Character Analysis
Two words: Aishwarya Rai. A few more words: beautiful, dramatic, flirt, bow-chicka-wow-wow. Pia Aziz is a stereotypically flamboyant, melodramatic, man-eating actress.
She's Hanif's wife, Saleem's aunt, and Homi Catrack's woman on the side. Most importantly, she's a drama queen.
Saleem describes her: "My mumani—my aunty—the divine Pia Aziz: to live with her was to exist in the hot sticky heart of a Bombay talkie. […] Deprived of film roles, Pia had turned her life into a feature picture" (2.17.13). She can't act, so she makes her whole life into a movie.
She is the total opposite of her husband. Hanif spends his life trying to get away from melodrama, but she creates as much of it as possible. Even though Saleem already lives in a world filled with magic, Pia seems to create magic even more powerful than the Midnight's Children. Not only does she captivate a horny and pubescent Saleem, but she mesmerizes almost any man that comes into her path. She is not supernatural, but she sure is spellbinding.