Mike Marquard

ENGE – 205

Dr. Rodney Stephens

November 24, 2003

Two-wheeled Gifted Messengers: an Exposé of Travelers, Gifts, and Narrators

Silver Saucers and electrified magnetic wheels stuck or flying from a continent to land someone on, or simply on, one’s head. All seems so simple now that dearest Saleem is old and telling, but what a life it would have been to live in his shoes and to see through his eyes the saucer eyes of a witch the knees of a bastard enemy or the face that India had seen millions of times on a billboard. Simplicity is the key because all is forgotten Saleempavartishiva all lived together and trades places lives and graces - separate and together allatthesametimeand- seperately. Oh, now it’s begun but where did it all begin? With a birth on new years - life for India, with a nose filled up with draw cords, or perhaps even on the shining silver bike of Evie Burns. Two wheeled (or rimmed) messengers lead Saleem in Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children to change, or a deliverance, of head or spirit noted by the symbolism of Rushdie (or me).

Yes, on that destined journey into the crevices of Sonny Ibrahim’s head, Rushdie chose this two-wheeled magnificent example of a time change, or a magic portal, to send Saleem sailing into not only one head, but to the many heads of all of the Midnight’s Children. Coincidence or not, it was a lovely way to gain at least my attention as I churned through a monstrosity of words culture lessons. Not only would Saleem’s head become a meeting place for the Midnight’s Children, but it also, as it has always been, a meeting place for all readers from everywhere. In sense we are the result and derivative being brought together by Saleem’s (or Rushdie’s – but isn’t all the same because characters are just in the head of the narrator are in the head of the author) head.

…Enough of that though because it doesn’t really matter all too much as to our topic of lovely revolving and moving things carried to our minds by wheels. So, as the reader sees/reads/finds through SaleemRushdie’s words/life, Saleem’s first journey on an object with two wheels (Evie’s shining silver Lone Ranger replica) causes him to undergo a change in head. His next journey on a bicycle is that of the Brass Monkey’s while he tries to show off his skills unsuccessfully to Evie. Finally, he has figured out how to ride, but this journey is different because he has control – not only over the bicycle – but also the control to know Evie’s thoughts. Onceagain, this journey comes unwound, like the first, ravaging out of control down a street intoaprotestof governmenthating pro test ers. The journey falls falls falls down the hill into the crowd of protesters and after Saleem’s ignorance and jumbled loss in language the groups do what he says and start thrashing each other to hell. Again, this journey on a bicycle would start another change, this time a bigger sort of meeting…a riot which would form into a war which would form into partition and more war and more hate which could all be found eventually within Saleem since he is our India through Rushdie – and – (don’t forget) his representative birth.

But I want to ask myself the questions because it seems like that may be what SaleemRushdie wants me to do. I want to know why I’m so happy and so excited when Saleem climbs on these bicycles - these instruments of faith upon two points touching the ground - a faith in balance which comes from the safety of speed which can become so dangerous? Hack hack hack away at the answers. Saleem doesn’t seem to always be happy on his experiences with bicycles – he seems to be scared as hell, or in a state of pure evil breaking into minds and protests, starting hate, fear, or war. Maybe it’s this pure amazement over the contrast between Saleem’s mentality and physicality always tugging back and forth between pure grace with words, and absolute clownshoes with physical ability and appearance. I start to feel more and more through other two-wheeled messengers of change and other shining silver objects that there is a little more to this idiotic clumsiness and Saleem’s head, something involving gifts of both the natural kind from God, birth, country or whatever you want to believe, and the kind given for a birthday or a wedding or St. Nick’s Day in shoes outside doorways leaving me so happy to receive that two dollar bill and Twix bar to pride around at school in the pursuing day.

Let’s analyze, shall we? Saleem never rides any two-wheeled messengers (bicycles), or has any desire to, until he sees Evie Burns priding around on her bike and he feels the need to impress her. In order to do so, Saleem determines, “I would have to share her interests, to make her passions mine […] I resolved to learn how to ride a bike” (186). Eventually Evie lends Saleem her bike leading him to crash his head against Sonny’s which leads to conferences with the Children of Midnight. Gift one, but not the end of Evie. Again, trying to impress, after learning some skills on a bicycle Saleem climbs aboard the two-wheeled messenger of JamiliaMonkey leading to an investigation and torture of a mind and the start of what would turn into quite a war. Gift two. Now for a real gift of the birthday kind – for his sixteenth birthday Saleem receives a Lambretta scooter, which leads him into adventure, discovery, and adulthood – yet again turns destructive. Gift three.

Air flying by flapping white long pants as a new scooter screams through the streets of Pakistan on Saleem’s new adventure of sniffing the air and following the trail of what smells real true – good. Discovery runs into the gigantic cucumber nose of Saleem as he takes his two wheeled messenger into the different segments of towns smelling out good danger likes dislikes and personal realization. He even finds out dirty secrets within himself through his nose on his many voyages. But Saleem soon finds his two-wheeled magnificent creature spewing him into danger – a danger he chooses. Speeding the streets at night Saleem dodges out the danger of bombs on forbidden roads and plays dodgeball with planes overhead until finally he runs out of room and is knocked from the comfort of two balance points as a bomb rocks his house killing his parents and tossing something back to him to keep and fill and empty. A gift four?

Certainly it has round parts. It’s shiny and silver. A gift at somepointoranother. But, is this round shiny silver spittoon a two-wheeled messenger? It delivers something to Saleem as it lands on his head after an explosion, though not necessarily an uplifting gift like the bicycles and scooters before it. A problem though, it’s not really two wheeled or a messenger. “But, I know!” I shout as I find my gleeful solution. I’m just going to play critic/analyst/ bitterprofessorwhohasntgottenhisnovelpublished and I’ll make up the symbolism of the spittoon. Yes, it is a two-wheeled messenger. Imagine with me please…the spittoon certainly must balance on the ground by a rim of some sort, a rounded bottom resting place, like a plate or the bottom of a cup. Then, on the top it must have a rimmed opening – again a circular opening. So there we have our two wheels, but still the greatest part of all. The messenger – the messenger hides in the spittoons simplest use. To deliver – and that’s what it does for Saleem – just like the scooter and bicycles. A spittoon’s most basic service is to serve as a transport, a messenger, to deliver spit and juices from the mouth to a final dumping point. Looking towards Saleem it is apparent that the spittoon is for him too a messenger. As it knocks him on the head it delivers him, first through the loss of his old self, into a new form, that of a father and a caregiver. This deliverance is a very long one, and it is ended by the loss of the spittoon. The first notation of this fact comes when SaleemRushdie writes/tells, “all of the Saleem’s go pouring out of me” (343). Notice the description of this deliverance in regards to a liquid carrying object by the use of the word “pour.” Again, as Saleem transforms back into his known self he again has with him his prized present. When he is being transported, invisibly, he states, “What I held on to in that ghostly time-and-space: a silver spittoon […] I was saved, perhaps, by the glints of my precious souvenir” (382). Even Saleem is seeing the symbolism reflecting of this shiny silver gift. Finally, in the destruction of the slum beside the Mosque, Saleem loses his gift to the bulldozers, and this final loss lets him get on with his life and to become a final man ready to be a father, to be a husband, and to die.

Gift one – a loaned shiny silver “Arjuna Indiabike in mint condition” (182). A messenger of realization and clarity. Upon that silver, non-scratched frame, with easy to read, clear stickers Saleem takes a voyage, one into Sonny Ibrahim’s head to finally give Saleem some clarity to hear the other children. Gift two – a borrowed girl’s bike – the monkey’s. Again delivering Saleem into a head, but this time not in a physical way. Round and round Evie Burns goes Saleem pushing deeper and deeper into her mind and her secrets until she can actually feel him there and sends him sailing with a mighty push down a hill into the head of a protest saying a few innocent words that would start a riot that would develop into a war. Gift three – a Lambretta scooter given as a sixteenth birthday present by his parents. Again, an obvious two-wheeled messenger, guiding Saleem around Karachi to sniff out the greatest of pleasures and dangers. From hookers to war planes, Saleem sniffs out horrors and goodness, but eventually the Lambretta will be a messenger into something new – a bomb dropped by a plane sends him spinning off and into the ground only to await Gift Four – an obscure two rimmed (wheeled) messenger originally a gift from his Grandfather – a silver spittoon. Without bicycle or scooter this gift would cause Saleem to change, to be delivered, first completely away from himself, but then back into himself and finally into the father/husband/corpse he foresees.

Four main vehicles, messengers of change and fate, lead me throughout a monstrous work by keeping me excited, happy, and always moving with the breeze or stuck with the staleness of a ghetto. The two-wheeled (or rimmed) messengers surely foreshadow Saleem’s changes of head, or at least, now they do because I made them. I created a Saleem from Saleem’s experience through Rushdie. Am I the fourth person? SaleemRushdieMarquard.

Work Cited

Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. London: Vintage, 1995