So among the midnight children were infants with powers of transmutation, flight, prophecy and wizardry… but two of us were born on the stroke of midnight. Saleem and Shiva, Shiva and Saleem, nose and knees and knees and nose… to Shiva, the hour had given the gifts of war (of Rama, who could draw the undrawable bow; of Arjuna and Bhima; the ancient prowess of Jurus and Pandavas united, unstoppably, in him!)… and to me, the greatest talent of all—the ability to look into the hearts and minds of men.

Basic Set Up:

Saleem Sinai, the narrator of Rushdie's novel, is filling us in on his archenemy, Shiva.

Salman Rushdie knows his Hindu mythology inside out. Saleem's archenemy in the novel is a kid called Shiva, who happens to have really big knees. Shiva is also the name of one of the most important Hindu gods: Shiva the god is powerful and scary, though he also has his good side. He's a god of both creation and destruction.

Here Saleem's telling us that not only does the kid Shiva have some of the attributes of the god Shiva, he's also got attributes of other Hindu gods and mythological figures. He has the "gifts of war," which are associated with the god Rama. He has the "prowess" of Arjuna and Bhima, who are two of the Pandava brothers in the famous Hindu epic Mahabharata.

By comparing Shiva to figures in Hindu mythology, Saleem's showing us how these ancient myths and religious stories frame the lives that we live in the present. He's telling us that his battle with Shiva is epic, as epic as the stories in the Mahabharata and other Hindu myths.

In this way, Saleem is situating his own story within the context of a long history of Hindu mythology. He's saying that his story and his battle with Shiva are continuations of this tradition, or links in the chain of this tradition.