For those of us for whom time stopped a bit when we opened the pages of Midnight’s Children in the early eighties, it is a historic moment. Salman Rushdie will be in Mumbai very soon with the film that he has made along with director Deepa Mehta on the book that forever changed our lives.

It is historic because though Rushdie has been here before, this time it’s more significant than ever. In those dark days when he lived as a fugitive running from his would-be assassins, who would have thought that Rushdie would return someday with the unforgettable Saleem Sinai and his family - people fashioned out of the genius of his homesickness and sense of history?