JULY 20, 2008-
With all the zeal of the recent convert, Sir Salman Rushdie has, of
late, been overseeing his own distinctly radical image makeover.
The 61-year-old author has been moved (somewhat ill-advisedly, it
must be said) to team a formal black suit with a pair of trendy
trainers.
He has treated himself to an oversized 'bling' watch that might be
more at home on the wrist of, say, David Beckham or the rapper
Jay-Z.
The portly wordsmith has also - those of a sensitive disposition
look away now - even taken to wearing sunglasses indoors.
All in all, the sort of crimes against good taste that could well
find him being issued with a fatwa from the style police.
But Sir Salman wants it to be known that his suspect new look has
left him feeling revitalized.
And as if to play up his new hip credentials, the Indian-born
novelist, who was raised in Britain and went to Rugby School and
Cambridge, has started littering his conversations with trendy
Americanisms - a new favorite being 'go figure' (it means 'work it
out for yourself').
He has even toyed with getting fit - though his attempts at exercise
have been thwarted somewhat by his unfortunate habit of being seized
by sneezing fits.
Ominously, too, the priapic Rushdie has let it be known that a year
after the collapse of his fourth marriage, he is once more in the
mood for love.
Or, as he prefers poetically to describe it, he is at last ready to
'take the risks of the heart again'.
More prosaically, perhaps, he issued a 'come-and-get-me-girls'
invitation in the New York Times last month, when he announced: 'I'm
totally eligible, single and available.'
That dramatic gesture aside, it would not take a literary detective
to work out that the reason for his youthful reinvention - with its
distinct whiff of desperation - can be found in the (much younger)
shape of a member of the fairer sex.
Step forward Riya Sen, a 27-year-old Bollywood actress and model,
who last week was described as the Indian equivalent of ubiquitous
British glamour girl Jordan.
The couple are said to have hit it off after meeting in a Mumbai
nightclub, and sources in India told the Mail this week that Rushdie
has since 'assiduously hunted her down'.
His glamorous prey has, it seems, not been making too serious an
attempt to escape his clutches, and has arranged to stay with Sir
Salman at his Manhattan home.
Meanwhile, her friends say they talk every day for hours on the
phone.
 On the face of it, at least, it is not a romantic coupling that
would routinely emerge if you ran the couple's details through a
dating website.
After all, Rushdie is 5ft 7in tall in his new Nike trainers and, at
61, nearing eligibility for his free bus pass.
He is significantly lacking in the hair department and suffers from
a rare inherited condition called ptosis, which gives him the
droopy-eyed look of a man fighting a losing battle with sleep.
In short, when it comes to looks, Rushdie is no catch.
She, on the other hand, is a babe. A full 34 years his junior, the
sultry Miss Sen has appeared in a string of raunchy films (by
conservative Indian standards at least) and is regularly to be found
semi-naked on the subcontinent's version of the Pirelli Calendar.
His shapely paramour, who lists belly dancing and kickboxing among
her hobbies and revels in her own publicity in her native Mumbai,
has been uncharacteristically tight-lipped about their new-found
friendship.
Indeed, her only public utterance so far has been to say: 'I think
when you are Salman Rushdie, you must get bored with people who
always want to talk to you about literature.
'When we met, we didn't talk about any of that.' (The conversation,
it seems, extended no further than ladies' fashion and her
determinedly lowbrow films.)
So what exactly does the huge-brained Rushdie, whose acclaimed
novel, Midnight's Children, was last week voted the greatest Booker
Prize winner of them all, see in the frothy Miss Sen?
The answer to that question is not quite as obvious as you might
think. Yes, she is desirable. But perhaps the motive for Rushdie's
overtures is revenge.
Rushdie, his friends told me this week, is far from over the breakup
from wife number four, beautiful former Vogue model Padma Lakshmi,
who dumped him a year ago.
They say Salman is still obsessed with Padma and is absolutely
desperate to make her jealous by being seen with this beautiful
girl.
'Without wishing to give too much away, losing Padma put Salman in a
very bad place that he is only now coming out of. He really crumbled
after she left him, and I think he now wants to let her know that he
doesn't need her any more,' said someone at the heart of the
publishing scene, who has known Rushdie for 25 years.
'Part of him might believe that as well, but I'd say he's being a
bit over optimistic. Whatever he tells himself, he is still very raw
at being thrown over by Padma.'
Nor are friends surprised by the timing of the news of his dates
with Miss Sen; nor his parading of the string of other beautiful
women who have escorted him recently.
They coincide with reports that the stunning Miss Lakshmi - a former
bikini-wearing hostess on Italian game shows - is being linked to
68-year-old Wall Street tycoon Teddy Forstmann.
Hardly surprisingly, perhaps, the 37-year-old Miss Lakshmi's
relationship with ladies' man Forstmann, who once had a dalliance
with Elizabeth Hurley, as well as a much-publicized flirtation with
Princess Diana, has not been at all well-received by Rushdie.
But his attempts to get his ex-wife's attention have so far, at
least, been annoyingly fruitless.
As well as his dates with Miss Sen, Rushdie has also recently
squired American Paralympics athlete-turned-model Aimee Mullins to a
series of parties in New York, where he keeps an apartment on the
trendy Upper West Side.
The beautiful Miss Mullins, 32, who was born without shin bones and
had both legs removed below the knees when she was one year old, is
one of several young women he has turned to for company since the
end of his marriage.
Two months ago, he was photographed with 24-year-old actress Olivia
Wilde, who appears in U.S. hospital drama House, draped all over
him.
And a month earlier, he was to be seen nuzzling the neck of actress
Scarlett Johansson and whispering in her ear as he made a somewhat
unlikely appearance in the video for her debut pop single, Falling
Down.
He is said to have told partygoers last month that he finds the
23-year-old blonde Miss Johansson 'very, very hot'.
Yesterday, the author was to be found at a polo event at Cowdray
Park in Sussex squiring a stunning young model named Aita Ighodaro.
Meanwhile, Sir Salman has launched a thinly veiled swipe at
Indian-born, American-raised Miss Lakshmi, who now writes food books
and is a judge on U.S. television cookery competition Top Chef.
He told his friend and fellow writer Kathy Lette in a magazine
interview last month: 'I actually don't think marriage is necessary.
Girls like it, especially if they've never been married before. It's
the dress. Girls want a wedding; they don't want a marriage. If only
you could have weddings without marriages.'
He also blamed his wife's departure for bringing on a severe case of
writer's block which nearly caused him to abandon his latest book,
the historical saga The Enchantress Of Florence.
Intriguingly, some critics have claimed that the sexually charged
heroine, Lady Black Eyes - a seductress who can 'mastermind multiple
orgasms across different continents' and makes men insane with lust
before breaking their hearts - is based on the ravishing Padma.
What is certainly true is that Rushdie has been unable to come to
terms with being the one who got dumped. In the past, it has usually
been the other way around.
Indeed, he had been married to third wife Elizabeth West a mere two
years when he kicked her into touch after meeting the statuesque
Miss Lakshmi (she stood a full 7in taller than him in her heels) at
a party in New York in 1999. Miss West later cited Salman's adultery
in their divorce case.
Rushdie, who was forced to live in hiding for nine years after the
late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran pronounced a fatwa, or religious
edict, calling for Muslims to kill him for his 'blasphemous' 1988
book The Satanic Verses, moved to New York from London in 2000 to be
with the leggy Padma.
But the marriage to Miss Lakshmi (his second marriage to the
American novelist Marianne Wiggins lasted little more than a year)
did not stop him squiring a host of gorgeous women to glittering
parties on both sides of the Atlantic.
On his stag night - thrown by Miss Lette and at which Rushdie was
the only male guest - Nigella Lawson and Dannii Minogue were invited
to send him off.
The evening is said to have ended with a bout of passionate kissing
during a game of spin the bottle.
Then, as the marriage was breaking down last year, he was spotted
kissing beautiful 29-year-old Hollywood actress Rosario Dawson over
dinner at Knightsbridge restaurant Mr Chow.
He and Miss Lakshmi are also said to have fallen out over the
subject of children.
Rushdie, friends say, had been desperately trying to persuade his
wife to start a family. (He already has a son, Zafar, 28, from his
failed first marriage to the late Clarissa Luard, and an 11-year-old
son, Milan, by Miss West.)
As his fourth marriage crumbled, Rushdie complained that as the
ambitious Padma followed her new acting and presenting career in
Hollywood, they barely spent three weeks together in four months.
Finally, sources close to the couple said that she called off the
marriage by e-mail after they had tried and failed to resolve their
differences through couples' counseling.
But friends say Rushdie has remained hopeful of a reconciliation,
particularly as Padma had refused to buy her own home and had been
living in a hotel near the apartment they shared. (She has just
moved into a £5,000-a-month rented flat in Manhattan).
Now, her relationship with the super-rich Forstmann has, it would
seem, put paid to any hopes of a rapprochement.
In her absence, Sir Salman, who was knighted by the Queen last
month, must make do with his dates with the equally gorgeous Miss
Sen.
A source in Mumbai described this week how they met: 'Salman was
with friends at a nightclub called Aurus, and Riya swept in at 1am
looking stunning in a backless dress. He couldn't keep his eyes off
her.
'He arranged for his friend to take him over and introduce him to
Riya's table and they spent the whole night talking. His eyes were
out on stalks.'
From his point of view, of course, it is easy to see the attraction.
As for the lovely Miss Sen, one suspects the television inquisitor
Mrs Merton might ask her: 'So Riya, what first attracted you to the
millionaire Sir Salman Rushdie?'
One doubts the master wordsmith could put it better himself - now
that he's overcome that little case of writer's block, of course.
(By Paul Scott; Courtesy: Daily Mail, UK) |
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