London :

Padma Lakshmi has written an “autobiography” in which she has revealed she slept with Salman Rushdie on their first date but eventually could not satisfy his insatiable sexual appetite after they were married.

When she could not have intercourse with him because of an operation for a painful medical condition, called endometriosis, the author apparently turned surly and commented sarcastically: “How convenient!”

Each year when the Nobel Prize went to another writer, Rushdie took it hard. Padma would console him, she claims.

Padma’s book is in the shops in the US tomorrow but ahead of its release, the most salacious aspects of Love, Loss, and What We Ate (HarperCollins; $26.99) have already been picked out from early review copies sent to the American newspapers – and also given general coverage in British newspapers as well.

Padma, a TV cook and one-time model and actress (she starred in the Bollywood movieBoom), married Rushdie in 2004. The marriage ended in acrimony after three years.

He was unkind to Padma in his autobiography, published in 2012, and now she has got her revenge.

In his memoir, Joseph Anton – the pseudonym Rushdie assumed in hiding by mixing “Joseph” Conrad and “Anton” Chekov – the author wrote about himself, somewhat curiously, in the third person.

“Then he went to Paris for the publication of La terre sous ses pieds (The Ground Beneath Her Feet) and she (Padma) joined him for a week of intoxicating pleasure punctuated by hammer blows of guilt,” he said.

“‘You saw an illusion and you destroyed your family for it,’ (his third wife) Elizabeth would tell him, and she was right,” Rushdie acknowledged

“She (Padma) was capable of saying things of such majestic narcissism that he didn’t know whether to bury his head in his hands or applaud,” he continued. “When the Indian film star Aishwarya Rai was named the most beautiful Indian woman in the world in some glossy magazine or the other, for example, Padma announced in a room full of people, that she had ‘serious issues with that’.”

“She was ambitious in a way that often obliterated feeling,” he said of Padma. “They would have a sort of life together – eight years from first meeting to final divorce, not a negligible length of time – and in the end, inevitably, she broke his heart as he had broken Elizabeth’s. In the end she would be Elizabeth’s best revenge.”

Padma is now 45 and Rushdie 68. It wasn’t like this when it began.

This is the New York Daily News on Padma’s revelations: “Lakshmi was 28 and single, Rushdie was 51 and married to his third wife. A bit part in Mariah Carey’s disastrous 2001 movie Glitter was the apex of Padma’s big screen acting career. The pair first met in 1999 at a party. On their first real date – Rushdie initially wooed her by phone since she lived in Los Angeles – the pair fell into bed.”

“At 3am, I woke with a start. I’m naked in a married man’s bed,” the good south Indian girl thought before sneaking out of the hotel room.

Today’s Daily Mail is a little more direct: “Rushdie initially pursued her by phone since she lived in Los Angeles, and on their first date they ended up in bed together.”

The Daily News is rather taken with Padma: “The stunningly beautiful Padma Lakshmi, in her new memoir, Love, Loss, and What We Ate, serves up the hot, steaming dish about the egotistical writer.” The strap reads: ” Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi recalls her years with author Salman Rushdie as a once beautiful meal that ultimately left her with mood poisoning.”

And: “The ever-demanding Rushdie needed constant care and feeding – not to mention frequent sex, according to the book.”

Padma “wrote that Rushdie was callously insensitive to a medical condition that made intercourse painful for her”.

Rushdie once became so enraged by her rejection of his overtures that he denounced Padma as a “bad investment”, she alleged. “When her undiagnosed endometriosis diminished Padma’s sex drive, the unsympathetic Rushdie became furious that she was unavailable for the fevered, urgent intimacy they’d once enjoyed, according to the book.”

The marriage was initially blissful. And then it wasn’t.

At one point, Newsweek put her on the cover illustrating a story about the “New India”.

“The only time Newsweek put me on their cover was when someone was trying to put a bullet in my head,” came Rushdie’s less-than-enthusiastic reaction.

“Rushdie was often away. After one five-hour surgery, Lakshmi came home with stitches in four major organs and stents in both kidneys. Rushdie left the next day for a trip.” “The show must go on, after all,” he said on his way out of the door, according to Padma.

Her first post-op trip out of the house was to a divorce lawyer.

It’s unlikely that Rushdie will take his ex-wife’s revelations lying down.

The New York Post has offered some insight. Apparently, Pia Glenn, a new girlfriend of Rushdie, gave an interview after they split up to the Post, saying he was “cowardly, dysfunctional and immature”, and that he kept talking about Padma.

It was claimed that Rushdie then rang the newspaper to label Glenn “an unstable person who carries around a large, radioactive bucket of stress wherever she goes”.

There was a period when Padma was having sex with two men.

The Daily News reports: “The troubles in her next serious relationship were all of her own making. Ted Forstmann, the billionaire CEO of the global sports and media empire IMG, had previously dated Princess Diana.

Life with Forstmann was definitely an upgrade for Lakshmi. In 2009, for example, he asked where she would most want to travel on a fantasy food tour. Lakshmi named the two most exclusive restaurants in the world. Soon after, the couple was dining at the legendary elBulli in Rosa, Spain, followed by Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark.”

Padma says she had some lesbian experiences in Europe. She “didn’t want to settle down so soon after her marriage ended. Back in the day, when modelling in Milan and Paris, she indulged in some bacchanalian evenings where she ‘acted out my curiosities and fantasies’.”

She adds: “Some I regret, but not all, like knowing what it’s like to touch and be touched by a woman.”

The Daily News adds: “While those days were in the past, Lakshmi didn’t see her future in an exclusive relationship with another much older man. Forstmann was 30 years her senior.

“While still seeing Forstmann, Lakshmi took up with Adam Dell – a venture capitalist and brother of Michael, the founder of the eponymous computer company. It was only after Dell returned to Texas that Lakshmi learned she was pregnant with his child. She had wanted a baby for so long, but this wasn’t entirely happy news.

“Forstmann, who had waited out her affair with Dell, became enraged when Lakshmi told him he might not be the father. She was terrified that she might have squandered his love. When a paternity test proved the baby wasn’t his, Forstmann pleaded with Padma not to involve Dell, she wrote. The lifelong bachelor, who had adopted two boys he met in a South African orphanage in the ’90s, promised to support the child as his own. But Padma felt Dell had a right to know. She writes that she was fully willing to involve him, but Dell kept his distance through much of her high-risk pregnancy.”

More drama followed. “Forstmann was in the room for the C-section, and handed Padma her baby daughter, Krishna, on Feb. 20, 2010. Dell appeared to stage a scene in Padma’s room. She remembers crying and asking him not to yell. He was furious that his name wasn’t on the birth certificate, pacing ‘ominously’ at her bedside for hours. Hospital security subsequently escorted the infant to another room to visit with her father.”

The story goes on: “Later, when Dell came to New York, Lakshmi sent Krishna to visit her father in the arms of her own mother – accompanied by a security guard. A custody battle ensued. Forstmann warned Padma that things would get ugly, but offered his unending support. Not long after, he started exhibiting symptoms that would lead to an eventual diagnosis of glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer. Forstmann suddenly had only months to live.

“On her last visit before his November 20, 2011, death, the toddler crawled on his bed while dressed as a lion for Halloween. Forstmann could barely open his eyes, but their last words to each other were, ‘I love you’. She soon settled the custody issue by agreeing to amend Krishna’s last name to ‘Lakshmi-Dell’. The three have since shared some lovely times together. According to news reports, Forstmann’s will established a trust for Krishna – and so he, too, remains a part of their lives. It’s not a perfect ending by any measure, but certainly a new beginning for Lakshmi and her little girl.”

Padma has told People magazine: “Nobody is responsible for my actions except me. There were a lot of difficult things I went through in a very short intense period under very public circumstances. It was something that affected my family who are very private and it affected people I love, who probably didn’t deserve it. And so I needed to be honest and forthright about that.”

She has also been “honest” about her romance with Rushdie. While their early years were full of passion (and a lot of great meals) he bristled as her career blossomed. “I just wanted my own identity. I was making the transition out of one stage of my life and into another. But in order to do that, it required that I wasn’t everywhere that he needed me to be.”

Rushdie will probably point out that the world had not heard of Padma Lakshmi until she had met, married and divorcced him. For her, he was a good career move.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Front Page> Story / by Amit Roy / Tuesday – March 08th, 2016