2. Introduction
 Tai is the third character introduced in this
book.
 Tai is a „simple ferryman‟.
 He plies across Lake Dal and Nageen.
 He is a part of symbolism in „Midnight‟s
Children‟.
 His character is dealt in detail in the first
two chapters.

3. SHIKARA

4. Representation of Tai
Tai, in this book, represents the following:
Permanence - Living Anti-thesis to the
Inevitability of change .
Permanence Vs Change.
The Author‟s Medium for Representing
the Inevitability of Change.
Element of Fantasy
Free Spirit of Nature.
A Symbol of Familiarity.
A Revolutionary.

5. Permanence - Living Anti-thesis to
the Inevitability of change
 Tai is man who has no beginning and no
end.
 No one remembers him being young.
“ Nobody could remember when Tai had been
young.”
 During Spring it is Tai‟s Shikara that starts
floating first , as a custom. It is not because
he is popular than other Shikaris, but that he
knows the weather very well to notice the
thaw first.

6. “…oldest boat was up the crack as old folks often are,
was therefore the first craft to move across the
unfrozen lake.”
“…one of the defining images of coming spring.”
 He claims to be older than the mountains.
“ I have watched the mountains being born: I have seen
Emperors die”.
 Oscar, Ilse, Ingrid- Aadam‟s friends in Germany.
They believed in that, “Nothing endures but
change.” Tai stands as a living antithesis to
Oskar- Ilse-Ingrid‟s this belief in the inevitability
of change.

7. Permanence Vs Change.
 Tai is a person who has been resisting change
for a long time. He is permanence
personified.
 This can be shown by his behaviour towards
Aadam after his return from Germany and
especially by his reaction on seeing Aadam‟s
bag containing medicines.
“We haven’t got enough bags at home that you
must bring that thing made of a pig’s skin…”

8.  Tai‟s resistance to change breaks the old
friendship between the doctor and him. They
become antagonists.
“…it sits between doctor and boatman, and
has made them antagonists.
 Bag – symbol of change, progress.
 He is a part of Salman Rushdie that resists
change.
 Salman Rushdie – Kashmiri brought up in
England.
 Tai represents the part of everyman‟s soul
that resists change.

9. The Author’s Medium for
Representing the Inevitability of
Change.
Though Salman Rushdie portrays Tai as a
symbol of Permanence, he also uses Tai to
bring out the importance of change.
 On seeing the changes brought by
Doctor Aadam, Tai decides not to take
bath.
“Meanwhile, the boatman, Tai, had taken his
unexplained decision to give up washing.”
This shows that anything that does
not change stinks – The importance of
change.

10.  Tai announcing that Naseem is sick –
Permanence bringing change.
“Tai bringing an urgent summons to Doctor
Aziz, is about to set history in motion.”

11. Element of Fantasy
 Tai gives out fabricated or imaginary
stories of history.
His story of Jesus Christ as
“bald and gluttonous”.
His story of Emperor Jehangir.
“Ask me what was the Emperor’s dying word-
I tell you it was “Kashmir”.

12. His belief of Fantasy – The
patriarchal aspect of Aadam’s nose.
 He tells Aadam to trust his nose.
“ A nose like that, little idiot, is a great gift. I
say: trust it. When it warns you, look out or
you’ll be finished. Follow your nose and you’ll
go far.”

13. Free Spirit of Nature
 Tai is synonymous with nature.
 Salman gives the description of Tai as, “his face
was a sculpture of wind on water: ripples made of
hide.” – words that attribute nature's qualities in
Tai
 His fellow boatmen look at him with awe and
fear.
“..awe, because, the old half-wit knew the lakes and
hills better than any of his detractors: fear, because of
his claim to an antiquity so immense it defied
numbering.”

14. A Symbol of Familiarity
 Familiarity, in this novel, is represented by
Tai.
“…a quirky, enduring familiar spirit of the
valley.”
 No one can think of the Kashmiri valley
and forget Tai, he is a part of it.
 He is a representation of all boatmen who
live in accord with the nature of the valley.

15. Revolutionary
 Tai – an unspoken revolutionist.
 He fought against what he thought was bad.
e.g. Aadam‟s bag.
 In 1947, he dies trying to give a piece of his
mind to the Indian and Pakistani armies
fighting over the Kashmiri valley.
 He wanted a peaceful Kashmir,
“Kashmir for Kashmiris: that as his line.”

16. Conclusion
Thus Salman Rushdie, though portraying
Tai as a quirky, eccentric character, brings
out in actual fact a symbolic representation
of all that is permanent, natural, free and
familiar.