 Hello friends, welcome to arpitakarva.com India's finest online coaching for English literature. And today we will discuss Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. The very famous novel will start with the introduction first. So this is a 1981 novel by Indian British writer Salman Rushdie that revolves around India's independence. It's a semi-autobiographical account and it talks about India's transition from British colonial rule to independence and partition. See it in a bit of detail. It's the story of the night of 14th and 15th August 1947. And I am very sure you all must be knowing what happened on those nights. India finally awakened to freedom. So this is also a post-colonial, post-modern and magical realist story. You must also remember that this work by Rushdie won the Booker Prize in 1981. So without wasting any more time, let's discuss it in detail. So let me explain something to you beforehand. This book mixes history and fiction. So there are going to be parts where you might think and really this happened. So don't get confused, that time it's fiction. So now the story begins with a guy named Salim Sinai who will be our protagonist. He says he was born at midnight when India became independent. And he is 31 years old now. He thinks his body isn't well and he might die. So he decides to share a story with someone named Padma. The story starts a long time ago in a place called Kashmir in the year 1915. This was even before Salim was born. His grandpa, Adam Aziz, was a doctor who started in Germany. He took care of a woman named Naseem. He treated her for years but she never showed her face to him. And he only saw the part of her body that needed treatment and in 1918, after World War I ended, he saw her face and married her. They left Kashmir and went to Agra. They had three girls and two boys. However, Adam started following an activist named Mia Abdullah. Even though Adam was smart, he followed Mia Abdullah. Now Mia Abdullah was a positive person but he got killed and after he died, Adam hid his assistant Nadir Khan in his basement. And his wife didn't agree but he didn't listen. So Adam's daughter Mumtaz fell in love with Nadir and they secretly got married. Two years passed and Adam found out that Mumtaz was still a virgin. So Nadir left her and ran away. But Mumtaz didn't feel lonely. She fell in love with another guy named Ahmad Sinai and they got married. After marriage, Mumtaz changed her name to Amina. Now they move to Delhi and Amina gets pregnant. There she met someone who could predict the future. He said her son would grow old with the country. Then some terrorists set fire to Ahmad's factory and after this, they left Delhi and went to Bombay. They bought a house from a British person named William Methwold and he had a servant named Wee Willy Winky and the servant's wife, Vanita. However, Vanita eventually got pregnant, though not from her husband but from William. Quite the turn, I assume. So now both the women were pregnant and they gave birth to their sons on the night India became independent. A nurse named Mary Pereira was there. She switched the baby's tags and that changed their destinies forever. Though the nurse was very remorseful of what she did, she did try to become a good caretaker of Salim. So now if you can recall and relate here, Amina has a son whom she has named as Salim. But this was not her real son as the child was exchanged just after the delivery. So please keep this in mind. So eventually, Salim also gets a younger sister who made fun of him for his strange nose and blue eyes. Because of this teasing, he would sometimes hide in the bathroom and one day his mother found him hiding there. She punished him and told him not to talk all day. While he was being silent as part of the punishment, he realized that he could hear many voices in his head. He told his parents and his mother understood that he had telepathy. This power was given to children born on India's independence night. Shiva, who was Ahmed and Amina's real son, also had this power. However, Shiva had magical power in his knees. A total of 1,001 children were born on that night. But only 581 could survive. So one day, Ahmed's son Salim had an accident and he lost a lot of blood. Doctors said they needed blood to treat him. But neither of his parents' blood matched and you definitely know the reason why now. So Ahmed learned that Salim wasn't his real son. And that is why he sent Salim to stay with his uncle. Now let us see what happened after Salim was sent away. Ahmed started having problems because he drank too much alcohol while Amina took the children and went to Pakistan to be with her sister. Amina's daughter was a good singer so she became famous in Pakistan and after 4 years they all come back to India because Ahmed's health was getting worse. However, another weird incident happened. Salim had some health issues with his nose. Hence he had to be operated on. Because of this, he lost his power of reading minds. One thing I didn't tell you is that Salim knew who the midnight children were. Those born on India's independence night. So now he lost his mind reading power but he gained a strong sense of smell. Again they all went back to Pakistan with Ahmed. Salim's sister as I already mentioned became very famous because she was a good singer and Ahmed liked that. It seemed like the family situation was improving but not for long. There was an explosion where they lived. Both his parents died and Salim got hit on the head which made him forget everything. After a while Salim joined the Pakistan army. He didn't know who he was or how he got there. The army used his strong sense of smell to their advantage and in 1971 during the war between Bangladesh and Pakistan he went to fight in the jungle. He was leading a group of young soldiers and suddenly he remembered everything. He told his story to his fellow soldiers but everyone in his group died except him. He returned to Pakistan and met a girl named Parvati. So coincidentally Parvati was also one of the midnight children. She had some magical powers too. She somehow helped Salim get back to India and in India his only family left was his uncle who worked for the government. His uncle didn't recognize him and told him to leave. He then went back to Parvati who asked him to marry her but he said no. So Parvati tried to marry Shiva who was Ahmed and Amina's original child. But here comes the twist. Shiva got Parvati pregnant but refused to marry her. However Salim didn't want the child to grow up without a father so he agreed to marry her. Now at that time the Prime Minister of India was Indira Gandhi. She believed in magic. So with Shiva's help she captured Salim and tortured him to know the names of all the midnight children. She knew he could read minds and would know all those children. So on the other hand Parvati delivered a baby but she died. Indira Gandhi declared an emergency to keep the midnight children's power under her control. Even after this she didn't win the elections. She released all the midnight children. Salim tried to find Parvati's son and moved to Bombay with him. There he tried a sauce from a factory and felt it tasted like what his caretaker used to make. Yes that nurse who swapped the children initially had started a factory. Now Salim eventually met Padma there and decided to marry her. He is telling her the story. But on his 31st birthday on India's independence day he died as it was predicted. And that's how the story ends. Now friends some facts and quotes sir as I mentioned earlier this work won the Booker Prize but it was also awarded the Booker of Booker's Prize in 1993 which was a special award given to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Booker Prize. Now some of the most significant quotes from this work read as most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence and to understand just one life you have to swallow the world. So that's all for this lecture friends we will meet soon in the next lecture Until the time we meet next stay happy keep loving literature and stay tuned to arpitaakarwa.com