Salman Rushdie soaks up India with girlfriend
Salman Rushdie soaks up India with girlfriend
Uttara Choudhury Agence France Presse New Delhi
Indian-born British writer Salman Rushdie, who spent the festive season squiring his model-actress girlfriend around India, says he has been using the trip to soak up the country's atmosphere for his next book.
"It's good to be here just to get the smell of India again," he told India's NDTV channel near the end of a low-key visit expected to conclude this week.
Rushdie, who shot to fame with his novel "Midnight's Children" about the India-Pakistan divide, said he had spent over two and half years working on the book in which India would feature prominently and that the work would most likely take another year to complete.
"The going (on the book) has been hard," said Rushdie.
It was not known Wednesday whether he had left the country, but news reports said he would return to his New York home while his girlfriend, Padma Lakshmi, stayed on in India to research her role for a film in which she is cast as an Indian immigrant living in the United States.
It was the second trip to India since 2000 for Bombay-born Rushdie, who was forced into hiding for nearly a decade in 1989 after the late Iranian leader, Ayotallah Ruhollah Khomeini, accused him of blasphemy against Islam with his novel "The Satanic Verses" and issued an death edict against him.
Rushdie's 2000 trip to India, soon after Iran said it would not support the Ayatollah's de facto death sentence, drew hundreds of demonstrators who burnt him in effigy and accused him of heresy. This time he attracted little attention.
Rushdie said he and his girlfriend had travelled to the capital, New Delhi, the palace-studded desert state of Rajasthan and the southern city of Madras, Lakshmi's home city, "just like two ordinary people".
In fact it was Lakshmi, who recently made her movie debut in the Bollywood comedy "Boom", who was the main focus. "I'm her sidekick. So many people know her while hardly anyone seems to recognise me," Rushdie joked to the media. "I'm here as the boyfriend."
It was only on the final leg of Rushdie's trip this week in Bombay that Muslim hardliners awoke to his presence. About 100 staged a demonstration and threatened to blacken his face with soot -- deemed a grave insult in India.
But Rushdie shrugged off the demonstration. "I am used to such protests," he told NDTV, before checking out of his Bombay hotel room earlier this week.
Lakshmi said she was delighted to be in India with Rushdie who had taken her to Bombay to show her his family home and introduce her to his writer friends.
"We've never been in India together before -- he hasn't been here for a long time -- and I'm happy to be holding his hand when he is," said Lakshmi.
"I think the combination of the two of us is very seductive. He comes from a very intellectual literary world and I come more from fashion and film. I think he's very funny and makes me laugh." Laskshmi added.
The trip came after Rushdie, 56, and Lakshmi, 32, denied reports last year that they were breaking up.
Lakshmi told the Times of India newspaper she would go back to Madras to prepare for her next film role. "I'm coming home to Madras to watch how my grandmother makes dosas, to listen to Indian classical music, observe the mannerisms of my aunts and cousins, read everything from (Indian President) Abdul Kalam's autobiography to the (Hindu holy book) Bhagwad Gita.
"She plays an old-fashioned girl. It will require acting," quipped Rushdie.
uc/pmc/lpo India-Rushdie AFP
GetAFP 2.10 -- JAN 15, 2004 08:52:38