Midnight's children

'The rapscallions have perpetrated an outrage!' Mr Kemal, who is the thi

Godown, gudam, warehouse, call it what you like; but no sooner had Ahmed Sinai asked his question than a hush fell upon the room, except of course that Lata Mangeshkar's voice still issued from Zohra's cleavage; because these three men shared one such large edifice, located on the industrial estate at the outskirts of the city. 'Not the godown, God forfend,' Amina prayed silently, because the reccine and leathercloth business was doing well-through Major Zulfikar, who was now an aide at Military G.H.Q, in Delhi, Ahmed Sinai had landed a contract to supply leathercloth jackets and waterproof table coverings to the Army itself-and large stocks of the material on which their lives depended were stored in that warehouse. 'But who would do such a thing?' Zohra wailed in harmony with her singing breasts, 'What mad people are loose in the world these days?'… and that was how Amina heard, for the first time, the name which her husband had hidden from her, and which was, in those times, striking terror into many hearts. 'It is Havana,' said S. P. Butt… but Ravana is the name of a many-headed demon; are demons, then, abroad in the land? 'What rubbish is this?' Amina, speaking with her father's hatred of superstition, demanded an answer; and Mr Kemal provided it. 'It is the name of a dastardly crew, Madam; a band of incendiary rogues. These are troubled days; troubled days.'

In the godown;roll upon roll of leathercloth; and the commodities dealt in by Mr Kemal, rice tea lentfls-he hoards them all over the1 country in vast quantities, as a form of protection against the many-headed many-mouthed rapacious monster that is the public, which, if given its heads, would force prices so low in a time of abundance that godfearing entrepreneurs would starve while the monster grew fat… 'Economics is scarcity,' Mr Kemal argues, 'therefore my hoards not only keep prices at a decent level but underpin the very structure of the economy.'-And then there is, in the godown, Mr Butt's stockpile, boxed in cartons bearing the words aag brand. I do not need to tell you that aag means fire. S. P. Butt was a manufacturer of matches.

'Our informations,' Mr Kemal says, 'reveal only the fact of a fire at the estate. The precise godown is not specified.'

'But why should it be ours?' Ahmed Sinai asks. 'Why, since we still have time to pay?'

'Pay?' Amina interrupts. 'Pay whom? Pay what? Husband, janum, life of mine, what is happening here?'… But 'We must go,' S. P. Butt says, and Ahmed Sinai is leaving, crumpled night-pajamas and all, rushing clatterfooted out of the house with the thin one and the spineless one, leaving behind him uneaten khichri, wide-eyed women, muffled Lata, and hanging in the air the name of Ravana… 'a gang of ne'er-do-wells, Madam; unscrupulous cut-throats and bounders to a man!'

And S. P. Butt's last quavering words: 'Damnfool Hindu firebugs, Begum Sahiba. But what can we Muslims do?'

What is known about the Ravana gang? That it posed as a fanatical anti-Muslim movement, which, in those days before the Partition riots, in those days when pigs' heads could be left with impunity in the courtyards of Friday mosques, was nothing unusual. That it sent men out, at dead of night, to paint slogans on the walls of both old and new cities: no partition or else perdition! muslims are the jews of asia! and so forth. And that it burned down Muslim-owned factories, shops, godowns. But there's more, and this is not commonly known: behind this facade of racial hatred, the Ravana gang was a brilliantly-conceived commercial enterprise. Anonymous phone calls, letters written with words cut out of newspapers were issued to Muslim businessmen, who were offered the choice between paying a single, once-only cash sum and having their world burned down. Interestingly, the gang proved itself to be ethical. There were no second demands. And they meant business: in the absence of grey bags full of pay-off money, fire would lick at shopfronts factories warehouses. Most people paid, preferring that to the risky alternative of trusting to the police. The police, in 1947, were not to be relied upon by Muslims. And it is said (though I can't be sure of this) that , when the blackmail letters arrived, they contained a list of 'satisfied customers' who had paid up and stayed in business. The Ravana gang-like all professionals-gave references.

Two men in business suits, one in pajamas, ran through the narrow gullies of the Muslim muhalla to the taxi waiting on Chandni Chowk. They attracted curious glances: not only because of their varied attire, but because they were trying not to run. 'Don't show panic,' Mr Kemal said, 'Look calm.' But their feet kept getting out of control and rushing on. Jerkily, in little rushes of speed followed by a few badly-disciplined steps at walking pace, they left the muhalla; and passed, on their way, a young man with a black metal peepshow box on wheels, a man holding a dugdugee drum: Lifafa Das, on his way to the scene of the important a

But Ahmed Sinai had other things to look at.

The children of the muhalla had their own names for most of the local inhabitants. One group of three neighbours was known as the 'fighting-cock people', because they comprised one Sindhi and one Bengali householder whose homes were separated by one of the muhalla's few Hindu residences. The Sindhi and the Bengali had very little in common-they didn't speak the same language or cook the same food; but they were both Muslims, and they both detested the interposed Hindu. They dropped garbage on his house from their rooftops. They hurled multilingual abuse at him from their windows. They flung scraps of meat at his door… while he, in turn, paid urchins to throw stones at their windows, stones with messages wrapped round them: 'Wait,' the messages said, 'Your turn will come'… the children of the muhalla did not call my father by his right name. They knew him as 'the man who can't follow his nose'.

Ahmed Sinai was the possessor of a sense of direction so inept that, left to his own devices, he could even get lost in the winding gullies of his own neighbourhood. Many times the street-arabs in the lanes had come across him, wandering forlornly, and been offered a four-a