Salman Rushdie

Rushdie first tied the nuptial knot in the year 1976 to Clarissa Luard. The couple was blessed with a son named Zafar in 1980. The alliance however did not last long as the two separated in the year 1987.

Following the divorce, Rushdie went into the wedlock with American novelist Marianne Wiggins in 1988. This too did not work out as the two separated in 1993.

Rushdie married Elizabeth West IN 1997 and fathered a son, Milan in 1999. The two divorced in 2004.

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay in a Muslim family of Kashmiri descent. He was the only child of his parents.

While his father Anis Ahmed Rushdie was a University of Cambridge educated lawyer turned businessman, his mother Negin Bhatt was into the profession of teaching.

After completing his preliminary education from John Connan School in Mumbai, young Rushdie moved to England. He enrolled at the Rugby School from where he completed his higher education.

Rushdie went to King’s College and later to Cambridge University from where he attained his Master’s Degree in History in 1968.

Rushdie’s first-hand experience into the field of writing was as a freelance writer for the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather. Working in the profile of a copywriter, he wrote ads and came up with tag-lines and words for various companies and stuffs such as ‘irresistibubble’ for Aero and ‘Naughty but Nice’ for cream cakes.

In 1975, with the release of the part-science fiction tale ‘Grimus’, Rushdie plunged into the career of full time writing, though he still continued freelancing as an advertisement writer.

The book, ‘Grimus’, revolved around the story of a Native American Eagle who voyaged to find out the true meaning of life. It failed to appeal to the sense of both the public and literary critics.

Rushdie’s second book, ‘Midnight’s Children’, released in 1981 brought instant fame and recognition to him. Apart from popular and critical appraise, Rushdie received much literary notability due to the book.

‘Midnight’s Children’ highlighted the life of a child, born at the stroke of midnight as India gained its independence. It focused on the character of Saleem Sinai, the special powers that he seem to be endowed with and his connection with other children born at the dawn of the modern and independent India and their magical power possessions.

Rushdie has for long been an active member of the advisory board of The Lunchbox Fund, a non-profit organization that provides daily meals to students of township in Soweto of South Africa.

He has also been a member of the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America, an advocacy group representing the interests of atheistic and humanistic Americans in Washington, D.C.

Rushdie is the founding patron of the Ralston College, a new liberal arts college that has adopted as its motto a Latin translation of a phrase ‘free speech is life itself’.