A+
Abbott, Edwin 261 (Flatland)
Abd'Allah Ibn Abi Sarh [367
Abracadabra 354
Abraham (Ibrahim)
achha 34
Actors' Equity 163
`Ad 320
Adam 99, 336
adda 52
Aethiop 96 (slaves)
afeem (opium) 76, 96
afreet 22, 122
AIDS 284
Akbar, Grand Mughal, the Magnificient 16, 190
Akhtar, Mirza Saeed (character) 216-240
Akhtar, Mishal (character) 218-239
"Aladdin" 36, [48, [63, [69 (Arabian Nights)
albatross 87
alcohol 26, 208, 209, 215
"Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" 56, 377 (Arabian Nights)
alien 62, 139 (illegals)
The Aliens 62
"All the President's Men" 265
Allahu Akbar 115
alleluiah 190
Alphaville 4
Amalekites (people) 99
amen 190
America 56, 63, 64 (Las Vegas), 70, 71 (Texas), 75, 150
Amin, Idi 54
amphisbaenae 117
Anatolia 96 (slaves), 98
Angrez 53, 59
Annapurna 82
Apuleius, Lucius 243
Aqabah 103
Arabia Orodifera 95
Arabian Nights (The Tales of Thousand Nights and a Night) 36, [48, [63, [69 ("Aladdin"); [69 ("Sinbad and The Old Man of the Sea"); 56, 377 ("Ali Baba")
Arabian Sea 546
Arafat, Yassir 261
Ariadne [24
Armenia 61
Art Deco 347
Aryan 52
Asians 53
Asimov, Isaac 40 (Foundation)
Asmodeus 76
Assam 56-7, 73
assassins 177 (Russian), 362 (hashashin)
Assyria 117 (sphinx),
Astarte 99
Australia 62
avatars 17, 23 (of Jupiter), 82
ayah 12, 37, 66-8
Ayesha (A'isha) 380
Ayesha (character) The Empress 206-215; the butterfly girl 219-240; and Mahound 387 (in the desert), 393-4 (Mahound's sickness and death); `Ayesha' 388-389
Azazael 321
Azrael (Azraeel) 181, 394
B+
baabu-ré 223
Baal (character) 97-126
Baal (Baalzebub) [97
baba 3, 18, 61, 66
Babel 58 (India's)
Babington, Jorge, Doctor (character) 145
babu 61
Babylon 4, 212
bachcha 333
Bachchan, Amitabh 63, 73, 341
Bacon, Francis 62
bandanna 49
Banerji, Bibhutibhushan 245
Bangladesh [206, 243, 259
banyan tree 45, 224
baprebap 21
Bapsy (character) 183
Baranczak, Stanislaw 297
barfi 184 (pista barfi), 249
baron-samedi 289
Bartica 193
Basra 96
Battle Hill 130
Battuta, Billy (character) 260
Battuta, Ibn [260
Baum, L. Frank [22, [282 (yellowbrick lane) (The Wizard of Oz)
Beaton, Cecil 298
Beckett, Samuel 340
beedi 12
Beelzebub 76, 167
Begin, Menachem 261
begum 65, 244 (sahiba)
beheshti 95
Benares (Varanasi) [74
Benarsi sari 74
Bengal 243
The Berlin Wall 347
Besant, Annie 24
bhaenchud
bhai 65, 83, 223 (bhaijan)
bhangra 284
bhel-puri 341
Bhopal 52
bibi 34, 81, 195
Bible 175 (Psalm 137); 206 (Sodom Gen 19); 236 (the parting of the Red Sea, Ex 14); 278 (mote and beam, Matt 7:3); 296 (In the beginning, Joh 1); 297 (precious pearl, Matt 13:45-6); 299 (gift of tongues, Acts 2:1-15); 321 (sons of God, Gen 6:4); 332 (Fall, Rev 12:9); 349 (John the Baptist, Mark 1:1-4)
big bang 4
Big Ben (London) 38
Big Eid 276
Bilal (character) 101-118; (Bilal X) 207-211
Bilal ben Rabah [101
Billimoria, Pimple (character) 12-13
Bilimoria, D. or E. or Fali [12
Binaca smile 53
Birbal 16
birth 3, 8, 10, 11, 17, 84, 87
black holes [61
Black Maria 142
Blake, William 304-5, 318, 338 (Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Blanchflower, Danny 161
blasphemy 49, 66, 69, 102
Blitz 13
Blofeld (character by Ian Fleming) 266-267
the Bloom's 298
Bluto (cartoon) 67
bodhi-tree 16
Bohemia 397
Bokhara rug 7
Bombay 11-31, 35-40, 44-9, 51-75
Bond, James [7 (character by Ian Fleming)
Boniek (character) 348
Bonney, William (Billy the Kid) 263
Bostan 4, 74
Botticelli 61 ("Birth of Venus")
Bradbury, Ray (The Martian Chronicles) 40
Braniff planes
Breach Candy Hospital 28-9, 52
Brecht, Bertold [3
Brick Lane [283
Brickhall 184, 283 (Brickhall Three)
broom 299
Brown, Eustace (character) 27-8
Brunel, Jack (character) 315-6
Bruno, Joe (character) 158
Bruno, Joe [158
Brutus 316
BTCA (Bombay Tiffin Carriers Association) 20
Buddha 20 (buddha-fat), [196 (mantra)
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward [361
Bumper Book of Fairy Tales 197
Burleigh, H.T. [87 ("Joshua")
Burns, Robert [196 ("Tam O'Shanter")
burqa 350
Burton, Richard 36
Busybee 13
butterfly girl 24
Byron, Lord [134 ("The Destruction of Sennacherib")
C+
Cactus Flower [18
Caesar, Julius 245
cannibalism 52 (long pork), 184 (Mailer)
Carmen 397
Carné, Marcel (Les enfants du paradis) [34
Carradine, David 278
Carrol, Lewis [54 (Alice in Wonderland); [58 (Through the Looking-Glass)
Celebrity 16
chaat 248
chai 184 (chaloo), 353 (tcha)
chamcha 54, 83
Chamcha, Saladin (Salahuddin Chamchawala) 3-10, 17, 33-87, 511-547
Chamchawala, Changez (character) 36, 40-9, 63-73, 511-535, 546
Chamchawala, Nasreen (character) 39-40, 42, 44-7
Chamchawala, Nasreen (II) (character) 47-8, 64-, 511
Chanakya 42
Chandela 12 (period), 70 (bronze)
Channel (see English Channel)
Chanukah 298
Charles I 220
Charles II 340
Charulata 342
Château Talbot 182
Chatnapatna 221
Chaudhuri, Nirad 398
Cheshire-Cat 166
Chevalier, Maurice 266
chhatri 26
chhi chhi 13
chimera 299, 301, 370
chin chin 183
Chingiz Khan (Genghiz) [36
Chola Natraj 14
Chomolungma (Mt. Everest) [3, 82
chootia 80
Christ (see Jesus)
Chu Chin Chow [327
Circassian eunuchs 376
Circe 24
circumscision 60
Claudette (character) 147
Cleopatra's Needle (London) 334
Club Hot Wax 291
cobra 78
Coca Cola 52 (Coke), (Coca-Colonization)
cocaine 76
Cochin 76
Cohen, Otto (Cone) 297
coir 355
Colaba 14
Collingwood Expedition 195
Columbus, Cristopher 54
communism, CPI(M) 537,
Cone, Alleluia (character, Alicja, Allie) 8, 30-2, [92, 295; 31, 85, 309 (icewoman, ice queen, frosty berg); 313 (fairy)
Cone, Elena (character, Yelyena)
Cone, Otto (character, Cohen) 295, 297-8
Cone Mountain 92-126
Cowper, William [95
crashpad 306
CRC (Community Relations Council) 286
crore 344
crorepati 64
Cruz, Martin de la (character) 138
Cuba 312
Curran, John Philpot [158
The Curtain (Hijab) 376-389
D+
dabba 18 (stealers), 331
dabbawalla 11 (lunch-runner), 18, 331
dada 56
Daedalus [5
dai 22
The Daily 13
Dajjal 371
Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso) 84
dalda (ghee) 54
dark stars 12 (darkened), 61, 349
Darwin, Charles 75, 251 (great Charles, Origin of Species)
death 15, 16,
Defoe, Daniel (epigraph) The History of the Devil, [173 (A Journal of the Plague Years)
Deep Throat 265
Depo-Provera 252
Desh 206-215
Deutero-Isaiah 323
Devi, Phoolan 13, 58, 263
dhaba 56
Dhaka 243
dharma bums 174
Dharraamm 3
Dharwendra 350
Dhaulagiri 82
dhoti 38, 224
Diamond, Henry (Enrique) (character) 138, 143
Diamond, Rosa (character) 129-
Din, Sarpanch Muhammad (character) 225
Disney 195 (Disneyish)
djellabah 81
djinn 22, 48, 117, 122, 275
Doordarshan 14
The Doors [3
dosa 246, 258 (masala)
dreams 22, 32, 392
Dresden 65
Dumsday, Eugene 75-7, 79-81, ?
Durga Khote 73
Dynasty 265
E+
Eclogues (Virgil) 248
Egypt 103
ekdumjaldi 12
electric shock treatment (EST) [338 (plug him in)
elephant joke 300
The Elephant Man [275
Eliot, T.S. [287 ("The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock")
Elizabeth I, Queen 280 (Gloriana), [332 (fairy-queen)
England 4-5, 8-10, 31, 37-48
English Channel 3, 9, Sleeve (La Manche) 5
Eros 174
Essequibo (river) 193
Evans, Cadwallader (character) 152
Everest Vilas 13
F+
Faiz, Faiz Ahmed 334
Falkland Road 52
Falklands War 175
falling, 3 (Gibreel & Saladin), 4 (stars), 5 (angelicdevilish), 8 (birth), 14-5 (Rekha and children, suicide), 133 (matter of tumbles), 181 (Pamela's parents, suicide), 298 (Otto Cone, suicide) 332 (Tumble of Woman and Man, Qur'an/Bible)
Family Planning Doll 224, 475
Fanon, Franz 353 [The Wretched of the Earth]
farangis 93
Farishta, Gibreel (character) 3-33, 17 (Ismail Najmuddin), 63, 75-87, 91-126 (first dream section), 130-156, 189-202, 205-240 (second dream section), 294, 295-356, 359-394 (third dream section), 473-507 (fourth dream section),
farishta 17
Fate 99
fauntleroy 45
Fawkes, Guy [291, [293
fedora 177
felo de se 324
Femina, Jerry della 266
Filmmela 350
Fitzgerald, Edward 397
flame of the forest 45
Fleming, Ian (see Bond, James)
Flight AI-420 4
Flintstones 42
forbidden foods 29, 31
Frazer, James [398
Frederick (character in the film by Carné) 34
funtoosh 81, 344
G+
Gagari 536
Gama, Vasco da 76
Gandhi, Bhupen (character) 53-8
Gandhi, Indira [28
Gandhi, Rajiv 56
Gandhi, Sanjay [28
Ganesh (Ganpati Baba) 24
Ganpati Baba (Ganesh) 24
Garbo, Greta 26
gargoyle 64
Garrick Club 163
gazal (ghazal) 3, 9, 334
Gautama, Siddharta (Buddha) 16
Gehenna 254
Genghiz Khan (Chingiz) [36
Geographer's London 156
ghee (dalda) 54, [166
ghost 22, 58, 61, 66
Gibreel, Archangel 123, 239, 315 (Angel of the Recitation)
Ginsberg, Allen [312 (Howl)
Gitanjali (Tagore) 248
Glass Bertha 169
glass skin 33-4; 30, 131 (skin of ice); 169 (Glass Bertha)
Glenn (character, dog) 176
Gloriana (Elizabeth I, Queen) 280, 306 (virgin queen)
Goa 398
god 21, 30; 41, 48 (father); 75 (guard); 92 (allgood allahgod); 99 (Allah); 111 (Allah Ishvar God); 182, 289 (I am); 216; 393-394
Godard, Jean-Luc [4
The Golden Bough (Frazer) 398
gopi 16
Gothenburg 26
Grahame, Kenneth [54 (The Wind in the Willows)
Gramsci, Antonio [15, 84-5
Granger 147
Granny Ripper 287
Grant, Ulysses S. [283
Grant Road 37
Gremlins 182
Griffith, D. W. [11
gryphon 117
"Guantanamera" 312
Gujranwala 159
gulab jaman (jamum) 248
Gulistan [4, [245
Gurdjijeff, Georgy S. 299
Guyana [193
Gwalior 342
H+
Hafsah [382
Hafsah (character) 382
Hagar 91, 95, 99
haj 236, 243
Halévy, Ludovic 397
Hamlet (Shakespeare)
Hamza (character) 104-125
Hamza, Amir [69, [104
Hamza-nama cloths 69-70, 292
Handel, Georg Friedrich 194 (Messiah)
Hanuman 24
haramzada 27
Haram Sharif (Kaaba) 235
haramzadi 250
Hare Krishna 174
harpy 92
Harrods 137
hashashin (assassin) 362
hashish 76, 96
Harold Arroweye 130
Hastings 130
Hauer, Rutger 268 (Blade Runner)
Hawn, Goldie 18 [Cactus Flower
Headroom, Max [63
Heinz 286
Henley, William Ernest [256 ("Invictus")
Henty, G.A. 229
Herbert, Zbigniew 297
Hesse, Herman 252 (Der Steppenwolf)
Heston, Charlton 132
Higham, Henry 182
hijab [376
Hijaz 93
hijra (eunuch) 54 (Amazonic), 80,
hijra (hegira) 125
the Himalayas 4
Hind (character) 96-125, 392-393
Hind 70, [96
Hindustan 54
Hindustani 58
hippogriff 120
Hira Mountain [92
Hit 99
Hitler, Adolf [316 (Hawful Hadolf)
Ho Chi Minh 177
Hocus Pocus 354
Hoffman, Dustin 341
Holbrook, Hal (character) 265
homosexuality 22, 23, 25, [122
Hong Kong 24
Hopkins, Matthew 1182
Horace [326 (Odes)
Hosanna 190
houri 117
The House of the Black Stone 94, 97, 98, 99, 100-124, 235 (Haram Sharif), 359
Hubal (Abel) 99, 373 (colossus)
hubshee 255
Hughes, Thomas [267 (Tom Brown's School Days)
Hurlingham 147
Huxley, Aldous [40 (Brave New World)
hybrid 6, 7
I+
Iago (character of William Shakespeare) 315
Iblis 327
Ibrahim 17, 95, 99, [276 (Big Eid)
Ibrahim (character) 377 (the butcher)
Icarus [5
ice queen (-> Alleluia Cone)
The Illustrated Weekly 16
The Imam (character) 205-215
immigration 4
insomnia 24, 32, 82-3
Isa (Jesus) 118 (Qur'an)
Isis 244
islam (Submission) 125, 289
Ismail 17 (Gibreel), 95, [276 (Big Eid)
Ismailis 209
Ithuriel 324
J+
jacaranda 45
jackfruit 17, 45
Jackson, Jessie [192
Jackson, Mahalia 298
Jacob [122-4
Jahannum 254
Jahilia 93-126, 215
Jahweh 323
Jaipur 342
Jaisalmer 26, 70
Jalandri 82
jalebi 184, 248
James, Henry 397
Jamme Masjid 285
Janab 323
Japan 135 (Japonaiserie)
Jarry, Alfred 297 (Ubu Roi)
Jayapradha 350
Jean of Arc 186
Jefferson, Thomas [162
Jerry 138
Jerusalem 110, 212
Jesus [23, 84 (Christ), [118
Jews 31 (yahudan), 60-1, 96, 297-8
ji 12
"Jingle Bells" 131
jodhpur 141
St. John the Divine 245
Johnson, Hanif 185
Jones, Grace 292
Joshi, Jamshed `Jumpy' 172-188, 243
Joyce, James [5, [188, [283 (Ulysses); 260 (Finnegans Wake);
juggernaut 254
Julia, Juan (character) 149
Jupiter (god) 23, 84
Jurhum 91
Juwairiyah [382
Juwairiyah (character) 382
K+
K2 82
ka 322
Kaaba [94, [97, 235 (Haram Sharif)
kabaddi 58
kachori
kahin 234
Kain 99
Kali 26
Kan ma kan... 143
Kanchenjunga 82
Kannada 70
Kanya Kumari (Kanyakumari, Cape Comorin) 27
Kapoor, Raj [5
Karim, Abdul (The Munshi) 292
Karnataka 37
Kashmir [45, 65, 342
Kasturba 37, 45, 66
Katha-Sarit-Sagar (The Ocean of the Streams of Story) 342
kathputli 311
Keats, John [62 ("Ode to a Nightingale")
Kelly, Grace 26
Kelly, Ned 263
Kennedy Onassis, Jacqueline 179
Kenya [140
Kenyatta, Jomo [140
Kerala 26, 70, 76
Kermit the Frog 62, 140
Kerouac, Jack [174 (Dharma Bums)
Khadija (character) 225 (Din),
Khadija 22, [225
khali-pili kalaas 46
Khalid (character) 95-125 (M), 210 (I), 381 (I, General)
Khalid ibn al-Walid [95
Khan, Aga 26, 209
Khanna, Vinod 262, 350
khattam-shud 122
Khayyam, Omar [172 (Rubayat), 397
khir 341
Khote, Durga 73
Kim (Kipling) [158
Kimi 350
Kipling, Rudyard [158-159 (Kim), [176 (The Jungle Book),
kipper 44, 46
Kiss of the Spiderwoman [24
klims and kleens 14
Kraft cheese 41
kreplach 297
Kung Fu 278
Kureishi, Hanif [185, [228
Kuri, Yoji 317
Kurla 14
kurta 174
Kurus 283 (Mahabharata)
L+
Laburnum 299
lafanga 27
lala 15
Lalique chrystal 14 [René Lalique]
Lamarck, Jean Baptiste-Pierre Antoine de 5, 251
Lambrakis, Gregory 271
lassi 341
Lat (Al-Lat, Lato, Ilat) 8, 91, 100-126, 392, 394
lathi-charges 28, 75
Le Fay, Morgan 144
Lee, Bruce 244
Lee, Robert E. [283
Lee, Ulysses E. (character) 283
Legree, Simon (character by Stowe) 292, 294
Levantine 326
Lime, Frank (character)
"Little Black Sambo" 294
"Little Red Riding Hood" [136
locus classicus 314
London 3, 4, 18, 31, 33, 35, 37 (eelowen deeowen), 38-43, 156
Long, Edward 292
lote-tree (Qur'an 53:14) 91, 235
Love Story (Segal) 64
Lovelace, Pamela 49-51, 53, 59, 85
LSD [306 (sugar-lump)
Lucifer 76, 131
Lucretius 276
"La lutte continue" 264
Luzhin (character of Vladimir Nabokov) 311
M+
MacCool, Finn 179
Machzikel HaDath synagogue 285
MacMurray 307
MacSween 152
Madaura (Morocco) 243
Madonna 245
The Magnificient Seven 64
Mahabharata 283
Mahagonny 4
maharaj 12
Mahavilayet 283
Mahmood, singer (character) 207
Mahound (character) 92-125, 379 (Nib), 393-4 (sickness and death)
Mailer, Norman [184 (Cannibals and Christians)
Maimunah [382
Maimunah (character) 382
Makalu 82
Malabar Hill 13
mala'ikah/malak 336
Malory, Sir Thomas [144 (Morte d'Athur)
Mamoulian, Mimi 60-3
Manaf 99
Manaslu 82
Manat 91, 99-126
Manet, Edouard 61 ("Olympia")
Marine Drive 13
Maudsley Hospital 339
manticore 102, 115-8, 167, 361 (manticorps)
mantra 196 (om mani padmè hum)
Mao Tse Tung (Chedong) 296
Marinetti, Filippo Tommasso 311
Mohican 326
Martello tower 147
Marwah 95
Mary the Copt [382
Mary the Copt (character) 382
Maryam (Mary) 118
masala dosa 258
masala movie 319
Maslama, John (character) 190
Matilda 62
Matthau, Walter 18 [Cactus Flower]
Mau Mau [140
McCoy 250
Mecca 24, 48, 70, 235 (Mecca Sharif), 239
Meerut 537, soldiers 230
Mehta, Jatinder Singh 284
Meilhac, Henri 397
"Mera joota hai japani" (O, my shoes are Japanese) 5
Merchant, Ismail [7
Merchant, Rekha (character) 7-9, 14, 25-32, 319, 350
Merlin 144
The Message (film) 272 (Al-Risala, Mohammed, the Messenger of God)
Mesopotamia 103
metamorphosis 5, 7, 23, 30
Mhatre, Babasaheb (character) 19-23, 25
Michelin 60, 271
Midian 103
Milosz, Czeslaw 297
Milton, John 324 (Paradise Lost)
Miranda [53 (The Tempest) (Shakespeare)
Miranda, George (character) 53-57
Miss Piggy 62
Mistry, Dr. (character) 197
Mistry, Rohinton [197
Mithun 350
mongoose 78
Monophysite 96
Monroe, Marilyn 61
Moscow Road 299
Moseley, Uriah 328
Moses 110
Mosley 292
mosque 120
Mount Everest (Chomonglungma) 3, [82, 85
movies 11-7, 108 (techniques),
Mughal 26, 52, 70
"Mughal-e-Azam" 334
Muhammad (The Prophet) 22, 24, 63, 70, [92, [93 (Mahomet, MoeHammered), 184 (Sufyan); [321
mullah 276
Mumba Devi [17
Mumbai (Bombay) 17
mummyji 17
The Munsters 62
muqaddam 19
Musa (character) 378 (the grocer)
Musaylima the Liar [190
"Music of the Spheres" 190
Muspellheim 254
mutation 5
Muttalib 92
N+
na 59
Nabatean 96, 99
Nabokov, Vladimir [269 (nymphet, Lolita); 211 (The Defense)
al-Nafzawi, Sheikh [245 The Perfumed Garden (Gulistan)
Najmuddin, Ismail (->Farishta, Gibreel)
Najmuddin, Naima (character) 17-9, 22
Najmuddin, Senior (character) 19
Nakruh 99
namaqool 7
Namche Bazar 303
Nandi bulls 71
Nanga Parbat 82
Narcissus [24
narrator (the authorial voice, 'I') 10, 25, 93, 133, 251, 256, [318-319, 397, 408-409, 424-425
National Front 283
natyam 74
nawab (nabob) 59
Neechayvala 318-319
Nelson's Column (London) 38
Never-Never 55
Nib (The Prophet) 379
Nicholson, Jack [353
Nietzsche, Friedrich 216
Nigel (character) 346
Nightingale, Florence [292
Nightmare on Elm Street [252
nikah ceremony 58
Notting Hill 59, 278
Novak, Kim (character) 158-164
Novak, Kim [158
Nubia 96 (slaves)
O+
obeah 280, 293, 330
"The Ocean of the Streams of Story" (Katha-Sarit-Sagar) 342
Ogilvy, David
Olympians 15
The Omen [252
Ooparvala 318-319
Op Art 39
opobalsam trees 93
Osman 221-240
Ovid [6, 276 (Metamorphoses)
Oz [22, 55, [75
P+
paan 229
pachy (pachyderm) 299
Packy 157, 163
padyatra 73, 488
Pagal Khana 341, 346
Pahlevi, Reza 14
Pakistan 45 (war), 56, 243
Pali Hill 64
Palmyra 103
panchayat 222, 235
Pandavas 283 (Mahabharata)
Pandemonium 352
Pandora 217 (imps)
pani nani 209
panjandrum 45
Paradise 393
Parsi 38 (style),
Partido Socialista 173
patchouli 174
Pathfinder pilot 181
Pavarotti, Luciano 341
Pemba, Sherpa 198
The Perfumed Garden (Gulistan)245
Peristan 55, 217
Perón, Juan 147
Perownistan 230
Persepolis 14
Persia 103
Persian Gulf 33
Petra 103
Phillips, Hyacinth (character) 164
Phillips, Orphia 328
Phillips, Wendell [158
phoenix 84
phutt 21
physic 21
Picabia 295
pice 185
Pinkwalla (character Sewsunker Ram) 291, 293
pir 185, 234
pista barfi 184
pooja 68
Popey (cartoon) 66
Powell, Enoch 186, 292
The Prime Minister (Indira Gandhi) 28
The Prince of Darkness 290
The Prophet (-> Muhammad)
Prospero Players [The Tempest (Shakespeare)] 49, 74, 79
protean 201
Puig, Manuel [24
pukka 326
Punch 316
Pune (Poona) 17
punkah 231
punkah-walla 231
purana 24
The Pure Hell of St Trinians 42
Pygmalien [62 (Pygmalion)
Pynchon, Thomas [3
Q+
qalmah (qualmah) 105, 106, 239, 335, 373-4, 392
qasidah 97
Qatar 34
Quant hairstyle 52 [Mary Quant]
Qur'an [91 (lote-tree, 53:14); 110, 212, [336 (Night Journey 17:1); 118 (Isa 2:87); [91, 124 ("The Star" 53:); 125 (al-qur'an), Quran-Sharif 245; 323 (O Children of Adam, 7:27); 332 (Fall, 38:78); 336 (Quran clearly states, 18:50, 2:34, 17:61); 336 (Wilt thou place, 2:30); 354 (Tree of Immortality, 7:20)
Qureishi, Mrs. (character) 228-239
R+
Rabanne, Paco 305
Rabanus Maurus [95 (De rerum naturis)
radio 210
`rail roko' demonstration 75
raita 341
rajah 40
rajaz verses 97
Rajneesh, Bhagwan Sri (Osho) 17
Rama, D. W. (character) 11, 12 (studios), 23
Ramachandran, M.G. (MGR) 73
Ramayana 24
Ramlah [382
Ramlah (character) 382
Rao, N.T. Rama 28, 73
Red Fort (Lal Qual'ah) [64
Redgrave, Vanessa 341
Reeve, Christopher 341
Rehana the Jew [382
Rehana the Jew (character) 382
Renata (character) 207
revelation 5
Richalmus, Monk 321
Ridley (character) 62-3
Rig-Veda 245
rishi 185
Ripper, Granny (character) 183,
Ripper, Jack the [183
Roberts, Sylvester (character, Uhuru Simba) 285
roc 117
The Rolling Stones [286 ("Sympathy for the Devil")
Rotary Club 76
"Rule, Britannia!" 6
Rushdie, Salman [101
S+
Sadi [4
Safa 95
Safia [382
Safia (character) 382
Safwan [387
Safwan (character) 387
sahib 35, 66, 244
Saladin, Sultan 175
salah 27, 57
Salman Farsi (character) 101-118 (M), 210 (I), 360-
Salman al-Farisi [101
Salomon 103
salwar 275
Samant, Datta 55
samosa 184
Santacruz airport 39
sari 7, 15, 40, 66; sari-pallu 22
Sartre, Jean-Paul 72
satanic verses 6 (verses of his own), 8 (verses in a language he did not understand), 91 (his soft seductive verses), 97 (the poetry competition), 123 (herons or swans) (satanic ... foul verses), 124 (abrogation of the verses), 340 (These are exalted), 373 (Exalted birds)
Saturnine 13
satyr 244
Sawdah [382
Sawdah (character) 382
sayonara 313
Scandal Point 13, 35, 55, 64-65, 546
Schwarzenegger, Arnold 268
science-fiction [40
Scott, Ridley [62
Seacole, Mary 292
Searle, Ronald [42
Segal, Erich [64 (Love Story)
Sellers, Peter 51
Semjaza 321
Sesame Street 62
seven-tiles 58
Severus, Septimus 38, 292
Sewsunker, Ram 291, 293
Shaandaar 184-7
Shah 353
Shaitan (Satan) 48, 91-124, 210, 315
Shakespeare, William 109; [49 (The Tempest); [133 (King Lear); [172, 248, 315, 398 (Othello); 228, 262 (Hamlet); 316 (Julius Caesar); [370 (Romeo and Juliet)
Shangri-La 295
shareef 156 (London), 235 (Mecca) (Haram), 250
Shark (Quraysh) 95, 103
Shatchacha 353
Shaw, George Bernard 49, 62, 71 (The Millionairess); (Pygmalion)
Shaw, Run Run 342
Sheba (Saba) 103, 103 (Queen)
Shelley, Mary [348 (Frankenstein)
Sher Khan 176
Shiv Sena 55, 537
shiksa 268
The Shining [252, [353
Shree 420 (Mr. 420) 5
Shufflebotham, Dora (character) 134
sickness 7, 11, 15, 25-9
Sikh 79
Simba, Uhuru (character, Sylvester Roberts) 267, 285
Simbel, Karim Abu, the Grandee (character) 96-125, 392-393
simurgh (simurg) 120
Singer, Isaac Bashevis 301 (Satan in Goray)
Singer, Israel Joseph 301 (The Family Carnovsky)
Singh (characters) 78-87 (Dara, Buta, Man); 54 (Khalida/Kerleeda)
Singh, Buta [78
Singh, Dara [78
Singh, Man [78
Sirdarji 86 (cut-sird)
sivayyan 341
Skinner, B. F. 397
skol 183
Skorpios, island of 179
"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" 195
Society 16
Sodom 206
Soho (London) 322
Sol, Aurora del (character) 147
Solomon 380 (horses)
Southall [283
Spurs (Tottenham Hotspurs FC) 161
Sridevi 262, 341, 350
Srinivas Sri S. 224
A Star Is Born [344
Star Wars 62
Stein, Jock (character) 158-
Stein, Jock [158
Stevenson, Robert Louis [340 (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
St.Lucia 346
Stowe, Harriet Beecher [267, [292, [294 (Uncle Tom's Cabin)
St. Paul's Carthedral (London) 39, [327
Struwelpeter 274 (Aileen)
Submission (Islam)
Sufyan, Abu [184
Sufyan, Anahita (character) 186
Sufyan, Mishal (character) 186
Sufyan, Muhammad (character) 184, 243-
Suleiman the Wise 361
supernova 16
sushi 274
swadeshi 229
Swatilekha 536-537
Sweden 26
T+
tabla 253
Tagore, Rabindranath 228 (Ghare-Baire); 245; Gitanjali 248
Taif 378, 392
takht 374
The Tales of a Thousand Nights and a Night (-> Arabian Nights)
tamasha 334
Tantric 12
Tavleen 74, 78-87
The Tempest (Shakespeare) [49, Miranda [53
Tennyson, Alfred Lord 136 [Enoch Arden]
Thamoud 320
tharaap 15
Thatcher, Margaret [266, [293
theosophy [24
Thomson, James 6
"Three Little Words" 334
Thums Up Cola 56, 66
tiffin [11 ('tiffin-carriers', lunch-runners of Bombay); 18, 29
time 34, 41, 211 (calendars), 214-215
Tini bénché achén! 271
tinka 39
Tinkerbell (Peter Pan) 49
Titian "Venus of Urbino" [61
Titlipur 217
Toady 54
Toff 316
tola 246
Torture, Mrs. (character) 266, 293 (Maggie)
Trafalgar Square (London) 37
Trojan horse 56
Trotskyist 49
true name 192
Truffaur Francois 302 (L'Argent du Poche)
tsimmi 298
Turin Shroud 346
Turner, Lana 298
Turpin, Dick 263
Tyburn tree 41
U+
Uganda [54, 140 (ugando-kenyattas)
Uhud 70
Umar 389
Umm Salamah the Makhzumite [382
Umm Salamah the Makhzumite (character) 382
umra 236, 239
unified field theory 24, 81
Union Carbide [52
The United Nations 60
Urdu love-poetry 232
uttapam 246
Uzza (al-Uzza) 91, 99-126
V+
Vadodara (Badora) 17
Vakil, Zeenat (Zeeny) 51-74, 83, 532-547
Valance, Hal (character) 264
Vallabh (Vallabhai) 45, 65-
Van Heusen shirts 42
Vanessa (Redgrave) 341
Varma, Ravi 70
Vassilikos, Vassilis [271 (Z)
VCR (video) 83, 243
Vespucci, Americo 150
Victoria, Queen [297 (Widow of Windsor)
Vikings [144
Vilayet 4, 31, 35, 37, 283 (Mahavilayet)
Vinci, Leonardo da [167 ("Mona Lisa")
Virgil 248 (Eclogues)
virgo intacta 306
Vishnu 17, 84
voice 9, 112, 123, 173 (Voice), 181, 211 [Voice of America]
W+
wahi 321
walnut-tree 45, 48, 65, 69, 72
Warden Road 28
water 26, 94, 209-215
Watkins, Rochelle 330
Weaver, Sigourney 62-3
Wembley Stadium 398
Weill, Kurt [3
Wells, Mary 266
Wells, Orson 266
Wesley, John [10
West, Mae 60
Whittington Turn-again 186
wilderness 23, (Wildernesse) 327
William the Conqueror (Willie-the-Conq) 44, 129-130
Willingdon Club 12
Wilson, Harold 177
Wilson, Maurice (character) 196
Wing Chun 244
Witchfinder General 182, 280
wog 54
Wolf 316
Wonderland 6, 55, 122
Woodward, Bob 265
World's End (Land's End) 306
Wren, Christopher 327
X+
Xixabangma Feng (Gosainthan) 82
Y+
Ya Allah 30
yaar 3, 18, 51, 85
yahudan 31
yakhni 253
Yates, Dornford 229
Yates [277 ("The Second Coming")
Yathrib (Medina) 103, 125, 215
Yelamma cult 37
yeti 196
Yuké 248
Z+
Zafar 103
Zainab bint Khuzaimah [382
Zainab bint Khuzaimah (character) 382
Zainab bint Jahsh [382
Zainab bint Jahsh (character) 382
zamindar 216
Zamzam 78, 91, 94, 95, 104, 106
zenana 218
Zephon 324
numbers
420: 4, 5, 31, 73
1001: 21, 26, 60 (the Man of a Thousand Voices and a Voice), 215
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Source: http://www.geocities.com/satverses/SV-index.html
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Index for Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses
Salman Rushdie Talk about James Joyce
Every year there is in the Netherlands a special week, called the Week of the Book, in which-- to promote the new titles-- anyone spending more than $10 in a book store receives an extra book, which is specially written for the occasion. In 2001 it was Salman Rushdie who was invited to write the book, and his Woede (i.e. Fury in English) became the year's present. He was also invited to the Gala of authors with which the Week of the Book started. This year the party was held in a wing of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.) It was here that Margot Dijkgraaf, literary critic of the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, interviewed Salman Rushdie for the series The Crucial Book, in which writers expound their views on the book that has most influenced their ideas.
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"Joyce built a whole universe out of a grain of sand"
Salman Rushdie, the author of the "Week of the Book" present, was carried along by James Joyce's Ulysses as though the book was rocket fuel.
The wing of the Rijksmuseum looks like a fort. His bodyguards (beside his own there are three other of the city of Amsterdam) have left for a cup of coffee, and the one walking along Salman Rushdie watches me with a slightly disturbed and slightly concerned expression. Many images must haunt the head of the man who wrote this year's "Week of the Book" present: frightening images, images of the future, images of old myths and modern internet legends. Somewhere in that hyperactive brain also roams the spirit of the Irish-born writer James Joyce (1882-1941). Rushdie: "Joyce is always in my mind, I carry him everywhere with me".
Who it was who called his attention to Ulysses (published in Paris in 1922) Rushdie does not remember, but he knows that it was in the first year of his study of history.. "Everyone said that it was such a sealed book, hard to penetrate, but I did not think so at all. You never hear people say that there is so much humor in the book, that the characters are so lively or that the theme - Stephen Daedalus in search of his lost father and Bloom looking for his lost child - is so moving. People talk about the cleverness of Ulysses and about the literary innovation. To me it was moving, in the first place"
Stephen and Bloom, those were the characters which touched him immediately. He quotes from memory: "Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls". Those were the first lines of the second chapter. "I am myself disgusted by that kind of organs", he grinned. "There are still so many little things I always have to smile about when I think of them. That commercial, for example: "What is home/without Plumtree's Potted Meat?/ Incomplete". That is still funny. Joyce used many stylistic means which were novel in his time, newspaper headlines for instance. Is it not moving that he makes Ulysses happen on the day that he met his wife! He kept that newspaper, carried it always with him and used all of its details, including the names of the horses in the races. In short, he built a universe out of a grain of sand. That was a revelation to me: so that is the way one could also write! To somebody who wanted to be a writer, like me, it was so perfect, so inspiring, that it made one need to recover. I have thought for some time: I quit writing, I become a lawyer. Later I thought that there may be some little things still worth doing."
Such as in the field of linguistic innovation? "Joyce spoke against the politisizing of literature, but his language is a purposeful attempt to create an English which was just not a property of the English. He employs a lot of borrowed words from other European languages and creates an un-English kind of English". Was that not also the goal of Rushdie himself? "Certainly. The Irish did it, so did the American and the Caribian writers. While English traveled around like that, the people felt the need to innovate it. So I did. But the Joycean innovation was the greatest of all. It is an example that deserves to be followed".
And what about Joyce's famous monologue intérieur ? "That stream of consciousness was not an invention of Joyce, but he used it more subtly than anyone else. Bloom's inner voices were about very common things, about a hungry feeling or so. Joyce demonstrates that the material of daily life can be as majestic as any great epic. The lives of ordinary people are also worthy of great art. One can create grandeur out of banality. That was precisely the criticism Virgina Woolf had on Joyce. Woolf was a bit too snobbish for it".
As the best example of the stream of consciousness Rushdie "of course" considers Molly Blooms monologue at the end of the book. "In the past I could recite whole parts of it: "and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." That conclusion is absolutely rocket fuel at the end. You have a book behind you in which the behavior of people is not strictly transparent and then suddenly you feel not only the skin of that woman, but her whole body, all her flesh and blood, that is a baffling climax. Of course also very erotic, although as yet the novel was not erotic at all. At that time literature did not extend to erotics, to the sexual fantasies of women. Impossible to imagine Virginia Woolf doing something like that".
Ulysses is in fact a national epic about Ireland. "It is a grand homage to the country that has never understood him" says Rushdie. "He was regarded there as a pornographer and blasphemer. Now he is viewed as Ireland's national monument. Well, that's easy. I do understand how Joyce felt. I am close to him. I feel a kinship, not so much between our types of authorship, but rather between his eye and ear, his mind and mine. The way one looks at things".
Nevertheless, they would not have become friends, he believes. "Joyce was not very good at friendship. There is a story about his put-down of Samuel Beckett, who adored him and often came along his place. He plainly told him that he only loved two people in the world: the first being his wife, the second his daughter. His only encounter with Proust was also very comical. Joyce and Proust met each other when leaving a party. Proust had his coach standing at the door and was wrapped up fom head to foot, afraid as he was to catch a cold. Joyce jumps into the coach uninvitedly, lights a cigar and opens the window widely. Proust says nothing, neither does Joyce. It is like a silent movie. Two masters of the word, who say nothing to each other and yet disclose themselves. Fantastic!"
In Portrait of the artist as a young man Joyce mentions the weapons with which a writer can defend himself against the outer world: silence, exile, and cunning. Are those the weapons Rushdie recognizes? "Well, that was a very good stratagem in the time of Joyce. Like Voltaire, Joyce believed that a writer should live near a border, so that he could leave immediately if problems arose. At present that does not work anymore: I have experienced it personally. And silence is an overrated artform, which people now too often impose upon you".
But are writers not regarded more and more as intellectuals and are they not continually asked for an opinion? "I believe that worldwide there are more and more efforts to impose silence upon writers - and that not only applies to me. It is easy to point to the Arab world, or to China, but even in the United States there are people who want to ban Harry Potter books from schools, because they contain something about witchcraft. Even something harmless like that provokes an attack. We live in a time with an increasing urge to censorship. Various interest groups--including antiracist or feminist movements-- demand it. When Kurt Vonnegut is banned from public libraries and not everywhere it is allowed to teach about Huckleberry Finn, then you just cannot assume straight-away that there is something like freedom. Against silence it is that now we have to fight. And exile does not work. Therefore, cunning is the only thing that remains".
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Translated by K. Gwan Go, reproduced by permission of Margot Dijkgraaf.
Source: www.wsu.edu
Interview with Salman Rushdie
When life becomes a bad novel
If Salman Rushdie seems, seven years after the fatwa, to be emerging from his underground exile, it is a cautious coming out. On his recent U.S. book tour to promote "The Moor's Last Sigh," his first novel since the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini sentenced him to death in 1989 for allegedly defaming Islam in "The Satanic Verses," he has appeared on the "Phil Donahue Show" and on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." He has given semi-public readings and attended private parties in his honor all over the country. But he still travels with bodyguards and no one, even the journalists who are scheduled to interview him, knows where he will be in advance.
While he was in San Francisco, the U.S. poet laureate Robert Hass threw a literary party attended by nearly every famous writer in town, from Alice Adams and Czeslaw Milosz to Richard North Patterson and Bharati Mukherjee, as well as celebrities such as former California governor Jerry Brown, singer Linda Ronstadt and actor Robin Williams. But the guests were informed of the party's location only on the day of the event. Likewise, the SALON interviewer and photographer were told to meet Rushdie's Pantheon publicist at a cafe a couple of blocks from the bed-and-breakfast where he was staying, and were screened by a phalanx of serious-looking bodyguards before they were allowed to enter his room.
Though he is an affable interview subject and a famously brilliant conversationalist, the 48-year-old Rushdie is tired of talking about the fatwa. And he is impatient with suggestions that his new novel, a wonderfully playful family epic told by a descendant of the explorer Vasco da Gama who was born with a strange condition that makes him age twice as fast as everyone else, is a metaphor for his situation. "The Moor's Last Sigh" is his best novel yet, the wordplay brilliant, the ideas rich and provocative, the story a page-turner. Rushdie is relieved and delighted to be writing novels and to be socially active again, however circumscribed his participation must necessarily continue to be.
How did you become so interested in language, so facile with words?
I think it had to do with the fact that, when I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words. It was certainly common in my family, but I think it is typical of Bombay, and maybe of India, that there is a sense of play in the way people use language. Most people in India are multilingual, and if you listen to the urban speech patterns there you'll find it's quite characteristic that a sentence will begin in one language, go through a second language and end in a third. It's the very playful, very natural result of juggling languages. You are always reaching for the most appropriate phrase.
When I was writing "Midnight's Children," I was really trying to say that the way in which English is used in India has diverged significantly from standard English. That India has made its own English the way America and Ireland and the Caribbean and Australia made their own English. But even though this is the way everybody speaks in India, nobody had the confidence, when I started writing, to use it as a literary language. When they settled down to write, they would do it in a kind of classical Forsterian English that had nothing to do with the way they were speaking.
Are the ways you play with verbs in "The Moor's Last Sigh" -- "One day you will killofy my heart,'' "I'll just bide-o my time'' -- typical of this emerging Indian English?
Oh that's just made up. I seem to remember that one of my sisters would occasionally use that kind of construction. What I wanted was not to reproduce Indian speech absolutely, but to create a family and its verbal habit. Every family has its own words for things, its own phrases. I wanted to create a family verbal tic.
It's interesting to me how much of what it is to be a family is governed by language use. There is that verbal habit, or family vocabulary, but there is also the habit of storytelling; every family has stories about itself. You could argue, in fact, that the collection of stories a family has about itself is actually the definition of the family. When someone joins a family -- a child is born, somebody marries into it -- they are gradually told all the secret family stories. And when you finally know all the stories, you belong to the family.
I know you're sick of being asked about the fatwa, but I wonder how you tell yourself that story.
I think it's a bad Salman Rushdie novel. And, believe me, it's a very dreadful thing to be stuck in a bad novel. I keep a journal about it and I have my conversation about what's happening in that form with myself, sometimes just jotting things down, sometimes sifting things through on paper. And one of these days I will use that journal as the basis of a book, but one thing I have always been absolutely sure of is that it will not be a work of fiction.
Why not?
Because I think the important thing about this whole case is that it's true. It would not be interesting as fiction. The terribly frustrating thing is that I've had to keep a lot of secrets and I am not naturally a secretive person. It's very peculiar not to be able to answer obvious questions. You ask me where I am going to be tomorrow, and I can't tell you. So it will be a total release to be able to tell that story.
When do you think you might be able to tell it?
Through this whole thing I have operated entirely on instinct. There is no certainty. Nobody is telling me, "Now it's all right to do a public reading,'' "Now it's all right to have a book tour." There is no secret message from Iran saying, "Hey, it's okay to go to the New York Public Library, it's okay to go to San Francisco." These decisions are just based on educated guesses.
Do you think you are feeling safer because you simply can't sustain fear forever?
Maybe it's that, maybe it's just a bloody-minded determination to get on with things, you know, and the hell with it. And maybe some of it is a sense of a genuine shift in the wind, a change in the atmosphere. All of that adds up to what I'm referring to as instinct. In the end I just think it's all right to do this now. Usually I reach that point rather earlier than my security forces.
How did it affect your writing to be afraid?
It never felt like fear, it felt more like disorientation and bewilderment and confusion, and of course these are very bad emotions out of which to write. So it derailed my life for a while, and I had to climb back onto the rails, I suppose. As you know, there were a series of smaller projects, short stories, a children's book, essays, things I'm very happy about. I like the way people responded to them, but they are the equivalent of chamber music, they are not the full orchestra.
How do you feel about your new novel?
Well, this is the full orchestra. I guess I do feel it's my best so far, but that doesn't mean much. I think one always likes the most recent thing.
How long did it take you to write "The Moor's Last Sigh?"
It took me about five years, on and off -- an interrupted five years because I have had all of this political campaigning to do. Five years is not so unusual for me. "Midnight's Children" took five years. "The Satanic Verses" took five years.
Did you have a clear plan when you started it?
It is unusual, this book, in that it represents the first time I have managed to end a book exactly where I thought I would end it. This time I was absolutely certain of the final note, which was very freeing because it meant I could fool around as much as I wanted and compose this great arc of a novel as long as I never lost sight of the fact that I had to go there. And I had certain things I wanted to write about. I wanted to write about the spice trade. And I wanted to write out of Cochin (in India) because I went there in the early 1980s and was very affected by it.
Affected in what way?
That it was a very pretty place, but also that it was the point of first contact. In science fiction people talk about first contacts between the human race and other races, and Cochin was the site of the first contact between India and the West, a kind of science fiction moment if you like, a meeting of two species. So the meeting and mingling of these two cultures was, you could say, my subject. And I thought I should begin at the beginning, start with the first contact in Cochin, of the activities of Vasco da Gama and his death there and burial and subsequent Eva Peron-like, post-death migration to Portugal. And it was my thought that I would start with Vasco and give him this furious dynasty. And so, really, the book grew from that germ, this image I had.
I was really attracted to the idea that when Europe first came to India it didn't come for conquest, though subsequently there was, of course, conquest. It came looking for pepper. To think that this whole incredible history grows out of a grain of pepper, there is more than half a novel in that.
Your British compatriot Kazuo Ishiguro talks about universalism, about an international literature. Like the placeless city in his newest novel, "The Unconsoled." Which is of course so different from what you do.
Writers find their own ways to whatever they want to do, and if it's right for him, it's fine, but it's not right for me.
Do you ever worry that using so many culturally specific references will leave many readers unable to understand what you're trying to say?
No. I use them as flavoring. I mean, I can read books from America and I don't always get the slang. American writers always assume that the whole world speaks American, but actually the whole world does not speak American. And American Jewish writers put lots of Yiddish in their books and sometimes I don't know what they're saying. I've read books by writers like Philip Roth with people getting hit in the kishkes and I think, "What?!''
It's fun to read things when you don't know all the words. Even children love it. One of the things any great children's writer will tell you is that children like it if in books designed for their age group there is a vocabulary just slightly bigger than theirs. So they come up against weird words, and the weird words excite them. If you describe a small girl in a story as "loquacious," it works so much better than "talkative." And then some little girl will read the book and her sister will be shooting her mouth off and she will say to her sister, "Don't be so loquacious." It is a whole new weapon in her arsenal.
What are you reading now?
I've been reading a book by a friend of mine, the novelist Graham Swift ("Waterland"). He has a new novel coming out called "Lost Orders" -- it's just come out in England and will be out here in a couple of months. It's a beautiful little book, about a man who dies and his four best friends take his ashes to sprinkle into the ocean. It's just about this outing, these four drinking partners out for a day in this borrowed or rented car. That's all that happens, but it's very touching and funny and tells you a lot about what these people have been to each other, and it also tells you something about the ritual of death, this last rite of passage. The way in which these people are ordinary folk who in a strange way rise to the occasion, and it becomes a real ceremony and they become conscious of the importance of what they're doing.
Do you think we are improved by the consciousness of death?
Nothing really improves us. Whatever improves one person will disimprove another. Some people are paralyzed by the consciousness of death, other people live with it.
How has it affected you?
The fatwa certainly made me think about it a lot more than I ever had. I guess I know I'm going to die, but then, so are you. And one of the things that I thought a lot about at the time of the fatwa and ever since is that quite a few of the people I really care about died during this period, all about the same age as I am, and they were not under a death sentence. They just died, of lung cancer, AIDS, whatever. It occurred to me that you don't need a fatwa, it can happen anytime. And that's one of the reasons why I think there is such a sense of urgency in this novel. It's all about a guy whose life is speeded up, that we may not have as much time as we think.
It's such a cartoonish idea and it could have been irritating. But you somehow made it work.
It was a gamble, as it always is. The important thing when you use a trick like that is not to use it because it's a trick, but to use it to say something which has a human truth in it. And if you can use it for that and keep your concentration on that fact, it will usually work, I think.
A technique in your arsenal, but a means to an end.
Yes, yes. Quite often surrealism or whatever one would call it is used just as a piece of acrobatics, and then that's all it is. And you think, "Oh shut the fuck up and tell me a story." But the reason I do it is not fancy footwork. It's because it seems to me to be a way of saying something that I hope is truthful. I just thought that there is something in the air at the moment, that people think everything is speeding up, the pace of life, the rate of change, everything just seems to be going zooooom! And I thought that if there is this widespread sense of the acceleration of things, one way of crystallizing it was to make it happen to someone in a very literal way.
It's interesting that so many reviewers assume it's a metaphor for your personal situation.
Well, (the reaction) to books settles down. I've often thought that a book doesn't get published on publication day, that it usually takes about five years.
Do you think "The Satanic Verses" is better understood today than it was when it was published?
Yes. You have to wait for the hype to go away, whether it's positive or negative. It's a sort of dreadful paradox, because you need all that noise when you're publishing a book to bring people to it in the first place. Then the noise gets in the way.
Is it because people finally read it themselves?
Well, certainly people don't read a book when they buy it. I think that's a mistake writers often make; we think, "everybody's bought my book so everybody's read my book." And, instead, what you hear endlessly is, "Sure I bought your book but I'm saving it up for a holiday, I bought your book but I'm so busy right now I'm not reading anything." It takes a long time, people find their moment.
Fiction is not taken very seriously in our culture and yours has been taken so much more seriously than most. Having been sentenced to death for the content of a novel, how seriously do you think fiction should be taken?
Very. I think there is nothing wrong with the idea that fiction is a matter of life and death. Look at the history of literature. Look at what happened in the Soviet Union. Look at what's happening in China, in Africa, and across the Muslim World. It's not just me. Fiction has always been treated this way. It does matter and it's often very bad for writers that it does. But that just comes with the territory.
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This interview taken from www.salon.com
Photo by Sibylla Herbrich
Salman Rushdie: Biography
Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) on 19 June 1947. He went to school in Bombay and at Rugby in England, and read History at King's College, Cambridge, where he joined the Cambridge Footlights theatre company. After graduating, he lived with his family who had moved to Pakistan in 1964, and worked briefly in television before returning to England, beginning work as a copywriter for an advertising agency. His first novel, Grimus, was published in 1975.
His second novel, the acclaimed Midnight's Children, was published in 1981. It won the Booker Prize for Fiction, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction), an Arts Council Writers' Award and the English-Speaking Union Award, and in 1993 was judged to have been the 'Booker of Bookers', the best novel to have won the Booker Prize for Fiction in the award's 25-year history. The novel narrates key events in the history of India through the story of pickle-factory worker Saleem Sinai, one of 1001 children born as India won independence from Britain in 1947. The critic Malcolm Bradbury acclaimed the novel's achievement in The Modern British Novel (Penguin, 1994): 'a new start for the late-twentieth-century novel.'
Rushdie's third novel, Shame (1983), which many critics saw as an allegory of the political situation in Pakistan, won the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. The publication in 1988 of his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, lead to accusations of blasphemy against Islam and demonstrations by Islamist groups in India and Pakistan. The orthodox Iranian leadership issued a fatwa against Rushdie on 14 February 1989 - effectively a sentence of death - and he was forced into hiding under the protection of the British government and police. The book itself centres on the adventures of two Indian actors, Gibreel and Saladin, who fall to earth in Britain when their Air India jet explodes. It won the Whitbread Novel Award in 1988.
Salman Rushdie continued to write and publish books, including a children's book, Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), a warning about the dangers of story-telling that won the Writers' Guild Award (Best Children's Book), and which he adapted for the stage (with Tim Supple and David Tushingham. It was first staged at the Royal National Theatre, London.) There followed a book of essays entitled Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 (1991); East, West (1994), a book of short stories; and a novel, The Moor's Last Sigh (1995), the history of the wealthy Zogoiby family told through the story of Moraes Zogoiby, a young man from Bombay descended from Sultan Muhammad XI, the last Muslim ruler of Andalucía.
The Ground Beneath Her Feet, published in 1999, re-works the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in the context of modern popular music. His most recent novel, Fury, set in New York at the beginning of the third millennium, was published in 2001. He is also the author of a travel narrative, The Jaguar Smile (1987), an account of a visit to Nicaragua in 1986.
Salman Rushdie is Honorary Professor in the Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was made Distinguished Fellow in Literature at the University of East Anglia in 1995. He was awarded the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1993 and the Aristeion Literary Prize in 1996, and has received eight honorary doctorates. He was elected to the Board of American PEN in 2002. The subjects in his new book, Step Across This Line: Collected Non-fiction 1992-2002 (2002), range from popular culture and football to twentieth-century literature and politics. Salman Rushdie is also co-author (with Tim Supple and Simon Reade) of the stage adaptation of Midnight's Children, premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2002.
His latest novel is Shalimar The Clown (2005), the story of Max Ophuls, his killer and daughter, and a fourth character who links them all. It was shortlisted for the 2005 Whitbread Novel Award.
Salman Rushdie became a KBE in 2007.
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Photo : © Penguin
Source: www.contemporarywriters.com
