What is the trauma of historical memory in Midnight's Children?

I think that the answer to such a question is present in
how both conditions are impermanent.  The idea of a lack of absolutism in either is a
source of liberation and a source of pain for the Sinai family.  On one hand, the
freedom of India at midnight represents a canvass upon which national identity and
personal notions of identity construction can be rendered.  Yet, the reality that the
Sinai family face, in particular Saleem, is that what had previously defined
consciousness no longer exists.  It is very interesting to note that the novel opens not
with Saleem, but rather a retelling of his family, an element that is no longer with him
at the end of the novel.  The impermanence of both national memory and personal history
are elements that Saleem confronts in trying to construct a new nation, as part of the
council of Midnight's Children, and in his own personal identity, as a child of
Midnight.  These conditions are both personally liberating, but also subjectively
difficult and a challenge.  It is not something that can be easily articulated, other
than to suggest that human freedom brings pain and hurt, but it is the only resource one
has in the construction of national identity and personal
subjectivity.