Abstract

“Saleem Sinai, later variously called Snotnose, Stainface, Baldy, Sniffer, Buddha, and even Piece-of-the-Moon” (p. 3) narrates and lives the story of the crisis of transition of the Nation, Nationalism, family, society, politics, culture and economy in Salman Rushdie’s winner of Booker of Bookers, Midnight’s Children. Saleem is, if we analyze him or the novel critically, not a single individual. He is a perfect representative of the Indian culture, society, religion, structure, economy, psychology and anthropology. He is, as though, manacled with these. When he seems to be timid he tells us that the nation in crisis of transition is timid. When he seems to be angry, he tells us that the nation in crisis is angry in the process of its transition. Likewise, when he seems undergoing all sorts of persecutions and agonies and pains and fears and worries, he tells us that the emerging nation is going through all these. The foremost feeling that underlies all other feelings Saleem undergoes all the above-mentioned feelings and the one greatest of feelings that he could not bear of facing, of course as a representative of the nation or as a mere sheer individual, has been what he himself admits in his own words, “above all things, I fear absurdity.”