Midnights Children (Man Booker Prize)

YA

Yousuf Azad , Aug 2, 2021

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

যাচাইকৃত মূল্যায়ন

"The power of the storytelling left me speechless - all the words were in the novel, and there were none left for me! If there ever was a novel that changed the way I read, this is it. I must have read each sentence several times, just to follow the thread of the confusing story, and I still got lost in the labyrinth of individual and collective history that unfolds on the stroke of Midnight, on the night of India's independence. So completely taken in by the children who are born on that particular stroke of midnight, thus beginning their lives together with the state, I must have bought at least ten more copies of it over the course of the years, to give to relatives and friends in different parts of the world. It was not always a welcome present, and some people looked at me strangely after giving up on reading it. They seemed to have come to the conclusion that my mind must be as confused as the novel if I was infatuated with it to the degree that I began to ramble when I talked about it. But it is just such a perfect example of how literature transcends reality and stays true at the same time. It is deeply connected to its roots in post-colonial India, and yet universal in its idea of humanity. Are we really who we think we are? Does it even matter if we are who we think we are, or is it more important that we are what we are meant to be? What decides what we are meant to be then? The sum total of what came before us and led to our being born constitutes the stage which we enter. Then we act out the play which is co-written by humanity, and it is definitely a tragedy, for we "all owe death a life", which is what tragedy is all about: life leading to death. Whatever happens to us has the effect of a "deus ex machina", and sometimes there are more gods in machines than we can handle, keep track of, or even describe in a novel. Sometimes the gods get stuck in their machines as well. Anything is possible on the stage of life. And it is always opening night, first performance, debut. We forget our lines, and we ramble. In life and in art. In this novel, we stumble over words spoken too fast, as if the characters are afraid that the curtain will fall before they have had their fair share of the show. How come it is so hopelessly funny then, this tragedy of India? How come each story line makes me smile through tears? In my memory, the novel grows to an explosion of the senses: I hear a cacophony of voices chatting incoherently in my head, I see colours merge into fireworks of lametta, I feel the heat and cold and humidity and dryness of an India I have never been to, I taste the foods whose names I cannot pronounce, I touch and I am touched by the story which contains a truth deeper than reality. It is funny in the exhilarating way a roller coaster is funny. You slowly move upwards, seeing where you are heading, feeling your stomach react to the fall before it comes, hoping for it to end and to go on forever. You feel dizzy and brave and alive, but confused. Do I remember the plot correctly? Well, memory itself is a tricky one: "Memory's truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own." So I trust my own memory, and declare that what I remember is true. This is a masterpiece! It was written in 1981. Where's that Nobel? Stuck in a broken god machine? Nothing to be surprised at there - the novel is about how such things happen"