Midnight’s Children“Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence; and my life really began on the shore of the Dal Lake in Kashmir more than 30 years before I was born.” Looking back at his life, Saleem begins his story taking the audience all the way back to a time when India was still bound to the British Empire, where Saleem’s grandparents, British educated Aadam Aziz and beautiful Naseem fall in love, get married and move to Agra, the home of Taj Mahal. They are blessed with three daughters - Alia, Emerald and Mumtaz.
A special screening of the movie Midnight’s Children took place in the National Film Corporation theater last week. The event was organized by the Film Team Sri Lanka, Nawala.By the early 1940s, India was ready to celebrate the joy of independence at the same time suffering the misery of partition. The Aziz family gets involved in the assassination of Mian Abdullah, who was a progressive political leader who campaigned against the partition of the country. Mian’s aide Nadir Khan was to hide in Aziz’s home trying to escape and ends up secretly getting married to Mumtaz. The marriage was not meant to last as Nadir had to run away leaving behind a letter of divorce, leaving Mumtaz to remarry Ahmed Sinai, change her name to Amina and move to Bombay with her new husband.
Saleem Sinai, the hero of the story comes into the world at the strike of midnight in August 15, 1947, when India received its independence. A nurse in the maternity clinic, Mary, who was severely influenced by her lover Joe’s politics switches Amina’s baby with another baby boy born to a poor woman and street performer named Wee Willie Winkie. Amina names her son Saleem and Wee Willie names his Shiva.
Saleem grows up cheerfully in a Victorian villa and the nurse who switched the babies becomes his nanny. Saleem, incidentally, has a unique gift which he realizes at the age of ten. By sniffling he could summon the spirits of hundreds of children who, like him, were born at the exact hour of India’s independence. Among these is Shiva, the Sinais’ biological son, who becomes his sworn enemy, and the spell-weaving witch Parvati who Saleem becomes romantically involved with. The other Midnight’s Children, all born in the first hour after India’s Midnight Independence are scattered across India and possesses special powers. But the strongest are Saleem, Shiva and Parvati.
No one suspects the secret of Saleem’s birth until an accident at school leads to a surprise blood test. This turns Ahmed’s love into hatred and sends Saleem away to Pakistan to his aunt Emerald, married to a military general, putting Amina in great suffering. Saleem continues all their secret conferences of the Midnight’s Children and practices their powers. Shiva is fierce and tries to take control into his hands but fails.
When Saleem is seventeen, his family forced to living in Pakistan and Saleem gets to live with his family again. His nanny is overwhelmed by guilt and reveals the truth. Amina fights for Saleem and stays with the family though everybody is shaken with the revealed truth.Saleem gets injured by debris falling during an air raid. He slides into years of unconsciousness. After years, in the after shocks of the civil war in the Pakistan’s east wing Saleem regains his memory becoming involved with the beautiful adult witch, Parvati against the background of Indira Gandhi’s brutal emergency measures bringing the Oscar award nominee Deepa Mehta’s latest movie ‘Midnight’s Children’ to and end.
The story was adapted by the novel Midnight’s Children written by Salman Rushdie. This was the second novel of Rushdie and it won the Booker Prize in 1981. The film began principal shooting in Colombo, Sri Lanka in February 2011 and wrapped up in May 2011. Metha kept shooting it in secret as she feared protests by Islamic fundamentalist groups. Deepa Mehta is known to create controversial movies and is most known for her Elements Trilogy, Fire (1996), Earth (1998), and Water (2005).
Metha has filmed the story beautifully with charming moments of humor and Rushdie himself slips some of his rich prose into the film’s voiceovers in his own voice. Many writers and reviewers have said that Metha has done justice to the story which was predicted unfilmable. Speaking to the Hindustan Times Rushdie has said that he is happy about the comments he received. “Nothing is unfilmable. Good films have been made of Anna Karenina, Ulysses and The Tin Drum, even the works of Proust. It’s just a question of finding the way, and that’s what we tried to do. There’s no magic trick, just hard work,” he has said to the Hindustan Times.
Indian-American actor Satya Bhabha plays the role of Saleem Sinai with Shriya Saran (Parvati) , Seema Biswas (Nanny), Shabana Azmi (Nazeem), Anupam Kher, Siddharth Narayan (Shiva), Rahul Bose, Soha Ali Khan, Shahana Goswami (Amina), Anita Majumdar and Darsheel Safary. The film was premiered in September 2012 at the Toronto International Film Festival and Vancouver International Film Festival. The film is quite unusual, a bit of out of the ordinary which exemplifies a perfect combination of writer and film director.
Published March 17,2013
Link : http://www.nation.lk/edition/fine/item/16563-a-novel-worth-watching.html
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