Magic Realism in Salman Rushdies Midnights Children.

Encyclopedia Brittannica explains Magic Realism as a narrative strategy that is

characterized by the matter-of-fact inclusion of fantastic or mythical elements
into seemingly realistic fiction. Although this strategy is known in the literature of
many cultures in many ages, the term magic realism is a relatively recent
designation, first applied in the 1940s by Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier, who
recognized this characteristic in much Latin-American literature. Some scholars
have posited that magic realism is a natural outcome of postcolonial writing,
which must make sense of at least two separate realitiesthe reality of the
conquerors as well as that of the conquered. The interesting parts in this
description is the use of the term postcolonial. And this paper tries to find out
the relationship between postcolonial Literature and Magic Realism, and why
does it becomes so important for the once-ruled culture to bring forward their
realities through these fantastic narratives. The focus of this paper is Salman
Rushdies novel Midnights Children which was published in 1980.

Midnights Children is a 650 page text which deals with many political issues of
modern Indian Sub-Continent including the Emergency. This text had won the
Booker Prize and also the The Best of Booker. New York reviews of Books had
called it one of the most important books to come out of the English-speaking
world in this generation. The novel starts with the narrator and protagonist
Saleem Sinai, telling Padma the story of the Sinai Family. The novel through the
technique of Magic Realism explains the event of his birth, how he had magical
powers, infact, all the children who were born at the stroke of the midnight, when
India was granted Independence, were born with magical powers and all these
children could communicate through telepathy. He goes on to explain the
Independence and the Partition, his sister, the War, bureaucracy and the
formation of Bangladesh. The narration goes full circle and ends with the
protagonist in the same house where he was born with his son.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in his nobel prize speech, said A reality not of paper,
but one that lives within us and determines each instant of our countless daily
deaths, and that nourishes a source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and
beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more,
singled out by fortune. Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and
scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of
imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to
render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude. This
kind of narrative, according to him, is not something which happens in isolation,
but it is the result of extreme violence which was inflicted on the natives through
times immemorial. The narrative of the powerful will be different from the ones
who went through the extreme suppression and subjugation. And the same could
be said about the Indian Sub Continent. In the introduction of the text, Salman
Rushdie writes it was the year that India became a nuclear power and margaret
Thatcher was elected leader of the conservative party and Sheikh mujib, the
founder of Bangladesh, was murdered. Mrs Gandhi was convicted of
election fraud. And one week after my 28th birthday she declared a State of
Emergency and assumed tyrannical powers. It was the beginning of a long period
of darkness which would not end until 1977. Salman Rushdie was talking about
the time he travelled to India which inspired him to write Midnights Children.
One could sense the violence and the note of tragedy in the voice. How do you
write history of a nation and its people, which was formed through the suffering
of the millions? But it is different when one looks at the book from a perspective
of an emigrant. Salman Rushdie was brought up in a villa on the Warden Road
which resembled Methwolds estate in the novel. He was sent to England for
furthur studies after attending the Cathedral School for some time. His parents
migrated to Karachi in pakistan in 1964, 17 years after independence. He went to
Cambridge to study history in the next year and returned to Pakistan for a short
duration but karachi could not hold him after being brought up in Mumbais
nonconformity. This dislike is also echoed through the protagonist in the novel.
He joined a firm as a copywriter and travelled extensively. Later he took up
writing making it his full time profession. So where does Salman Rushdie belong?
India, Pakistan or England? This ambiguous identity manifest itself in the
writings. Salman Rushdie in Imaginary homelands says It maybe writers in my
position, exiles or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss,
some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars
of salt. But we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge- which gives
rise to profound uncertainties- that our physical alienation from india almost
invariably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing
that was lost; that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages,
but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind. This statement
becomes important because Rushdies position here is of an Emigrant writer. For
him to reclaim the past, the past he hasnt lived, to write that past, he makes use
of magic realism, because Identities become important, because with identities
come the experiences. The profound uncertainties the physical alienation
represents the rootlessness which violates a human being especially a writer,
Magic realism comes to the fore as a device, then, which enables that writer to
express his reality. Rushdie further writes ...what I was actually doing was a
novel of memory and about memory, so that my India was just that: my India, a
version and no more than one version of all the hundreds of millions of possible
versions. Memory in itself is non linear and that is why memory can be expressed
through the fantastic. Memory can always be influenced by ones imagination
and therefore in Midnights Children, memory and imagination are important to
the narration. As Rushdie said that being an Emigrant he is obliged to deal in
broken mirrors and these broken mirrors reflect fragments and this
fragmentation made trivial things seem like symbols and the mundane acquired
numinous qualities. For example, the Dal lake and the boatman Tai, acquired a
fantastic aura. Nobody knows Tais age, he claimed to have watched the
mountains being born, and emperors dying, claimed to have seen Jesus and also
said that Isa knew his manners and had huge appetite. tai represents the Old
India and its value system.
There are many instances where this mundane acquires fantastic. The itch in
the nose always warns Aadam Aziz.
Salman Rushdie made use of the superstitions as well, and that is important to
some extent because as Marquez had said, our reality is different from the
Eurocentric reality. Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful
than the facts...Mian Abdullah owed his downfall to his purchase, at the Agra
Railway station, of a peacock-feather fan, despite Nadir Khans warning about
the bad luck. This is a perfect example of how superstition is used in the text.
But further a perfect example of Magic Realism surfaces, Mian Abdullah was
known for his humming, and when assassins came to kill him, he hummed so
high that their swords began to sing and the dogs heard him who then came for
the assassins. The truth in these details is reinforced by saying that everybody
saw it except for those who were asleep.
The Reverend Mother had the power to see into her daughters sleep. Shri
Ramram Seth floating six inches off the ground tells the future of her Aminas
son. The instances of Magic realism are innumerable in the text. But what
concerns a reader about the Magic realism of the novel is the fact that why is it
such an important trope in the post colonial fiction. Can it be Writing back to the
Empire? Does Magic Realism also play an important part in representing the
nation to the Eurocentric authorities? But the situation is problematized when
one realizes that Rushdie has lived in Europe more than in the Indian
Subcontinent. So he is writing for the Indian Subcontinent or for the West?

Midnights Children is not just about a family but also about 3 Countries. Their
formation and their eventual development. About their History. An argument for
Literature is that it portrays history through the point of view of the society and
its people, unlike the textbooks and encyclopedias which are construction of
history vis-a-vis the powerful and the dominant. And that is true for Midnights
Children as well, the history of the gruesome partition and Bangladeshi
Liberation War is not explained with political efficiency but with populations
emotions. This is where Realism becomes important in Magic Realism. These are
the real incidents which have different effects on various individuals.
Some critics have accused Rushdie for exoticising India in the name of magic
Realism. For instance, in the description of The Sunderbans, he portrays it as a
life sucking forest with huris which tempt people to stay on in the forest forever.
But this is a very simplistic comment. Is it entirely impossible to see ghosts and
hear voices in the atmosphere of violence? Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the
medical condition, is explained in the Dictionary as Posttraumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) may develop after a person is exposed to one or more traumatic
events, such as sexual assault, warfare, serious injury, or threats of imminent
death. The diagnosis may be given when a group of symptoms, such as
disturbing recurring flashbacks, avoidance or numbing of memories of the event,
and hyperarousal, continue for more than a month after the occurrence of a
traumatic event.War veterans are commonly at risk for PTSD. It depends on an
individual and his/her culture and environment, how can anyone define ones
reality or deny it? and therefore the term magic realism itself becomes
problematic. Why call these parallel realities Magical?

In conclusion, Salman Rushdie, writing from the perspective of a Emigrant Indian

Writer uses Magic Realism to bring forward the realities of various individuals in
highly troubled times in the Indian Subcontinent.