Joseph-Rushdie-3/7

Saleem Sinai has long been championing himself as a human solid, but this is an instance when he considers that perhaps he may be a human surd.

The selection starts off with a repetition of 'silence' paired with parentheses:

'Silence outside me. A dark room(blinds down). Can't see anything(nothing there to see).

Silence inside me. A connection broken(for ever). Can't hear anything(nothing there to hear).

Silence, like a desert. And a clear, free nose(nasal passages full of air). Air, like a vandal, invading my private places.

Drained. I have been drained. The parahamsa, grounded. (For good).'

First off, we can note the parallels and rhythm of this section: It goes from silence inside, to silence outside, to silence all around. It goes from not being able to hear anything to not being able to see anything. Desert is followed by 'drained'. Fatalistic statements like 'for ever' are followed by 'for good'. It's a wondrous notion that air would be draining something: Saleem blows a lot of hot air, and it seems to have become so full that the draining is removing the surface elements, stripping Saleem's prose style down to a bare minimum. Interestingly enough though, this part is the most obtuse and the most minimal, and continues with the fatal attitude towards language that a lot of this section adopts.

 'Parahama' is an interesting and evocative word choice. Parahamsa is typically represented as a wild swan. The image of a wild swan in the desert is a bizarre pairing, but it works. This is not just any bird that has landed in a desert: It is the bird that most symbolizes water and grace, and the choice to place the swan in the desert is jarring.

The next paragraph Saleem begins with 'O, spell it out, spell it out' and proceeds to spell out his predicament in a detached, almost medical tone: 'obstensible', 'draining of my inflamed sinuses', etc etc. It's a bit strange for Saleem to begin with an 'O' and then proceed to speak in such a matter of fact, detached manner.

The final paragraph finds Saleem outlining all the possible meanings of the last name Sinai,and ones ultimate bondage to their name : Many connections are mythical and Rushdie sets up the prose like an ascending tower to Babel: The paragraph is almost made into one long sentence linking together all different interpretations underneath the repetition of 'also'. It's like Rushdie stacks the meaning upon another: 'But also', 'And there is also', 'and also'. All these meanings layered upon another are ultimately futile by the conclusion of the passage, which mirrors the style of the spare opening: "It is the name of the desert-of barrenness, infertility, dust;the name of the end'. Our language limits are the limits of our world, and if we examine the 'Iceberg theory' populated by Hemingway, we can see that perhaps Rushdie is asserting that no amount of myth or language can escape a larger,ever present force: All of the iceberg is on the surface and there is nothing underneath.