The Tale Of Two Salmans

We forge the chains we wear in life

Charles Dickens

Salman Rushdie is no stranger to controversy. In fact, he has served as its poster child since my childhood. He has had to dive into unfathomed depths of living incognito, only to surface occasionally like a breaching whale, has had to seek protection from Scotland Yard, have his children visit him only at midnight and has had his painstakingly composed verses termed ‘Satanic’. It was a different matter when he termed them so himself. They were his brainchild, his creation to raise or destroy. But to have a price on his head for more than three decades is not cricket, as the Brits, whose isle he calls home, would say. The long arm of the fatwa issued against him caught up with him in New York a few weeks ago, much to the horror of everyone. Hunted down in the Big Apple! In the land of free speech! What was the world coming to?

Of course, the perpetrator was caught, but it means little for the aging writer who stands to lose an eye and has spent several days on the brink. What strikes one as strange is that terrorizing people who say things you don’t like seems to have become the accepted norm rather than the exception when one particularly sensitive religion which was birthed in blood shed in the Middle east is concerned. Perhaps Salman Rushdie was far too trenchant in his remarks. Perhaps he acted with malicious intent and did hurt sentiments. But a price on his head and one which was almost extracted after thirty years makes one wonder who is wrong and who is the wronged one here!

Considering that Salman Rushdie was born in India, several Western fingers were pointed in an easterly direction when his book ‘The Satanic Verses’ was swiftly banned in the subcontinent in 1988 following a meek ‘toe the line’ capitulation by the then ruling dispensation. It was a victory for those forces who believed that might was right, for those who carried their religions on their sleeves. Salman Rushdie, however, had his moment in the sun as a brave heart who did not fear to speak his mind. His quote “To read a 600- page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended”, is a classic. He rightly points out that seeing a book which offends him in a bookstore does NOT give him the right to torch said bookshop.

This is the tale of Salman the first, a man who unfortunately had to keep a date with Nemesis, whose fate caught up with him, in his twilight years half a world away from the place where he was declared persona non grata thanks to a blind world which refuses to call out religious fanaticism even when it is staring them in the eye.

A buff, arrogant looking individual, who swaggers as if he owns the earth and all that is in it (apologies to Rudyard Kipling for the plagiarism) and who has so far stayed quite a few jumps ahead of the law of the land, Tyche’s favorite child, that is Salman Khan. This controversial self- proclaimed Bhai or Big Brother at large has often found himself in the eye of a storm of his own making. He has courted controversy because in the business in which he dabbles (if you call it that), no publicity is ever bad.

From running over pavement dwellers while under the influence to running over some black buck merely because the fancy took him to violence against women, he’s been there, done that. But the reason why he is merely termed ‘wayward’ or a boy sowing his wild oats (at the age of 56? Get real, people!) is because he is ‘Being Human’ of course! Court judgements are overturned before the ink dries on the paper and Bhai enjoys the ‘Bail Life’ rather than the jail life! If you have a fan following longer than the tail of Haley’s comet, you, my friend can apparently do no wrong in the universe. Your crimes cannot catch up with you even if they live right next door, forget half a world away.

Yes, his heart is probably in the right place, yes, he probably does a lot of charity and social service, but that does not and should not make him larger than life, placing him above the law of the land. The larger- than- life Robin Hoodesque story of Salman the second sets one’s teeth on edge at the sheer injustice of it all.

Every good tale ends a moral. And what do we learn? That today it is the popular perception of your thoughts which determine whether you are right or wrong, the facts of the case be damned! Take on the powerful and pay the price, ride rough-shod over the helpless and see yourself rise!

And that is why I often find myself thinking of Dickens when he wrote ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us”.

Our own Dickensian world beckons us to answer who was right and who was wrong, who faced a travesty of justice and who made a mockery of it in this Tale of Two Salmans!