After reading Last Tango in Midnight Square

Every book has an image of its own. After reading Midnight's Children, the first thing that presents itself to our impression is a gourmand - he is robust, vigorous, wielding a knife and fork and is feasting, he is a keen lover of vegetarian fruits but he also gulps down wine and meat, and we can even see the muscles of his face twisted by the force of his chewing. His appetite is so great that the plate in front of him is filled with the vivid stories of a dozen or so characters. He devoured their loves, anguish and joys, he devoured their inner hisses and unspoken secrets, he devoured the glory and shame washed away by flowing history, he devoured wars, uprootedness, and religious conflicts, he devoured deception and fidelity, and he devoured death and mourning as well. This is a torrent of joyous language, a mishmash of indulgence and astringency, a balance of coarseness and sensitivity, a torrent that rushes straight down from the clouds, and any doubt about it will be destroyed without mercy, and ultimately, when we close the volume, we will unconsciously fall in love with this gourmand, and you'll realize that there's a special elegance and heart-stopping charm in his wolfing down of food.

For this feast, Rushdie actually hints at it, in the last stanza of Midnight's Children, Part 1, "Tick Tock Tick Tock," which reads, "I can tell you with certainty that in order to comprehend a single life, you must swallow the whole world." In other words, it's a premeditated feast that feeds on the world for the purpose of soaking it in the gastric juices of language, molding it into a multitude of living, breathing, slender beings, and, incidentally, putting its own stamp on the labels of the classics that will inevitably descend upon it.

After that key-like phrase that opens the door to understanding throughout the novel, Rushdie goes on to write:

And there are fishermen, and Catherine of Braganza's royal family, and Mumbadevi's coconut rice; a statue of Shiva and a hill at Methwold; a swimming pool shaped like British India and a two-story hill; hair parted in the middle and a nose passed down from Bergerac; a clock tower that refuses to properly chime; a clock tower and a tiny circular alcove; an Englishman who loves Indian satire and who has seduced the wife of an accordion player. The budgerigar, the ceiling fan, the Times of India, these are the baggage I brought into the world ...... So, will you still be surprised that I weigh heavily? The blue Jesus permeated me; Mary's despair, Josef's revolutionary fervor, Alice Pereira's capriciousness ...... it all made me too.