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谜语来原于中国古代民间，是古人集体智慧创造的，无法把谜语的发明权落实到某一个人。最初起源于民间口头文学，是我们的祖先在长期生产劳动和生活实践中创造出来的，是劳动人民聪明智慧的表现。后经文人的加工、创新有了文义谜。一般称民间谜为谜语，文义谜为灯谜，即也统称为谜语。
我不会轻功，但一只脚搭在鸡蛋上，鸡蛋不会破，这是为什么？（打一脑筋急转弯)
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今日搜索谜语一个人踩在鸡蛋上为什么鸡蛋不破
一个人踩在鸡蛋上为什么鸡蛋不破
09-04-25 &匿名提问
你试一试，采不破的是鸵鸟蛋，这是专门说明鸵鸟蛋僵硬的证据。。。。。鸡蛋绝对一脚一个。。。除非你站在下面几十个鸡蛋的木版上，或者其他增大接触面积的方法。几十个鸡蛋不破是因为力被分摊了，或者接触面增大，受力变小。一个踩不破只能是刚满月的孩子踩不破。。。
如果真有人踩在鸡蛋上而鸡蛋不破的话，那在物理上就要从缓冲和压强这两方面考虑，踩上时要很慢的，若穿鞋，鞋底要非常软，能让鸡蛋陷入鞋底，这样可以增大鸡蛋的受力面积，减小鸡蛋受到的压强。
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可能那个不是人,而是人的影子吧
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熟鸡蛋？？
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你应该知道在相同压力的情况下,受力面越小,单位面积的压力越大,受力面越大,单位面积的压力越小.这样就有两种方法,第一是多摆些鸡蛋,第二个就是平放鸡蛋,并用脚心成弓型与鸡蛋表面切和.在高中你应该会学习到动量定理,即ft=mv2-mv1,简单说,举个例子,你把鸡蛋分别从相同高度仍下,鸡蛋落到地上回烂,而在海绵上不烂,因为接触时间不同,方程是右边两者是一样的,但左边,t大的f就小，鸡蛋从落到海绵表面到把海绵压缩，用的时间肯定比与地接触时间长，所以f就小，人踩在鸡蛋上有一个重心下落的过程，如果人脚和鸡蛋下有缓冲物，鸡蛋就更不易破啦。 上去的时候用力均匀些就没有问题了。鸡蛋本身近似球形，抗压力非常高（参考拱桥抗压），有足够的面积后，一个鸡蛋耐受10kg是小意思。 再有力气的人，也握不碎一个鸡蛋的。
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用醋泡 大概泡半个小时，醋要够量！1碗饭那么多 或 科学让鸡蛋坚如磐石 ——关于“高空坠蛋”的研究报告 高2005级一班 史建强 古代人常用“鸡蛋碰石头”来比喻自不量力。可见，鸡蛋是极易碎的，轻轻一磕就碎了。如果说鸡蛋能从十几米高的地方落下而安然无恙，那简直就是天方夜谭。但是科学有时能将不可思议的事情变为现实。今天，就让我们共同走进这个神话吧。 首先，让我们明确一下从十几米的高空落下是一个什么概念。不难算出，若不计空气阻力，物体落地时的速度将达到十多米每秒。为了让大家更好地明白这么快的速度将产生什么样的作用效果，我打一个比方。这就好比一辆时速达40km/h的汽车突然撞到了墙上，后果可想而知。如果不采取任何措施，不要说是鸡蛋，就是一块石头，恐怕也要粉身碎骨。 这样一件看似不可能的事情，是否就不可办到呢？不是的，科学的魅力正在于此。只要我们依据正确的科学道理，提出可行的解决方案，再经过一次次实践的检验，不断改进，是完全可以办到的。 今天，第四届科技节的“高空坠蛋”比赛给我们提供了自由发挥的机会。让我们放飞想象的翅膀，来创造这个奇迹！ 比赛规则： 将一个采取了一定保护措施的鸡蛋从五楼阳台上扔下，使其自由下落。在鸡蛋不破的前提下，整个装置重量（不包括鸡蛋）越小，落地点距指规定的地点越近，其比赛成绩就越靠前。 一、科学道理： （一）、理论依据： 1、动量定理表达式：Ft =△p 其中△p指的是动量的变化，F指的是冲力的大小，t指的是力的作用时间。 由于鸡蛋在下落的过程中，动量的变化△p一定，鸡蛋所受的力F与力的作用时间t成反比，即t越大，F就越小，作用在鸡蛋上的力就越小。这样，鸡蛋就不容易碎了。 2、由空中垂直下落的物体所受空气阻力f与空气的密度ρ、物体的有效横截面积S、下落的速率v的平方成正比，阻力的大小可表示为f=CρSv2，其中C为阻力系数，一般在0.2～0.5之间，ρ=1.2kg/m3，物体下落经过一段时间将达匀速，这称为终极速率。 我们可以发现如下的一些日常现象： 雨滴在空气中下落，速度越来越快，所受空气阻力也越来越大。 当阻力增加到与雨滴所受重力相等时，二力平衡，雨滴开始匀速下落。 跳伞运动员在空中张开降落伞，凭借着降落伞较大的横截面积取得较大的空气阻力，得以比较缓慢地降落。这些都是这个公式在生活中的应用。 明白了这以后，就不会认为装置的加速度是9.8m/s2了。 3、一切物体都具有惯性。在“高空坠蛋”整个装置落地的一瞬间，装置静止，然而鸡蛋由于惯性，还会继续运动，造成与装置挤压、碰撞，容易损坏。如何将鸡蛋由于具有惯性而造成的影响降到最低，还需要我们进一步分析解决。 （二）、规则分析： 有了理论指导，就可以分析比赛规则了。目的是在不违反比赛规则的情况下，充分考虑各方面的影响和应当解决的问题，以制定切实可行的方案。 由于比赛规则有一个大前提就是鸡蛋不破，鸡蛋一旦破了，便会被淘汰，一切努力也就白费了。因此，最重要的就是要保证鸡蛋不破，然后再考虑如何使装置重量尽可能小，使装置稳定性尽可能高。保证鸡蛋不破就要加强保护措施；重量尽可能小就要选用密度小的材料，能省就省；稳定性尽可能高，一是要投得准，二是装置受大气影响尽可能小。 二、方案设计： 在前面理论依据的支持下，又认真分析了比赛规则，找到了问题的关键所在，现在可以制定可行性方案了。 结合在同学们中的调查和全国各地举行过类似比赛的方案来看，比较常见的、有一定可行性的方案有以下几种： 1、降落伞型： 降落伞型，顾名思义，就是利用降落伞，增大空气阻力，以使鸡蛋连同整个装置平稳落地。 这种方案最容易想到，因为跳伞、宇宙飞船减速，都运用了这个方法，效果很好。安全性极高，使整个装置达到较小的速度即可匀速下落。装置的重量也不会很重。唯一的缺点就是：受大气扰动影响太厉害，会使实验装置飘忽不定，准确性较差，往往不能落到指定位置，从而影响了比赛成绩。 2、外包装型： 外包装型，就是用较多的减震材料将鸡蛋严严实实地包裹起来。比如泡沫、棉花、各种填充材料等。通过这些材料的缓冲作用，达到保护鸡蛋的目的。 这种方案也较容易想到。平常生活中用各种填充材料保护贵重用品的方法相信大家都见到过。这的确是一个有效的方法。这种方案由于受空气阻力影响很小，所以准确性较高。由于所使用的材料都是密度极小的，所以可将整个装置的重量降到最低。但美中不足的是：整个装置是自由下落状态，到达地面时的速度较大，因而对装置的坚固度和缓冲效果要求较高，安全性稍差一点。 3、不倒翁型： 不倒翁型，就是使整个装置像不倒翁一样，把重心尽可能降低，使得装置下落时能保持稳定状态，确保始终让一个面着地。那么保护工作只需要在这一个面做好就行了，从而节省了材料。 这种方案充分考虑到了上一种方案可能出现在空中翻滚现象，经过改进形成的。其可靠性远远高于第一种方案，材料更节省，准确性更高。美中不足的就是为了确保装置的重心降低，势必要在底部放上一个质量较大的物体，这就大大加重整个装置，将影响比赛成绩。 4、多面体型： 多面体型，就是把整个装置制作成一个多面体，将鸡蛋用结实的绳子固定在多面体的中央，使整个鸡蛋悬空。装置落地后，不论哪个面着地，鸡蛋都不会着地，鸡蛋就完好无损了。 这种方案无需额外的材料，只需要制作多面体的骨架和几根线即可，用料极其节省，因而重量会大大降低。因受空气阻力较小，所以稳定性较好。但这种方案也有一个大的缺点就是多面体不易扎制，结实程度不高，落地后可能会散架，鸡蛋也就岌岌可危了。 5、双气球型： 双气球型，就是将鸡蛋放在一个气球中，充入一定量空气，在外面再套一个气球，充入适量空气。这样两层气球之间就会形成一个气垫，会使鸡蛋免受地面的冲击。 这种方案所用材料应该是所有方案中最省的，重量只是两个气球的重量，几乎可以忽略不计。但这种方案有一个致命的缺点就是两层气球之间有一块是紧密接触的，没有气垫的保护，如果此面着地，一切都完了。另外，由于重量太轻，受空气扰动影响，其稳定性也不是很好。 6、螺旋桨型： 螺旋桨型，就是在整个装置上方安置一个螺旋桨，靠流动的空气推动或遥控，使螺旋桨旋转起来，以提高安全性和准确度。这极像直升飞机的飞行原理。 这种方案因螺旋桨的转动而减小了装置下落的速度，安全性更高。如果是遥控，准确性也会很高。问题是如何保证螺旋桨始终朝上，螺旋桨一旦不朝上，准确性将无从谈起。如何保证螺旋桨平稳旋转也是一个问题。 7、滑翔机型： 滑翔机型，顾名思义，就是将鸡蛋悬挂在滑翔机下方，整个装置就会在空气中滑翔，最后会平稳地降落。 这种方案准确性极差，降落地点不确定。如果不限制落地点的话，这无疑是一个好方案，安全性较高。在这种比赛规则下，不提倡这种方法。 8、盐水型： 盐水型，就是配一个密度很大的氯化钠溶液，让鸡蛋漂浮在上面，落地后盐水就充当了缓冲材料，保证鸡蛋不破。 这种方案新颖独特，用盐水作缓冲，安全性较高，受到空气阻力影响很小，准确性较高。但装置不易控制，如果装置在空中翻滚，盐水洒出，就起不到保护作用了，因此，一定要保证装置重心要稳，并且尽可能降低。这种装置的重量问题也是不容忽视的，毕竟，盐水的密度要比泡沫大得多。 9、吸管组型： 吸管组型，用几根吸管绑在一起做成吸管组，将几组吸管组搭成金字塔形，将鸡蛋夹在中间，用胶条固定。吸管由于是中空的，可以起到缓冲作用。 这种方案材料来源广泛，重量轻，体积小，因而准确性较好。至于安全性嘛，可能要差一点，吸管的缓冲作用毕竟有限。 10、综合型： 综合型，就是将几种保护措施结合起来使用，造出的装置也是五花八门。 综合型装置的安全性肯定会大大提高，这是毫无疑问的。准确性很难说究竟是提高了还是降低了。不过有一点可以确定，那就是装置的总重量大大增加，可能会影响比赛成绩。 … … 上面大体介绍了十种方案。其实还有很多方案，就不一一列举了。不难看出，这十种方案各有利弊，很难找出一个十全十美的方案。而且，各种方案的偶然性较大。以上仅是从理论层面对各种方案进行了分析，实际操作中会有各种意想不到的事情发生。 三、实践检验： （一）、外界影响分析： 受当时天气状况、场地情况、装置制作情况、鸡蛋的大小和形状等，都会对比赛结果产生一定影响。 1、天气状况的影响： 天气状况对这种比赛的影响可以说是非常大的。主要影响是风力的大小。理想的天气状况应该是几乎没有风，这样才能保证一些需要借助空气阻力来减速的装置能够平稳降落。如果风太大，那么降落伞型、螺旋桨型、双气球型等类型的实验装置就会在风中摇摆不定，准确性会很差，安全性也会大大降低。 2、场地情况的影响： 场地情况的好坏直接影响了比赛成绩。这里的场地场地主要是指装置落地的场地。理想的场地应该平坦、松软，这样会大大增加成功的几率。遗憾的是这次比赛场地是大理石地面，平坦尚还可以，但是坚硬无比，这无疑是对装置的一次严酷的考验。这就要求我们的装置一定要结实，缓冲效果要好。 3、装置制作情况的影响： 装置制作的好坏具有很大的不确定性。试验时试验成功并不代表着在正式比赛中会成功。因为试验时整个装置从十几米高的地方落下，会造成装置整体或局部的损坏，如果再用试验过的装置去比赛，这些损坏造成的影响便会显现出来。会让认为安全可靠的装置出现意外情况。如果再制作一个新的装置，即使原理跟试验时的装置一模一样也无法保证制作得和试验时的装置没有差别，问题往往就出现在这细小的差别上。 4、鸡蛋的大小和形状的影响： 也许你会问：鸡蛋的大小和形状还对试验效果有影响吗？回答是肯定的。经请教物理老师宋老师后得知：鸡蛋越小越不容易破。对此你可能会不理解，其实我也不明白。宋老师给了一个恰当的事例：将大小不等的一筐鸡蛋晃几晃，你会发现：大的鸡蛋先破，小的鸡蛋后破。由此可以得知：小的鸡蛋更结实一点。如果拿两个蛋壳厚薄不同不一样的鸡蛋相碰，一定是蛋壳薄的鸡蛋先破。由此可以得知：蛋壳厚的鸡蛋更结实一点。另外，形状规则的鸡蛋由于受力均匀，会比不规则的鸡蛋结实。因此，所用鸡蛋太长、太圆、太扁或鼓出一块、凹下一块都不行。 如果比赛规则允许自带鸡蛋的话，一定要注意以上内容。如果不让自带鸡蛋，只好听天由命了。 由此可以看出，这种比赛中许多不确定因素都是人们难以预料的。对于前两种影响，对每一个参赛者都是公平的。条件好对大家都好，条件不好对大家都不好。对于后两种影响，要求我们一定要细心，力求将装置调试得完美无缺，比赛时才能确保万无一失。 （二）、临场窍门： 一切准备工作准备就绪后，就只等着实地检验自己的装置了。 正式比赛也并不意味着结局已定。经分析，这里面还是有很多窍门的。 首先，一定要将自己的装置对准投掷点。如果没有对准投掷点，装置落地时还有什么准确度可言？对准投掷点，可以先向下扔一个小石子，看小石子落地点与起落点的关系，再根据这个确定自己装置的起落点。可以反复试验几次，以找到最好的起落点。 再次，对于要求稳定下落的装置，一定要调整好落地面朝下，确保重心稳定，装置的这种姿态一定要求重心最低，才会避免装置在空中翻滚、摇摆、抖动。如果重心不够低，可临时在装置底面捆绑一个重物。但这样会使装置重量大大增加，这是不得已而为之呀。 最后，尽量将装置置于所允许高度的最低点，这样下落高度就会降低，装置落地时的速度就会降低，增加了安全性。 四、最佳方案： 在充分考虑了各中方案的利弊和外界环境对装置影响的大小之后，我们选取了一个最佳方案，即外包装型。选取它的理由如下： 1、外包装型装置选用材料密度小，重量轻，能够以较少的材料，较轻的重量达到较好的保护效果。 2、稳定性高。因其受空气阻力的影响较小，可以沿着一条近似竖直向下的轨迹下落，如果起落点选得准，落地点也会很准。 3、排除了装置在空中翻滚可能造成的影响。由于鸡蛋周围各个方向的保护程度都是一样的，因此，装置哪一个面先着地，都会受到缓冲材料的保护。即使装置在空中翻滚，也不会对装置的安全性产生太大影响。 4、材料来源广泛。因为所选材料是泡沫、棉花等常见材料，因而便于寻找，装置的造价也不会太高。 5、成功几率高。只要保护材料足够厚，保护效果足够好就可以了。无须进行各种调试，使装置状态最佳。在下落过程中无须手动干预，就不会因人们可能的失误而对比赛产生影响了。 因而，“外包装型”方案应该是最好的。最好只是相对而言，其实这种方案也有缺点，那就是落地后可能会反弹，影响了准确性。 解决的方法就是在装置外包一层弹性较小的材料，使得装置落地后不会弹起。另外，在装置外面贴双面胶也是一个好方法。 五、总结分析： 高空坠蛋，看似不可能的事情经过一番讨论分析也会变成现实。科学的魅力正在于此。它能用科学的手段解决这种类似问题。小小的高空坠蛋中竟有这么复杂的内容，竟蕴涵着这么多的科学道理，不禁想起毕达格拉斯的一句话：处处留心皆学问。 留心身边的小事吧！其中会蕴涵着丰富的科学道理，只要我们去发现，去实践。科学真理的大门刚刚向我们敞开，里面充满了神秘与未知，等待我们去探索！And other omens: comets were seen exploding above the Back B it was reported that flowers had been seen and in February the snakes escaped from the Schaapsteker Institute. The rumour spread that a mad Bengali snake-charmer, a Tubriwallah, was travelling the country, charming reptiles from captivity, leading them out of snake farms (such as the Schaapsteker, where snake venom's medicinal functions were studied, and antivenenes devised) by the Pied Piper fascination of his flute, in retribution for the partition of his beloved Golden Bengal. After a while the rumours added that the Tubriwallah was seven feet tall, with bright blue skin. He was Krishna come to he was the sky-hued Jesus of the missionaries. It seems that, in the aftermath of my changeling birth, while I enlarged myself at breakneck speed, everything that could possibly go wrong began to do so. In the snake winter of early 1948, and in the succeeding hot and rainy seasons, events piled upon events, so that by the time the Brass Monkey was born in September we were all exhausted, and ready for a few years' rest. Escaped cobras vanished into th banded kraits were seen on buses. Religious leaders described the' snake escape as a warning - the god Naga had been unleashed, they intoned, as a punishment for the nation's official renunciation of its deities. ('We are a secular State,' Nehru announced, and Morarji and Patel and M but still Ahmed Sinai shivered under the influence of the freeze.) And one day, when Mary had been asking, 'How are we going to live now, Madam?' Homi Catrack introduced us to Dr Schaapsteker himself. He was eighty- his tongue flicked constantly in and out bet and he was prepared to pay cash rent for a top-floor apartment overlooking the Arabian Sea. Ahmed Sinai, in those days,
the icy cold of the freeze impre he downed vast quantities of whisky for medicinal purposes, but it failed to warm him up ... so it was Amina who agreed to let the upper storey of Buckingham Villa to the old snake-doctor. At the end of February, snake poison entered our lives. Dr Schaapsteker was a man who engendered wild stories. The more superstitious orderlies at his Institute swore that he had the capacity of dreaming every night about being bitten by snakes, and thus remained immune to their bites. Others whispered that he was half-snake himself, the child of an unnatural union between a woman and a cobra. His obsession with the venom of the banded krait - bungarus fasciatus - was becoming legendary. There is no known antivenene to the bite of bungarus: but Schaapsteker had devoted his life to finding one. Buying broken-down horses from the Catrack stables (among others) he injected them with s but the horses, unhelpfully, failed to develop antibodies, frothed at the mouth, died standing up and had to be transformed into glue. It was said that Dr Schaapsteker - 'Sharpsticker sahib' - had now acquired the power of killing horses simply by approaching them with a hypodermic syringe ... but Amina paid no attention to these tall stories. 'He is an old gentleman,' she told Mary P 'What should we care about people who black-tongue him? He pays his rent, and permits us to live.' Amina was grateful to the European snake-doctor, particularly in those days of the freeze when Ahmed did not seem to have the nerve to fight. 'My beloved father and mother,' Amina wrote, 'By my eyes and head I swear I do not know why such things are happening to us ... Ahmed is a good man, but this business has hit him hard. If you have advice for your daughter, she is greatly in need of it.' Three days after they received this letter, Aadam Aziz and Reverend Mother arrived at Bombay Central Station by Frontier M and Amina, driving them home in our 1946 Rover, looked out of a side window and saw the Mahalaxmi R and had the first germ of her reckless idea. 'This modern decoration is all right for you young people, whatsits-name,' Reverend Mother said. 'But give me one old-fashioned takht to sit on. These chairs are so soft, whatsitsname, they make me feel like I'm falling.' 'Is he ill?' Aadam Aziz asked. 'Should I examine him and prescribe medicines?' 'This is no time to hide in bed,' Reverend Mother pronounced. 'Now he must be a man, whatsitsname, and do a man's business.' 'How well you both look, my parents,' Amina cried, thinking that her father was turning into an old man who seemed to be getting shorter wi while Reverend Mother had grown so wide that armchairs, though soft, groaned beneath her weight... and sometimes, through a trick-of the light, Amina thought she saw, in the centre of her father's body, a dark shadow like a hole. 'What is left in this India?' Reverend Mother asked, hand slicing air. 'Go, leave it all, go to Pakistan. See how well that Zulfikar is doing - he will give you a start. Be a man, my son - get up and start again!' 'He doesn't want to speak now,' Amina said, 'he must rest.' 'Rest?' Aadam Aziz roared. 'The man is a jelly!' 'Even Alia, whatsitsname,' Reverend Mother said, 'all on her own, gone to Pakistan - even she is making a decent life, teaching in a fine school. They say she will be headmistress soon.' 'Shhh, mother, he wants to sleep ... let's go next door ...' 'There is a time to sleep, whatsitsname, and a time to wake! Listen: Mustapha is making many hundreds of rupees a month, whatsitsname, in the Civil Service. What is your husband? Too good to work?' 'Mother, he is upset. His temperature is so low ...' 'What food are you giving? From today, whatsitsname, I will run your kitchen. Young people today - like babies, whatsitsname!' 'Just as you like, mother.' 'I tell you whatsitsname, it's those photos in the paper. I wrote -didn't I write? - no good would come of that. Photos take away pieces of you. My God, whatsitsname, when I saw your picture, you had become so transparent I could see the writing from the other side coming right through your face!' 'But that's only ...' 'Don't tell me your stories, whatsitsname! I give thanks to God you have recovered from that photography!' After that day, Amina was freed from the exigencies of running her home. Reverend Mother sat at the head of the dining-table, doling out food (Amina took plates to Ahmed, who stayed in bed, moaning from time to time, 'Smashed, wife! Snapped - like an icicle!'); while, in the kitchens, Mary Pereira took the time to prepare, for the benefit of their visitors, some of the finest and most delicate mango pickles, lime chutneys and cucumber kasaundies in the world. And now, restored to the status of daughter in her own home, Amina began to feel the emotions of other people's food seeping into her - because Reverend Mother doled out the curries and meatballs of intransigence, dishes imbued with the personal Amina ate the fish salans of stubbornness and the birianis of determination. And, althiough Mary's pickles had a partially counteractive effect - since she had stirred into them the guilt of her heart, and the fear of discovery, so that, good as they tasted, they had the power of making those who ate them subject to nameless uncertainties and dreams of accusing fingers - the diet provided by Reverend Mother filled Amina with a kind of rage, and even produced slight signs of improvement in her defeated husband. So that finally the day came when Amina, who had been watching me play incompetently with toy horses of sandal wood in the bath, inhaling the sweet odours of sandalwood which the bathwater released, suddenly rediscovered within herself the adventurous streak which was her inheritance from her fading father, the streak which had brought Aadam Aziz down from Amina turned to Mary Pereira and said, 'I'm fed up. If nobody in this house is going to put things right, then it's just going to be up to me!' Toy horses galloped behind Amina's eyes as she left Mary to dry me and marched into her bedroom. Remembered glimpses of Mahalaxmi Racecourse cantered in her head as she pushed aside saris and petticoats. The fever of a reckless scheme flushed her cheeks as she opened the lid of an old tin trunk... filling her purse with the coins and rupee notes of grateful patients and wedding-guests, my mother went to the races. With the Brass Monkey growing inside her, my mother stalked the paddocks of the racecourse named after t braving early-morning sickness and varicose veins, she stood in line at the Tote window, putting money on three-horse accumulators and long-odds outsiders. Ignorant of the first thing about horses, she backed mares known not to be staye she put her money on jockeys because she liked their smiles. Clutching a purse full of the dowry which had lain untouched in its trunk since her own mother had packed it away, she took wild flutters on stallions who looked fit for the Schaapsteker Institute ... and won, and won, and won. 'Good news,' Ismail Ibrahim is saying, 'I always thought you should fight the bastards. I'll begin proceedings at once ... but it will take cash, Amina. Have you got cash?' 'The money will be there.' 'Not for myself,' Ismail explains, 'My services are, as I said, free, gratis absolutely. But, forgive me, you must know how things are, one must give little presents to people to smooth one's way ...' 'Here,' Amina hands him an envelope, 'Will this do for now?' 'My God,' Ismail Ibrahim drops the packet in surprise and rupee notes in large denominations scatter all over his sitting-room floor, 'Where did you lay your hands on ...' And Amina, 'Better you don't ask - and I won't ask how you spend it.' Schaapsteker money pai but horses fought our war. The streak of luck of my mother at the race-track was so long, a seam so rich, that if it hadn't happened it wouldn't have been credible ... for month after month, she put her money on a jockey's nice tidy hair-style or a horse's pret and she never left the track without a large envelope stuffed with notes. 'Things are going well,' Ismail Ibrahim told her, 'But Amina sister, God knows what you are up to. Is it decent? Is it legal?' And Amina: 'Don't worry your head. What can't be cured must be endured. I am doing what must be done.' Never once in all that time did my mother take pleasure in
because she was weighed down by more than a baby - eating Reverend Mother's curries filled with ancient prejudices, she had become convinced that gambling was the next worst thing on earth, so, although she was not a criminal, she felt consumed by sin. Verrucas plagued her feet, although Purushottam the sadhu, who sat under our garden tap until dripping water created a bald patch amid the luxuriantly matted hair on his head, was a marvel a but throughout the snake winter and the hot season, my mother fought her husband's fight. You ask: how is it possible? How could a housewife, however assiduous, however determined, win fortunes on the horses, day after racing day, month after month? You think to yourself: aha, that Homi Catrack, he's a horse- and everyone knows that most of Amina was asking her neighbour for hot tips! A but Mr Catrack himself los he saw my mother at the race-track and was astounded by her success. ('Please,' Amina asked him, 'Catrack Sahib, let this be our secret. Gambling it would be so shaming if my mother found out.' And Catrack, nodding dazedly, said, 'Just as you wish.') So it was not the Parsee who was behind it - but perhaps I can offer another explanation. Here it is, in a sky-blue crib in a sky-blue room with a fisherman's pointing finger on the wall: here, whenever his mother goes away clutching a purse full of secrets, is Baby Saleem, who has acquired an expression of the most intense concentration, whose eyes have been seized by a singleness of purpose of such enormous power that it has darkened them to deep navy blue, and whose nose is twitching strangely while he appears to be watching some distant event, to be guiding it from a distance, just as the moon controls the tides. 'Coming to court very soon,' Ismail Ibrahim said, 'I think you can be fairly confident ... my God, Amina, have you found King Solomon's Mines?' The moment I was old enough to play board games, I fell in love with Snakes and Ladders. ?perfect balance of rewards and penalties! ?seemingly random choices made by tumbling dice! Clambering up ladders, slithering down snakes, I spent some of the happiest days of my life. When, in my time of trial, my father challenged me to master the game of shatranj, I infuriated him by preferring to invite him, instead, to chance his fortune among the ladders and nibbling snakes. A and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting ju and for every snake, a ladder will compensate. But it' no mere carrot-and- because implicit in the game is the unchanging twoness of things, the duality of up against down, the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuos in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see, metaphorically, all conceivable oppositions, Alpha against Omega, f here is the war of Mary and Musa, and the polarities of knees and nose ... but I found, very early in my life, that the game lacked one crucial dimension, that of ambiguity -beca use, as events are about to show, it is also possible to slither down a ladder and climb to triumph on the venom of a snake ... Keeping things simple for the moment, however, I record that no sooner had my mother discovered the ladder to victory represented by her racecourse luck than she was reminded that the gutters of the country were still teeming with snakes. Amina's brother Hanif had not gone to Pakistan. Following the childhood dream which he had whispered to Rashid the rickshaw-boy in an Agra cornfield, he had arrived in Bombay and sought employ, ment in the great film studios. Precociously confident, he had not only succeeded in becoming the youngest man ever to be given a film to direct in the history of the I he had also wooed and married one of the brightest stars of that celluloid heaven, the divine Pia, whose face was her fortune, and whose saris were made of fabrics whose designers had clearly set out to prove that it was possible to incorporate every colour known to man in a single pattern. Reverend Mother did not approve of the divine Pia, but Hanif of all my family was the one who was free of her a jolly, burly man with the booming laugh of the boatman Tai and the explosive, innocent anger of his father Aadam Aziz, he took her to live simply in a small, un-filmi apartment on Marine Drive, telling her, 'Plenty of time to live like Emperors after I've made my name.' S she starred in his first feature, which was partly financed by Homi Catrack and partly by D. W. Rama Studios (Pvt.) Ltd - it was called The Lovers of Kashmir, and one evening in the midst of her racing days Amina Sinai went to the premiere. Her parents did not come, thanks to Reverend Mother's loathing of the cinema, against which Aadam Aziz no longer had the strength to struggle - just as he, who had fought with Mian Abdullah against Pakistan, no longer argued with her when she praised the country, retaining just enough strength to dig in his heels an but Ahmed Sinai, revived by his mother-in-law's cookery, but resentful of her continued presence, got to his feet and accompanied his wife. They took their seats, next to Hanif and. Pia and the male star of the film, one of India's most successful 'lover-boys', I. S. Nayyar. And, although they didn't know it, a serpent waited in the wings... but in the meanwhile, let us permit Hanif Azi because The Lovers of Kashmir contained a notion which was to provide my uncle with a spectacular, though brief, period of triumph. In those days it was not permitted for lover-boys and their leading ladies to touch one another on screen, for fear that their osculations might corrupt the nation's youth ... but thirty-three minutes after the beginning of The Lovers the premiere audience began to give off a low buzz of shock, because Pia and Nayyar had begun to kiss - not one another - but things. Pia kissed an apple, sensuously, with all the rich fullness then passed it to N who planted, upon its opposite face, a virilely passionate mouth. This was the birth of what came to be known as the indirect kiss - and how much more sophisticated a notion it was than anything i how pregnant with longing and eroticism! The cinema audience (which would, nowadays, cheer raucously at the sight of a young couple diving behind ?bush, which would then begin to shake ridiculously - so low have we sunk in our ability to suggest) watched, riveted to the screen, as the love of Pia and Nayyar, against a background of Dal Lake and ice-blue Kashmiri sky, expressed itself in kisses applied to cups of pink K by the fountains of Shalimar they pressed their lips to a sword ... but now, at the height of Hanif Aziz's triumph, the ser under its influence, the house-lights came up. Against the larger-than-life figures of Pia and Nayyar, kissing mangoes as they mouthed to playback music, the figure of a timorous, inadequately bearded man was seen, marching on to the stage beneath the screen, microphone in hand. The Serpent can take m now, in the guise of this ineffectual house-manager, it unleashed its venom. Pia and N and the amplified voice of the bearded man said: 'Ladies and gents, but there is terrible news.' His voice broke - a sob from the Serpent, to lend power to its teeth! - and then continued, 'This afternoon, at Birla House in Delhi, our beloved Mahatma was killed. Some madman shot him in the stomach, ladies and gentlemen - our Bapu is gone!' The audience had begun to screa the poison of his words entered their veins - there were grown men rolling in the aisles clutching their bellies, not laughing but crying, Hai Ram! Hai Ram! - and women tearing their hair: the city's finest coiffures tumbling around the ears of the poisoned ladies - there were film-stars yelling like fishwives and something terrible to smell in the air - and Hanif whispered, 'Get out of here, big sister - if a Muslim did this thing there will be hell to pay.' For every ladder, there is a snake ... and for forty-eight hours after the abortive end of The Lovers of Kashmir, our family remained within the walls of Buckingham Villa ('Put furniture against the doors, whatsitsname!' Reverend Mother ordered. 'If there are Hindu servants, let them go home!'); and Amina did not dare to visit the racetrack. But for every snake, there is a ladder: and finally the radio gave us a name. Nathuram Godse. 'Thank God,' Amina burst out, 'It's not a Muslim name!' And Aadam, upon whom the news of Gandhi's death had placed a new burden of age: 'This Godse is nothing to be grateful for!' Amina, however, was full of the light-headedness of relief, she was rushing dizzily up the long ladder of relief... 'Why not, after all? By being Godse he has saved our lives!' Ahmed Sinai, after rising from his supposed sickbed, continued to behave like an invalid. In a voice like cloudy glass he told Amina, 'So, you have told I very well, but we will lose. In these courts you have to buy judges...' And Amina, rushing to Ismail, 'Never - never under any circumstances - must you tell Ahmed about the money. A man must keep his pride.' And, later on, 'No, janum, I' no, the baby is not you rest, I must just go to shop - maybe I will visit Hanif- we women, you know, must fill up our days!' And coming home with envelopes brimming with rupee-notes ... 'Take, Ismail, now that he's up we have to be quick and careful!' And sitting dutifully beside her mother in the evenings, 'Yes, of course you're right, and Ahmed will be getting so rich soon, you'll just see!' And end and envelopes, and the growing baby, nearing the point at which Amina will not be able to insert herself behind the driving-wheel of the 1946 R and can her luck hold?; and Musa and Mary, quarrelling like aged tigers. What starts fights? What remnants of guilt fear shame, pickled by time in Mary's intestines, led her willingly? unwillingly? to provoke the aged bearer in a dozen different ways - by a tilt of the nose to indicate by aggressive counting of rosary beads under the nose of the devout M by acceptance of the title mausi, little mother, bestowed upon her by the other Estate servants, which Musa saw as a
by excessive familiarity with the Begum Sahiba -little giggled whispers in corners, just loud enough for formal, stiff, correct Musa to hear and feel somehow cheated? What tiny grain of grit, in the sea of old age now washing over the old bearer, lodged between bis lips to fatten into the dark pearl of hatred - into what unaccustomed torpors did Musa fall, becoming leaden of hand and foot, so that vases were broken, ashtrays spilled, and a veiled hint of forthcoming dismissal - from Mary's conscious or unconscious lips? - grew into an obsessive fear, which rebounded upon the person who started it off? And (not to omit social factors) what was the brutalizing effect of servant status, of a servants' room behind a blackstoved kitchen, in which Musa was obliged to sleep along with gardener, odd-job boy, and hamal - while Mary slept in style on a rush mat beside a new-born child? And was Mary blameless or not? Did her inability to go to church -because in churches you found confessionals, and in confessionals secrets could not be kept - turn sour inside her and make her a little sharp, a little hurtful? Or must we look beyond psychology - seeking our answer in statements such as, there was a snake lying in wait for Mary, and Musa was doomed to learn about the ambiguity of ladders? Or further still, beyond snake-and-ladder, should we see the Hand of Fate in the quarrel - and say, in order for Musa to return as explosive ghost, in order for him to adopt the role of Bomb-in-Bombay, it was necessary to engineer a departure ... or, descending from such sublimities to the ridiculous, could it be that Ahmed Sinai - whom whisky provoked, whom djinns goaded into excesses of rudeness - had so incensed the aged bearer that his crime, with which he equalled Mary's record, was committed out of the injured pride of an abused old servitor - and was nothing to do with Mary at all? Ending questions, I confine myself to facts: Musa and Mary were perpetually at daggers drawn. And yes: Ahmed insulted him, and Amina's pacifying efforts may not
and yes: the fuddling shadows of age had convinced him he would be dismissed, without warning, and so it was that Amina came to discover, one August morning, that the house had been burgled. The police came. Amina reported what was missing: a silver spittoon encrust bejewelled samovars and silver tea- the contents of a green tin trunk. Servants were lined up in the hall and subjected to the threats of Inspector Johnny Vakeel. 'Come on, own up now' - lathi-stick tapping against his leg -'or you'll see what we can't do to you. You want to stand on one leg all day and night? You want water thrown over you, sometimes boiling hot, sometimes freezing cold? We have many methods in the Police Force ...& And now a cacophony of noise from servants, Not me, Inspector Sahib, I for pity's sake, search my things, sahib! And Amina: 'This is too much, sir, you go too far. My Mary I know, anyway, is innocent. I will not have her questioned.' Suppressed irritation of police officer. A search of belongings is instituted - 'Just in case, Madam. These fellows have limited intelligence - and maybe you discovered the theft too soon for the felon to abscond with the booty!' The search succeeds. In the bedroll of Musa the old bearer: a silver spittoon. Wrapped in his puny bundle of clothes: gold coins, a silver samovar. Secreted under his charpoy bed: a missing tea-service. And now Musa has thrown himself at Ahmed Sinai' Musa is begging, 'Forgive, sahib! I I thought you were going to throw me into the street!' but Ahmed S th 'I feel so weak,' he says, and Amina, aghast, asks: 'But, Musa, why did you make that terrible oath?' ... Because, in the interim between line-up in passageway and discoveries in servants' quarters, Musa had said to his master: 'It was not me, sahib. If I have robbed you, may I be turned into a leper! May my old skin run with sores!' Amina, with horror on her face, awaits Musa's reply. The bearer's old face twists
words are spat out. 'Begum Sahiba, I only took your precious possessions, but you, and your sahib, and his father, have and in my old age you have humiliated me with Christian ayahs.' There is silence in Buckingham Villa - Amina has refused to press charges, but Musa is leaving. Bedroll on his back, he descends a spiral iron staircase, discovering that ladders can g he walks away down hillock, leaving a curse upon the house. And (was it the curse that did it?) Mary Pereira is about to discover that even w even when staircases operate in your favour, you can't avoid a snake. Amina says, 'I can't get you any more money, I have you had enough?' And Ismail, 'I hope so - but you never know - is there any chance of... ?' But Amina: 'The trouble is, I've got so big and all, I can't get in the car any more. It will just have to do.' ... Time is slowing down for A once again, her eyes look through leaded glass, in which red tulips, green-stemmed, for a second time, her gaze lingers on a clocktower which has not worked since the rains of 1947; once again, it is raining. The racing season is over. A pale blue clocktower: squat, peeling, inoperational. It stood on black-tarred concrete at the end of the circus-ring - the flat roof of the upper storey of the buildings along Warden Road, which abutted our two-storey hillock, so that if you climbed over Buckingham Villa's boundary wall, flat black tar would be under your feet. And beneath black tar, Breach Candy Kindergarten School, from which, every afternoon during term, there rose the tinkling music of Miss Harrison's piano playing the unchangin and below that, the shops, Reader's Paradise, Fatbhoy Jewellery, Chimalker's Toys and Bombelli's, with its windows filled with One Yards of Chocolates. The door to the clocktower was supposed to be locked, but it was a cheap lock of a kind Nadir Khan would have recognized: made in India. And on three successive evenings immediately before my first birthday, Mary Pereira, standing by my window at night, noticed a shadowy figure floating across the roof, his hands full of shapeless objects, a shadow which filled her with an unidentifiable dread. After the third night, the
and Inspector Vakeel returned to Methwold's Estate, accompanied by a special squad of crack officers - 'all deadeye shots. Begum S just you leave it all to us!' - who, disguised as sweepers, with guns concealed under their rags, kept the clocktower under surveillance while sweeping up the dust in the circus-ring. Night fell. Behind curtains and chick-blinds, the inhabitants of Methwold's Estate peered fearfully in the direction of the clocktower. Sweepers, absurdly, went about their duties in the dark. Johnny Vakeel took up a position on our verandah, rifle just out of sight... and, at midnight, a shadow came over the side wall of the Breach Candy school and made its way towards the tower, with a sack slung over one shoulder ... 'He must enter,' Vakeel had told A 'Must be sure we get the proper johnny.' The johnny, padding across flat tarred roof,
entered. 'Inspector Sahib, what are you waiting for?' 'Shhh, Begum, thi please go inside some way. We shall take h you mark my words. Caught,' Vakeel said with satisfaction, 'like a rat in a trap.' 'But who is he?' 'Who knows?' Vakeel shrugged. 'Some badmaash for sure. There are bad eggs everywhere these days.' ... And then the silence of the night is split like milk by a single, sawn- somebody lurches against the inside of and something streaks out on to black tarmac. Inspector Vakeel leaps into action, swinging up his rifle, shooting from the hip like John W sweepers extract marksmen's weapons from their brushes and blaze away ... shrieks of excited women, yells of servants ... silence. What lies, brown and black, banded and serpentine on the black tarmac? What, leaking black blood, provokes Dr Schaapsteker to screech from his top-floor vantage-point: 'You complete fools! Brothers of cockroaches! Sons of transvestites!' ... what, flick-tongued, dies while Vakeel races on to tarred roof? And inside the clocktower door? What weight, falling, created such an almighty crash? Whose hand
in whose heel are visible the two red, flowing holes, filled with a venom for which there is no known antivenene, a poison which has killed stablefuls of worn-out horses? Whose body is carried out of the tower by plain-clothes men, in a dead march, coffinless, with imitation sweepers for pallbearers? Why, when the moonlight falls upon the dead face, does Mary Pereira fall like a sack of potatoes to the floor, eyes rolling upwards in their sockets, in a sudden and dramatic faint? And lining the interior walls of the clocktower: what are these strange mechanisms, attached to cheap time-pieces - why are there so many bottles with rags stuffed into their necks? 'Damn lucky you called my boys out, Begum Sahiba,' Inspector Vakeel is saying. 'That was Joseph D'Costa - on our Most Wanted list. Been after him for a year or thereabouts. Absolute black-hearted badmaash. You should see the walls inside that clocktower! Shelves, filled from floor to ceiling with home-made bombs. Enough explosive power to blow this hill into the sea!' Melodrama p life acquiring the colouring of a B snakes following ladders, ladde in the midst of too much incident, Baby Saleem fell ill. As if incapable of assimilating so many goings-on, he closed his eyes and became red and flushed. While Amina awaited the results of Ismail's case against the S while the Brass Mon while Mary entered a state of shock from which she would fully emerge only when Joseph's ghost r while umbilical cord hung in pickle-jar and Mary's chutneys filled our dreams w while Reverend Mother ran the kitchens, my grandfather examined me and said, 'I'm afra the poor lad has typhoid.' 'O God in heaven,' Reverend Mother cried out, 'What dark devil has come, whatsitsname, to sit upon this house?' This is how I have heard the story of the illness which nearly stopped me before I'd started: day and night, at the end of August 1948, mother and grandfa Mary dragged herself out of her guilt and pressed cold fla Reverend Mother sang lullabies and spoone even my father, forgetting momentarily his own disorders, stood flapping helplessly in the doorway. But the night came when Doctor Aziz, looking as broken as an old horse, said, 'There is nothing more I can do. He will be dead by morning.' And in the midst of wailing women and the incipient labour of my mother who had been pushed into it by grief and the tearing of Mary Pereira's ha a servant announced Dr S who handed my grandfather a little bottle and said, 'I make no bones about it: this is kill or cure. T then wait and see.' My grandfather, sitting head in hands in the rubble of his medical learning, asked, 'What is it?' And Dr Schaapsteker, nearly eighty-two, tongue flicking at the corners of his mouth: 'Diluted venene of the king cobra. It has been known to work.' Snakes can lead to triumph, just as ladders can be descended: my grandfather, knowing I would die anyway, administered the cobra poison. The family stood and watched while poison spread through the child's body ... and six hours later, my temperature had returned to normal. After that, my growth-rate lost it but something was given in exchange for what was lost: life, and an early awareness of the ambiguity of snakes. While my temperature came down, my sister was being born at Narlikar's Nursing Home. It was S and the birth was so uneventful, so effortless that it passed virtually unnoticed on Methwold's E because on the same day Ismail Ibrahim visited my parents at the clinic and announced that the case had been won ... While Ismail celebrated, I was grabbin while he cried, 'So much for freezes! Your assets are your own again! By order of the High Court!', I was heaving red-f and while Ismail announced, with a straight face, 'Sinai bhai, the rule of law has won a famous victory,' and avoided my mother's delighted, triumphant eyes, I, Baby Saleem, aged exactly one year, two weeks and one day, hauled myself upright in my cot. The effects of the events of that day were twofold: I grew up with legs that were irretrievably bowed, because I had got
and the Brass Monkey (so called because of her thick thatch of red-gold hair, which would not darken until she was nine) learned that, if she was going to get any attention in her life, she would have to make plenty of noise. 47It has been two whole days since Padma stormed out of my life. For two days, her place at the vat of mango kasaundy has been taken by another woman - also thick of waist, a but, in my eyes, no replacement at all! - while my own dung-lotus has vanished into I don't know where. A balance M I feel.cracks widening down t because suddenly I am alone, without my necessary ear, and it isn't enough. I am seized by a sudden fist of anger: why should I be so unreasonably treated by my one disciple? Other men have recit other men were not so impetuously abandoned. When Valmiki, the author of the Ramayana, dictated his masterpiece to elephant-headed Ganesh, did the god walk out on him halfway? He certainly did not. (Note that, despite my Muslim background, I'm enough of a Bombayite to be well up in Hindu stories, and actually I'm very fond of the image of trunk-nosed, flap-eared Ganesh solemnly taking dictation!) How to dispense with Padma? How give up her ignorance and superstition, necessary counterweights to my miracle-laden omniscience? How to do without her paradoxical earthiness of spirit, which keeps - kept? - my feet on the ground? I have become, it seems to me, the apex of an isosceles triangle, supported equally by twin deities, the wild god of memory and the lotus-goddess of the present... but must I now become reconciled to the narrow one-dimensionality of a straight line? I am, perhaps, hiding behind all these questions. Yes, perhaps that's right. I should speak plainly, without the cloak of a question-mark: our Padma has gone, and I miss her. Yes, that's it. But there is still work to be done: for instance: In the summer of 1956, when most things in the world were still larger than myself, my sister the Brass Monkey developed the curious habit of setting fire to shoes. While Nasser sank ships at Suez, thus slowing down the movements of the world by obliging it to travel around the Cape of Good Hope, my sister was also trying to impede our progress. Obliged to fight for attention, possessed by her need to place herself at the centre of events, even of unpleasant ones (she was my sister, but no prime minister wrote letters to her, no sadhus watched her from their plac unprophesied, un-photographed, her life was a struggle from the start), she carried her war into the world of footwear, hoping, perhaps, that by burning our shoes she would make us stand still long enough to notice that she was there ... she made no attempt at concealing her crimes. When my father entered his room to find a pair of black Oxfords on fire, the Brass Monkey was standing over them, match in hand. His nostrils were assailed by the unprecedented odour of ignited boot-leather, mingled with Cherry Blossom boot-polish and a little Three-In-One oil ... 'Look, Abba!' the Monkey said charmingly, 'Look how pretty -just the exact colour of my hair!' Despite all precautions, the merry red flowers of my sister's obsession blossomed all over the Estate that summer, blooming in the sandals of Nussie-the-duck and the film-magnate footwear of Homi C hair-coloured flames licked at Mr Dubash's down-at-heel suedes and at Lila Sabarmati's stiletto heels. Despite the concealment of matches and the vigilance of servants, the Brass Monkey found her ways, undeterred by punishment and threats. For one year, on and off, Methwold's Estate was assailed by the fumes of until her hair darkened into anonymous brown, and she seemed to lose interest in matches. Amina Sinai, abhorring the idea of beating her children, temperamentally incapable of raising her voice, came close to her wits' and the Monkey was sentenced, for day after day, to silence. This was my mother's chosen disciplinary method: unable to strike us, she ordered us to seal our lips. Some echo, no doubt, of the great silence with which her own mother had tormented Aadam Aziz lingered in her ears - because silence, too, has an echo, hollower and longer-lasting than the reverberations of any sound - and with an emphatic 'Chup!' she would place a finger across her lips and command our tongues to be still. It was a punishment which never failed to co the Brass Monkey, however, was made of less pliant stuff. Soundlessly, behind lips clamped tight as her grandmother's, she plotted the incineration of leather -just as once, long ago, another monkey in another city had performed the act which made inevitable the burning of a leathercloth godown ... She was as beautiful (if somewhat scrawny) as I but she was from the first, mischievous as a whirlwind and noisy as a crowd. Count the windows and vases, broken accidentally-on- number, if you can, the meals that somehow flew off her treacherous dinner-plates, to stain valuable Persian rugs! Silence was, indeed, the worst punishment she c but she bore it cheerfully, standing innocently amid the ruins of broken chairs and shattered ornaments. Mary Pereira said, 'That one! That Monkey! Should have been born with four legs!' But Amina, in whose mind the memory of her narrow escape from giving birth to a two-headed son had obstinately refused to fade, cried, 'Mary! What are you saying? Don't even think such things!' ... Despite my mother's protestations, it was true that the Brass Monkey was as
and, as all the servants and children on Methwold's Estate knew, she had the gift of talking to birds, and to cats. Dogs, too: but after she was bitten, at the age of six, by a supposedly rabid stray, and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to Breach Candy Hospital, every afternoon for three weeks, to be given an injection in the stomach, it seems she either forgot their language or else refused to have any further dealings with them. From birds she from cats she learned a form of dangerous independence. The Brass Monkey was never so furious as when anyone spoke to
desperate for affection, deprived of it by my overpowering shadow, she had a tendency to turn upon anyone who gave her what she wanted, as if she were defending herself against the possibility of being tricked. ... Such as the time when Sonny Ibrahim plucked up his courage to tell her, 'Hey, listen, Saleem's sister - you're a solid type. I'm, um, you know, damn keen on you ...' And at once she marched across to where his father and mother were sipping lassi in the gardens of Sans Souci to say, 'Nussie auntie, I don't know what your Sonny's been getting up to. Only just now I saw him and Cyrus behind a bush, doing such funny rubbing things with their soo-soos!' ... The Brass Monkey h she she acquired the tag of problem- but she and I were close-as-close, in spite of framed letters from Delhi and sadhu-under-the-tap. From the beginning, I decided to treat her as an ally, and, as a result, she never once blamed me for my preeminence in our household, saying, 'What's to blame? Is it your fault if they think you're so great?' (But when, years later, I made the same mistake as Sonny, she treated me just the same.) And it was Monkey who, by answering a certain wrong-number telephone call, began the process of events which led to my accident in a white washing-chest made of slatted wood. Already, at the age of nearlynine, I knew this much: everybody was waiting for me. Midnight and baby-snaps, prophets and prime ministers had created around me a glowing and inescapable mist of expectancy ... in which my father pulled me into his squashy belly in the cool of the cocktail hour to say, 'Great things! My son: what is not in store for you? Great deeds, a great life!' While I, wriggling between jutting lip and big toe, wetting his shirt with my eternally leaking nose-goo, turned scarlet and squealed, 'Let me go, Abba! Everyone will see!' And he, embarrassing me beyond belief, bellowed, 'Let them look! Let the whole world see how I love my son!'... and my grandmother, visiting us one winter, gave me advice, too: 'Just pull up your socks, whatsitsname, and you'll be better than anyone in the whole wide world!' ... Adrift in this haze of anticipation, I had already felt within myself the first movings of that shapeless animal which still, on these Padmaless nights, champs and scratches in my stomach: cursed by a multitude of hopes and nicknames (I had already acquired Sniffer and Snotnose), I became afraid that everyone was wrong - that my much-trumpeted existence might turn out to be utterly useless, void, and without the shred of a purpose. And it was to escape from this beast that I took to hiding myself, from an early age, in my mother's large white washing- because although the creature was inside me, the comforting presence of enveloping soiled linen seemed to lull it into sleep. Outside the washing-chest, surrounded by people who seemed to possess a devastatingly clear sense of purpose, I buried myself in fairy-tales. Hatim Tai and Batman, Superman and Sinbad helped to get me through the nearlynine years. When I went shopping with Mary Pereira - overawed by her ability to tell a chicken's age by looking at its neck, by the sheer determination with which she stared dead pomfrets in the eyes - I became Aladdin, voyagin watching servants dusting vases with a dedication as majestic as it was obscure, I imagined Ali Baba's forty thieves hidin in the garden, staring at Purushottam the sadhu being eroded by water, I turned into the genie of the lamp, and thus avoided, for the most part, the terrible notion that I, alone in the universe, had no idea what I should be, or how I should behave. Purpose: it crept up behind me when I stood staring down from my window at European girls cavorting in the map-shaped pool beside the sea. 'Where do you get it?' I the Brass Monkey, who shared my sky-blue room, jumped half-way out of her skin. I
she was almostseven. It was a very early age at which to be perplexed by meaning. But servants are excluded from washing- school buses, too, are absent. In my nearlyninth year I had begun to attend the Cathedral and John Connon Boys' High School on Outram Road in the old F washed and brushed every morning, I stood at the foot of our two-storey hillock, white-shorted, wearing a blue-striped elastic belt with a snake-buckle, satchel over my shoulder, my mighty cucumber of a no Eyeslice and Hairoil, Sonny Ibrahim and precocious Cyrus-the-great waited too. And on the bus, amid rattling seats and the nostalgic cracks of the window-panes, what certainties! What nearlynine-year-old certitudes about the future! A boast from Sonny: 'I'm going Spain! Chiquitas! Hey, toro, toro!' His satchel held before him like the muleta of Manolete, he enacted his future while the bus rattled around Kemp's Corner, past Thomas Kemp and Co. (Chemists), beneath the Air-India rajah's poster ('See you later, alligator! I'm off to London on Air-India!') and the other hoarding, on which, throughout my childhood, the Kolynos Kid, a gleamtoothed pixie in a green, elfin, chlorophyll hat proclaimed the virtues of Kolynos Toothpaste: 'Keep Teeth Kleen and Keep Teeth Brite! Keep Teeth Kolynos Super White!' The kid on his hoarding, the children in the bus: one-dimensional, flattened by certitude, they knew what they were for. Here is Glandy Keith Colaco, a thyroid balloon of a child with hair already sprouting tuftily on his lip: 'I'm going to run my father' you bastards want to watch movies, you'll have to come an' beg me for seats!' ... And Fat Perce Fishwala, whose obesity is due to nothing but overeating, and who, along with Glandy Keith, occupies the privileged position of class bully: 'Bah! That's nothing! I'll have diamonds and emeralds and moonstones! Pearls as big as my balls!' Fat Perce's father runs the city's othe his great enemy is the son of Mr Fatbhoy, who, being small and intellectual, comes off badly in the war of the pearl-tcsticled children ... And Eyeslice, announcing his future as a Test cricketer, with a fine disregard for
and Hairoil, who is as slicked-down and neat as his brother is curly-topped and dishevelled, says, 'What selfish bums you are! I shall follow my father into the N I shall defend my country!' Whereupon he is pelted with rulers, compasses, inky pellets ... in the school bus, as it clattered past Chowpatty Beach, as it turned left off Marine Drive beside the apartment of my favourite uncle Hanif and headed past Victoria Terminus towards Flora Fountain, past Churchgate Station and Crawford Market, I I was mild-mannered Clark Kent protectin but what on earth was that? 'Hey, Snotnose!' Glandy Keith yelled, 'Hey, whaddya suppose our Sniffer'11 grow up to be?' And the answering yell from Fat Perce Fishwala, 'Pinocchio!' And the rest, joining in, sing a raucous chorus of 'There are no strings on me!' ... while Cyrus-the-great sits quiet as genius and plans the future of the nation's leading nuclear research establishment. And, at home, there was the Brass Monkey with her shoe- and my father, who had emerged from the depths of his collapse to fall, once more, into the folly of tetrapods ... 'Where do you find it?' I
the fisherman's finger pointed, misleadingly, out to sea. Banned from washing-chests: cries of 'Pinocchio! Cucumber-nose! Goo-face!' Concealed in my hiding-place, I was safe from the memory of Miss Kapadia, the teacher at Breach Candy Kindergarten, who had, on my first day at school, turned from her blackboard to greet me, seen my nose, and dropped her duster in alarm, smashing the nail on her big toe, in a screechy but minor echo of my father' buried amongst soiled hankies and crumpled pajamas, I could forget, for a time, my ugliness. Typhoid ' krait- and my early, overheated growth-rate cooled off. By the time I was nearlynine, Sonny Ibrahim was an inch and a half taller than I. But one piece of Baby Saleem seemed immune to disease and extract-of-snakes. Between my eyes, it mushroomed outwards and downwards, as if all my expansionist forces, driven out of the rest of my body, had decided to concentrate on this single incomparable thrust... between my eyes and above my lips, my nose bloomed like a prize marrow. (But then, I was one should try to count one's blessings.) What's in a nose? The usual answer: 'That's simple. A hairs.' But in my case, the answer was simpler still, although, I'm bound to admit, somewhat repellent: what was in my nose was snot. With apologies, I must unfortunately insist on details: nasal congestion obliged me to breathe through my mouth, giving me the air o perennial blockages doomed me to a childhood without perfumes, to days which ignored the odours of musk and chambeli and mango kasaundy and home-made ice-cream: and dirty washing, too. A disability in the world outside washing-chests can be a positive advantage once you're in. But only for the duration of your stay. Purpose-obsessed, I worried about my nose. Dressed in the bitter garments which arrived regularly from my headmistress aunt Alia, I went to school, played French cricket, fought, entered fairy-tales... and worried. (In those days, my aunt Alia had begun to send us an unending stream of children's clothes, into whose seams she had sewn her old maid' the Brass Monkey and I were clothed in her gifts, wearing at first the baby-things of bitterness, then the r I grew up in white shorts starched with the starch of jealousy, while the Monkey wore the pretty flowered frocks of Alia's undimmed envy ... unaware that our wardrobe was binding us in the webs of her revenge, we led our well-dressed lives.) My nose: elephantine as the trunk of Ganesh, it should, I thought, have been a
a smeller without an answer, instead, it was permanently bunged-up, and as useless as a wooden sikh-kabab. Enough. I sat in the washing-ches forgot about the climbing of Mount Everest in 1953 - when grubby Eyeslice giggled, 'Hey, men! You think that Tenzing could climb up Sniffer's face?' - and about the quarrels between my parents over my nose, for which Ahmed Sinai never tired of blaming Amina's father: 'Never before in my family has there been a nose like it! We
royal noses, wife!' Ahmed Sinai had already begun, at that time, to believe in the fictional ancestry he had created for the benefit of William M djinn-sodden, he saw Mughal blood running in his veins... Forgotten, too, the night when I was eight and a half, and my father, djinns on his breath, came into my bedroom to rip the sheets off me and demand: 'What are you up to? Pig! Pig from somewhere?' I puzzled. He roared on. 'Chhi-chhi! Filthy! God punishes boys who do that! Already he's made your nose as big as poplars. He' he'll make your soo-soo shrivel up!' And my mother, arriving nightdressed in the startled room, 'Janum, for pity' the boy was only sleeping.' The djinn roared through my father's lips, possessing him completely: 'Look on his face! Whoever got a nose like that from sleeping?' There are no mirrors in a washing- rude jokes do not enter it, nor pointing fingers. The rage of fathers is muffled by used sheets and discarded brassieres. A washing-chest is a hole in the world, a place which civilization has put outside itself, this makes it the finest of hiding-places. In the washing-chest, I was like Nadir Khan in his underworld, safe from all pressures, concealed from the demands of parents and history ... ... My father, pulling me into his squashy belly, speaking in a voice choked with instant emotion: 'All right, all right, there, there, you' you can
you just have to want it enough! Sleep now ...' And Mary Pereira, echoing him in her little rhyme: 'Anything you want to be, You can be just what-all you want!' It had already occurred to me that our family believed implicitly in good they expected a handsome return for their investment in me. Children get food shelter pocket-money longholidays and love, all of it apparently free gratis, and most of the little fools think it's a sort of compensation for having been born. 'There are no strings on me!' but I, Pin( cchio, saw the strings. Parents are impelled by the profit motive - nothing more, nothing less. For their attentions, they expected, from me, the immense dividend of greatness. Don':. I didn't mind. I was, at that time, a dutiful child. I longed to give them what they wanted, what soothsayers and framed lette I simply did not know how. Where did greatness come from? How did you get some? When?... When I was seven years old, Aadam Aziz and Reverend Mother came to visit us. On my seventh birthday, dutifully, I permitted myself to be dressed up like the boys in t hot and constricted in the outlandish garb, I smiled and smiled. 'See, my little piece-of-the-moon!' Amina cried cutting a cake covered with candied farmyard animals, 'So chweet! Never takes out one tear!' Sandbagging down the floods of tears lurking just beneath my eyes, the tears of heat discomfort and the absence of One Yard Of Chocolates in my pile of presents, I took a slice of cake to Reverend Mother, who was ill in bed. I had been given a doctor' it was around my neck.