Midnight children

Salman Rushdie :-

Salman Rushdie is undoubtly one of the most famous novelists in presenttime. His second novel Midnight's Children received greater critical acclaimand made Rushdie a famous literary figure in English speaking world. The novelwon for him Booker of Bookers prize in 1993. In the novel Rushdie introduces aninnovator narrative technique which is different from the contemporary writers.He uses the first person narrative through Saleem Sinai, the protagonist of thenovel. Rushdie also makes good use of the device of Magic Realism in Midnight'sChildren. Further Rushdie's use of cinematic elements can clearly be seen inthe novel.

All this shows Bombay Cinema's influence on Rushdie and Rushdie'suse of Indianized English is his biggest achievement. His use of Indian worldlike ekdum, angrez, firangee etc. give Indian flavor to the novel. Above all,Rushdie can be considered the master of narrative techniques at present time.

The narrative techniques in Midnight's children :-

Rushdie's Midnight's Children introduces a new narrative technique which is totally different from the traditional narrative techniques. Also Rushdie sets the trend for experimentation with narrative technique and usage of English language. In this way, he gave a new direction to Indian writing in English. William Walsh Rightly praised the technique by saying that, "combining the elements of magic and Fantasy, the grimmest realism, extravagant force, multi-mirrored analogy, and a potent symbolic structure, Salman Rushdie has captured the astonishing energy of the novel unprecedented in scope, manner and achievement in the hundred and fifty-years-old tradition of the India novel in English".

The novel covers a period of seventy five years of the history of the Indian subcontinent. The protagonist, Saleem Sinai, narrates the story of his birth and the birth of Indian subcontinent. The narrative blurs the chronological boundaries. As, Rushdies counterpart, Saleem Sinai narrates his story from a distance of time, and place. Like the narrator of Mahabharta, Sanjay who is endowed with special power to see things from a distance, and narrates the events of the Kurukshetra war, Saleen is endowed with magic power so that he can see from a distance and read the mind of readers.

Rushdie used the device of magic realism for the framework of the novel. When we go through the novel, we find that Saleem Sinai, the protagonist, has the gift of having an incredible sense of smell which allows him to determine other's thoughts and emotions. This gift of Saleem is same to that of his grandfather Adam Ajiz who also had the same large nose and magical gift. In the novel we see that how Adam's incredible sense of smell and his magical nose saved him from being killed in the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre.

Character :-

Adaptation is an integral part of literature in which one genre is transformed into the same or the another. The person who adapts any literary product generally adds or deletes, maybe something or maybe many things, from the original and recreates a new original proving Linda Serger’s statement, “…adaptation is a new

original”, right.

The concept of the transfer of a novel into a feature film is known as ‘Novel into Film’. It is considered in modern western culture as a type of derivative work. Popular novels are frequently adapted into films to take advantage of the popularity of the written literature. The reason is to reach the audience easily in order to make

commercial benefit. Obviously, the more successful the source novel is, the more likely it is to attract a larger

audience. By now many novels have already been converted into films but there is still no definitive theory of adaptation, thus the critics and scholars ponder over adaptation, yet cannot seem to agree on what makes an adaptation a success or a failure. On successfully observing both the genres without any prejudices, the observer can realise that the change is a new creativity that also helps in better understanding of the texts.

 Themes and symbols :-

A mixture of fiction and history, verisimilar and imaginary, Midnight’s Children is narrated in the first person by Saleem Sinai, one of the 1000 children born right at or soon after midnight on 15th August 1947, India’s Independence Day from the British Empire. Each child holds some kind of supernatural, magical power.

The perfect balance, so typical in Rushdie’s works, is denoted even chronologically here, with the Indian Independence Day being the perfect centre of the novel’s timeline. While the present time of the story is set at the end of the 1970s – 32 years after Saleem’s birthday – the first events he tells are about his grandfather, Aadam Aziz, in 1915 – 32 years before. Its central position makes that eventful night even more important: everything revolves around it.

Throughout the whole novel, pairs of characters are presented more or less in direct opposition to each other. As Saleem’s story serves as an allegory of India’s history, as we will see further on, these clashes also assume a specific metaphorical meaning: tradition versus opposition (Tai the boatman and Aadam Aziz, Salem’s grandfather); Muslims and Hindus (Saleem and Shiva); different visions of Islam (Aziz again and his wife Naseem). In a way, contrast is most frequent relationship between characters and, where events in Saleem’s life reflect historical events of India, these frictions represent clashes in the country’s society – a never-ending flow of conflicts between different ethnic groups, faiths, or political parties.

Texture :-

In the journey from the novel to the movie, Midnight’s Children bypasses many plots and remains faithful to many. At the very beginning, the episode of Padma being a faithful audience to Saleem’s story is

replaced by direct narration but the episode of the famous perforated sheet remains faithful to a good deal.

Aadam and Naseem have comparatively become smaller characters in the movie. Thus, Tai turns into a character of an unrecognisable youth in the movie and the episode of Naseem’s breaking of silence after a gap of three long years is omitted.

As Ahmed and Amina directly shift to Bombay, the part in which Amina saves Lifafa from being killed by the mob and Lafifa’s cousin Shri Ramram Seth making mystic prophesies about Amina's son fail to get a place in the movie.

Even Saleem’s prowess in digging deep into people's minds evades in the motion format. In the movie,Saleem has the power to get connected to the midnight's children only, and his power to get into anyone’s mind is missing. Thus, Saleem’s one-sided love with Evie Burns as well as his attempt to push into Evie’s mind is lost. Similarly, the episode of using his mental abilities to follow Amina around the town to discover her affair with Nadir is replaced by a monotonous observation through overhearing.

The movie tries to keep Saleem’s image clear enough and therefore the scene in which Saleem sees his mom, Amina, masturbating; while reciting the name of a man who is not Saleem’s father, and Saleem having a glance of his mother’s butt while she is about to pee; is reduced to a scene where Saleem watches his mother being passionate and taking the name of her former lover.

Unlike the text where Saleem is hospitalised for a cut in his fingers, Saleem in the motion genre is

hospitalised soon after a teacher badly punishes him. Then after, in both the formats, Saleem’s parents discover

that Saleem is not their biological son.

The entire episode of Saleem being sent to live with his filmmaker uncle and movie-star aunt is replaced by the episode where Saleem is sent to his aunt, Emerald, whose husband, Zulfikar, is Pakistani Army’s one of the supreme officers. And unlike the text, Saleem becomes youth in Pakistan in the movie. Thus,Instead of travelling to Pakistan with his family, Saleem reunites with them in Karachi. But, from his journey

from childhood till youth, Saleem was alone, with no friends, except the friends of his mind – the midnight’s children. The irony remains that in the text, Saleem fails to connect with the midnight’s children while he was in Pakistan.

In Pakistan, Jamila becomes famous as a singer as in the original genre, but Ahmed fails to enjoy moderate success making bath linens in the movie.

The movie doesn’t agree to emancipate the feeling of incest in Saleem, like in the novel. Therefore, his love for Jamila and his unnecessary justification towards a love relationship between both of is erased from the motion format.

In the movie, Saleem undergoes a nasal surgery not because he gets a severe sinus infection, like in the novel, but just because Ahmed forcibly makes that happen. But similar to the text, Saleem realises that he has lost his power of telepathy, but in its place, he is endowed with a powerful sense of smell where he can even smell the perfume of new love.

The text shows the revolt of the midnight’s children against Saleem . 

 Aesthetic :-

Midnight’s Children has been adapted three times so far, first for television (MCS) in 1998 by Rushdie, then for theatre (MCT) in 2002, again by Rushdie with dramaturg Simon Reade and director Tim Supple,5 and lastly for film (MCF) in 2012.6 Both of the earlier adaptations have also been published as books: The Screenplay of Midnight’s children (Rushdie, 1999b), and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children: Adapted for the Theatre (Rushdie, Reade, and Supple, 2002). The film screenplay, the most recent of these, was written by Rushdie and the Indian-Canadian director Deepa Mehta; in the film Rushdie also appears as the narratorial voiceover, and Satya Bhabha (who plays Saleem)Is the son of Rushdie’s friend, the postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha.

that the film adaptation is a protracted creative project that has taken into consideration, more than previous adaptations of the novel, not only new forms of representation and

new ways of reading, but also new ways of engaging its constructed audiences.

Comparisons with the novel are not made in order to calibrate its success but as variations on a theme with two foci: the question of beginning, and the question of address. We con-clude that the adaptation by the author of the “original” presents different types of adjust-ment, and that the questions of audience and media are more relevant.

As with the 2012 film adaptation, Rushdie was involved in the other adaptations as

both author of the source text and screenplay writer and co-adaptor, thus “authorizing”these dramatizations. This direct involvement prompts such questions as: What is at

stake when the author of the “source” text participates in the adaptation, co-creates it,and thus wishes to retain prolonged authorial control over the text? What implications do the merging of author and voiceover narrator have for the reception? What is involved when the author breaks “the fourth wall”, speaking directly to the audience through the imaginary barrier that, by convention, separates viewers from the characters (and the author)? What happens when the typically central issues in adaptation theory (author-ship, authenticity, fidelity, and intertextuality) become marginal? To offer tentative

answers to these questions here, we will first consider critical considerations and

Rushdie’s own views on adaptation, before analysing the adaptations especially through audience construction.