I found Rushdie’s descriptions of the city throughout the novel really interesting. It is associated with the grotesque. It is a fragmented place – the chapter many-headed monsters flits between two experiences of the city at night; Amina and Ahmed Sinai’s. Everything seems subverted and infused with the carnivalesque. Amina enters a building where she confronts a ‘bone-setter’, a ‘monkey-dancer’ and a ‘snake and mongoose man’, complete with queuing cripples and a multitude of monstrous animals. The setting reminds us of a circus; she is going to meet a seer, but it is a perverse version of one and becomes horrifying. In the same way, the narrator invokes the story of Prince Rama in Ahmed’s part. However whilst in the original Hanuman was a helper, here he causes destruction and works against the characters. Throughout the chapter, Rushdie plays on fairytale and popular children’s tropes but subverts them in the context of the city.
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