How It All Goes Down
This is next to impossible. Saleem? Brief or sparse? Yeah, right… when pigs fly.
Here's the deal guys: There are too many characters, too many themes, and too many side plots to make a sensible plot summary.
The story is essentially the autobiography of Saleem Sinai, an ugly man with a huge nose who believes that he controls the fate of India. His nose grants him the power to read minds, but he doesn't use it much, and when his parents take him to the doctor to get his sinuses fixed, he loses his power. His whole family dies during the first Indo Pakistani war, and he loses his memory. It doesn't return until the second Pakistani war. After that, he lives in the slums with magicians and takes up making pickles at a pickle factory.
See? That sounds crazy. It sounds like the worst sci-fi/war fiction ever. Who would want to read that? But Saleem's story is more than the sum of its parts. So a summary like this could never do it justice.
Do yourself a favor: go check it out.