REAL AND MAGICAL SPACES IN SALMAN RUSHDIE’S MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN: THE KASHMIR VALLEY AND THE SUNDARBANS

Abstract

The paper deals with two real regions in India that acquire a magical quality in Salman Rushdie’s novel, Midnight’s Children, the Kashmir Valley, where the narrator-protagonist’s family history begins, and the Sundarbans, where Saleem regains his memory. It begins with Rushdie’s assertion that the spaces and places in the novel are as fictional as they are real, described during a time when the writer no longer lived in India. The paper then introduces Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia which shares key characteristics with the two spaces analysed: both are isolated, yet penetrable, function in relation to surrounding space, and reach their full potential when characters break with traditional time. The main analysis focuses on the realistic elements of the Kashmir Valley and the Sundarbans before highlighting the magical aspects that transform them. In the Kashmir Valley, the landscape is personified, resisting intrusion, particularly from Doctor Aadam Aziz, who returns with a new worldview after studying in Germany. The valley’s timelessness, its association with Paradise, and its extraordinary inhabitants – exemplified by Tai the boatman – are also explored. The Sundarbans similarly resists change, rejecting four strangers – Saleem Sinai, Ayooba Baloch, Farooq Rashid and Shaheed Dar –after initially attempting to assimilate them. Its symbolic association with a tomb, the theme of symbolic death followed by a rebirth and the exaggerated features of the forest are also discussed. The paper concludes by drawing parallels between the two spaces, both of which possess agency, resist intrusion, and function as atemporal havens where unconventional solutions to crises are sought.

Keywords

• paradise
• rebirth
• magical space
• initiation
• rejection of intrusion