Home » Reading & Literature » Indo-Anglian Fiction » Midnight's Children On Stage

Midnight's Children On Stage

© Mrinal Bose

According to newspaper reports, Salman Rushdie’s great novel THE MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN is coming on stage early next year. Rushdie does the stage adaptation himself, and the famous Royal Shakespeare Company will produce it.

For Rushdie, it must be a special occasion for rejoicing because he has always wanted the novel to come on stage and screen. Just five years ago the BBC undertook a project to screen it for TV, and in fact had started shooting for it. But it was ultimately shelved as the then Prime Minister of India, Indrakumar Gujral, refused permission for shooting the film on Indian locales. It should be relevant to mention here that Rushdie is not really a much-loved writer in his own land, India, especially to Muslims and religious fundamentalists, and the Government always watches on him since he has ruffled many political figures by lampooning them in his work.

So, what is rummy about the stage version? Ever since its publication in 1981, Midnight’s Children has been read and re-read by countless discerning readers across the globe. Who could forget that searing cry of liberation of Saleem Sinai, the protagonist, who has found himself caught up in different odd and eccentric situations in his endless journey as a perpetual itinerant? And it’s not just a great novel; it is a unique history of Pak-India subcontinent written by a highly sensitive and sensible soul who had to take in the entire trauma in the wake of bifurcation of the land.

Since Rushdie has himself involved in the adaptation and production of the novel, the theatre is expected to have the best possible script. But the most important thing about the big theatre event is its timing. It could not have staged at a more appropriate time. We have been passing through a political climate when the Muslims, as a religious community, are being increasingly hated and marginalised in our daily discourses, post 9/11. Now, the novel centres around a Muslim family, and many of us have not noticed it in the first instance. In the realm of literature it really does not, and should not, matter who your protagonist is, or what community he belongs to. On stage, under the new circumstances, the Muslim identity of characters is now bound to be noticed. And it is for the better. The audience could now have a fresh insight into the mindset of many Muslim characters and reconstruct their image about them, which must be different from the one imposed on them, and a tolerant one, too.