narrate the entire story of a nation through his own lens and doing it as if it is his own.

I was amazed by the metaphorical prowess of Salman, who was able to cover the events of Indian history, stringing them together with the story of Saleem Sinai, and then close every thread he opens across the story.

History books will try to teach you history, and stories will make you live in a fictional world. Midnight’s Children will bring you closest to experiencing the past of a nation through the story of an unreliable narrator, while taking you through a rollercoaster ride of characters, emotions and metaphors.