THUS SPAKE RUSHDIE …..
There is a certain allure to the counterfeit books, like infidelity, you know it’s not real but you still reach out to them. A very long time ago, so long that it feels ancient now, that I picked Midnight’s Children from the footpath bookseller, who was soliciting like a hooker to the prospective clients. Deft in his art, he read the colour of the eyes and hawked relentlessly when he saw a prospect succumbing to the well-stacked books and salivating at the thought of netting a good haul.
I first heard about Salman Rushdie in 1989 while walking back home in Srinagar. Two elderly gents, smoking noisily and cursing Rushdie and calling him a heretic, taking solace in the Fatwa issued by Khamenei by the end of the smoke. At home, I heard about him again and threat issued by JKLF for writing a book — SATANIC VERSES — which allegedly desecrated Holy Quran. While the book was written by someone based in London and Fatwa was issued by another one based in Tehran, I saw the fallout on the streets of Srinagar and more so towards the minuscule minority community of KPs. That was my first brush with the conundrum called Kashmir and with Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. Satanic Verses was eventually banned and so it remains till today.
People who read books and more so non-fiction, have an unconscious FOMO for the famous and classic books which are discussed like the most beautiful girl on the college campus. Everyone wants to get associated but very few can afford her. I kept a copy of the book — Midnight’s Children, like a trophy in my bookshelf and assumed an air of an intellectual when someone noticed the book, not knowing I hadn’t opened a page.
I attempted to read the book twice with a gap of few years in between, thinking I was not ready to drink Lord Rushdie’s concoction which the literary world raised a toast to and Rushdie got a Booker for . The book travelled with me over the years and adorned my many bookshelves — from ramshackle ones to the Dewaan of the bed. All through the years, I brought home new ones, read them, cared for them and neatly stacked them alongside Midnight’s Children. She in turn gave me looks of a jilted lover who waited to be betrothed, while I occasionally flipped through it, admiring its antiquity and marks on the pages, reminding me of the love bites of my secret lovers.
2026 — The time arrived and I, like a hungry, sex-starved man, went for the kill. Again, I found it indifferent, I just couldn’t engage, thinking maybe it wasn’t written with the Indian reader in mind. It took me a very long time to finish the book, which despite the flowery and juicy prose which Rushdie is known for, didn’t fire much dopamine within my bone box. Only thing which I could connect with was Rushdie’s Kashmiri ancestry.
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I drudgingly went through the book, reading another book in between to blunt the effects of Rushdie’s tome and prepping myself for another round of forced reading and fulfilling the desire of the decades to finish and proudly proclaim myself — A Rushdie reader. With divine grace and perhaps Rushdie getting bored with his own writing and calling it a wrap, I finished the book with a sense of achievement akin to reaching the summit of a mountain. I heaved a sigh of relief and put the book back in the rack and to my dismay I found SATANIC VERSES luring me to Rushdie’s world once again
