Salman Rushdie

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty eight, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:32

My Castaway this week is a story teller. His most famous stories are about the teeming, confused world of modern India and her neighbor Pakistan.

Presenter0:41

Born into a Moslem family in Bombay, he was educated here in England, where he now lives from where he eyes the country of his birth, trying to discover in her, and perhaps in himself, an identity which history has made difficult.

Presenter0:56

Winner of the Booker Prize in nineteen eighty one for Midnight's Children, he's established himself as one of the most prominent writers of the English language to day. He is Salman Rushdie.

Presenter1:08

Salman, has English always been your first language, or has it become so?

Salman Rushdie1:12

No, I wasn't born speaking English, I was born speaking Urdu, which is basically the language of India's Muslims.

Salman Rushdie1:19

And I started learning English when I was five, uh because I was sent to an English medium school. So it's so it's not a first language, but by now I have to admit that my English is is better than my

Presenter1:29

It's better than most people's too, I think. Better than most English people's.

Salman Rushdie1:32

Well, I remember when my first novel came out, I was at some friend's house and they had a friend round who saw a copy of my book lying around and saw the name Grimas and then saw my name and looked at me, sort of did a double take and said, did you write this? And I said, well, yes. And he said, well, but it's in English. And I said, well, yes. And they said, well, was that very difficult for you?

Salman Rushdie1:53

And I said, Well, yes, it was actually, but I don't think that's what he meant.

Presenter1:56

Do you think in English?

Salman Rushdie1:59

Yes, I do when I'm here. And I think a curious switch happens if I go back to India or Pakistan for any any length of time. It usually takes a few weeks actually, and then my dreams start changing language. I find myself dreaming much more in Urdu than in English.

Presenter2:14

Well, you're gonna have plenty of time to dream on the desert island. I mean is peace and solitude uh anathema to you? Are you saying that you

Presenter2:20

Uh you you write about teeming complicated India.

Salman Rushdie2:24

Well, I mean, you know, I have that kind of writer's schizophrenia, which is on the one hand, I'm I'm very good at solitude because it's what I do for a living and I sit I sit in rooms and make things up. So so that aspect of the desert island is very attractive. But on the other hand, um I really like crowds when I'm not r when I'm not doing the work and that might be a problem.

Presenter2:41

Let's have your first record. Has it been difficult to choose them?

Salman Rushdie2:44

Well, no, actually it's been it's been a lot of fun really, and and it's an opportunity to this first one actually particularly is it really came back from a long way, um, because uh the Indian movies are of course not kind of primarily art movies. They're they're they're great big extravaganzas which which try and contain the whole of life. And

Salman Rushdie3:03

Uh this this song

Salman Rushdie3:04

The translation of which is My Shoes are Japanese, it's called Mirajuta Hai Dapani, was one of the big movie hits of the 50s when I was growing up in Bombay. It's from a film called Mr. 420, which means Mr. Fake, because to call somebody a 420 in India, you're calling them a fraud or a con man. And I think it's because of the number in the Indian Penal Code, which relates to such crimes. And the movie stars Raj Kapoor, and he plays a very kind of imitation Charlie Chaplin figure, kind of little tramp coming to the big city and trying to make good. And the point about this song is that it's about how he sees himself as being made up of all sorts of different elements. He talks about how his shoes are Japanese and his trousers are English and the hat on his head's Russian, but he still thinks he's still an Indian for all that. And that kind of.

Salman Rushdie3:48

mixed up character, that kind of hybrid figure, is very much to do with the kind of Indian life that I came out of, and it actually feels like my theme song.

Presenter4:00

Mira Juta He Japani Ye Padloom, Englishani Sarpe Larto, Pirusi Pirbidi He Hindustani, Mirajuta Hei Japani Ye Padloon, Englishani Sarpe Larto, Pirusi Pirbidi He Hindustani, Mira Jutta Hei Japan

Presenter4:27

My shoes are Japanese, sung by Mukesh from the film mister Four Twenty. I wonder why it is, someone, that we are so fascinated with India. I mean, from passage to India to jewel in the crown and all things in between. What is it?

Salman Rushdie4:41

Well I actually I don't know why you are really and I know why I have. It's because I came from then and actually the British fascination with India is really I felt very unlike mine and it was always a worry really. I mean I thought when I was writing Midnight Story and I wasn't really sure if anybody in England would really be interested because it was for a change not about the British in India.

Presenter5:00

Well, we'll come to Midnight's children in a minute, but let's go back to your beginnings. You were born in in Bombay, as I was saying, in in june nineteen forty seven, two months before Indian independence. What what sort of home, what sort of family life?

Salman Rushdie5:14

Well, it was very untypically Indian really, because it was middle class in a country where most people are poor, and it was Muslim in a country where most people are Hindu, and it was urban in a country where most people live in villages. So it was rather eccentric Indian childhood, if you like. And also Bombay is very much unlike the rest of India, because it is a very much more cosmopolitan city, and it stands on the frontier between North India and South India. So you get greater variety of Indians in Bombay than you get most other places. So certainly my experience of growing up there was growing up in this extremely varied and diverse culture. Whereas if one had grown up in another part of India, the culture I suspect would have been less so.

Presenter5:52

What did your father do for a living?

Salman Rushdie5:53

He was, you know, what they call a business man, which covers a multitude of sins. He was rather unsuccessful actually. No, he was quite successful then, he spent his life becoming more unsuccessful.

Presenter6:01

Was there a strong sense of family?

Salman Rushdie6:04

Oh, yes. I mean, I think certainly, I mean, I think that's true most Indian childhoods, is that you grow up in in very much an extended family. And my family always had a shortage of boys, really. There's very, very few men in my family. There's en enormous quantities of female cousins, sisters, aunts, and all that. So so I grew up surrounded by women, which was quite nice.

Presenter6:22

And was there a love of storytelling in your family?

Salman Rushdie6:25

You grow up in India, I think classically, with this huge storehouse of stories around you. I mean, both the Hindu myths and the whole tradition of stories like the Arabian Nights and all that. So you have this, as a child, you have a colossal richness of story available. And certainly one of the things it teaches you is that stories are really best when they are fabulous. You know, when the horses do fly and when the jinns do jump out of the lamp.

Presenter6:50

And and were your aspirations, therefore, born, if you like, at at bedtime in Bombay?

Salman Rushdie6:56

Well, certainly I I always used to say from a very early age that I wanted to be a writer, and obviously I had no I had no real sense of what it meant. Well I did write I mean my first publ not well unpublished work, I wrote a story called Over the Rainbow.

Salman Rushdie7:09

So I suppose you could say my first literary influence was the Wizard of Oz.

Presenter7:12

Let's have another record.

Salman Rushdie7:14

Well, this is because we weren't allowed to listen to Western music much in Bombay. In fact, the radio, all India radio, it was banned because it was considered to be the wrong sort of thing to play. And the only way we could listen to what was happening in the West was Radio Salon, which every Sunday used to play a programme of a Western hit parade. And so we would all, as kids, crowd round the radiogram to listen to Elvis Presley and Pat Boone and stuff like that. And parents would come in and switch the radiogram off. But eventually it ended up being the... This was actually, I think, just about the first Western record I ever bought, which is Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis Presley.

Speaker 27:48

And baby lamp, will I find a new place to dwell? Will it stand at the end of lonely street in that heartbreak hotel?

Speaker 27:58

I'll be just lonely, baby, well I'm so lonely.

Speaker 28:04

I'll be here so lonely, I could die

Presenter8:08

All the boats always crowded, and you still can find some room.

Salman Rushdie8:13

Uh

Presenter8:13

Well bro, good hearted

Speaker 28:15

An others to cry.

Salman Rushdie8:16

But

Presenter8:17

Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis Presley.

Presenter8:20

Salman Rushti, you were packed off to England to rugby school when you were thirteen. That must have been terrifying.

Salman Rushdie8:27

Actually, it was very exciting when my parents said to me, Did I want to go to school in England? And I jumped at it, really, and I did. But certainly.

Salman Rushdie8:34

I had no idea what it was actually going to be like because for a start

Salman Rushdie8:37

For a start it was very cold. I mean it seems trivial to say, but but I arrived in England in in in January of nineteen sixty one, and I had never been so cold in my life. I was used to sleeping in Bombay under a maximum of one light blanket.

Speaker 28:40

By

Speaker 38:40

Uh

Speaker 28:40

Right.

Salman Rushdie8:50

And suddenly one was sleeping under this mountain of of fabric, and it felt exactly like having a great boulder on top of one's chest, and I couldn't sleep. I felt I was being crushed. So I had this choice between either being crushed to death under these blankets or or throwing them off and freezing to death. And it actually took me weeks to learn how to sleep.

Presenter9:07

And what about the other boys? How did you get on with them?

Salman Rushdie9:09

Well, not very well, really. I mean, I think this is, in a way, I mean, I've been saying for too long, perhaps, that I had a bad time at rugby, which I which I did. But I mean, what I feel like saying now, really, is that it was a very long time ago, and I survived. But I mean, it wasn't pleasant. It there was a certain amount of fairly kind of racially based opposition. Now, perhaps if I hadn't been foreign, they would have found some other thing to get at me about. But I really had the triple whammy, which is I was bad at games, good at studies, and foreign.

Presenter9:40

The Triple Whammy.

Salman Rushdie9:41

Yeah.

Presenter9:42

What's a web?

Salman Rushdie9:42

Well, I mean, I think I'd have got away with it, you know, if I hadn't had all three. I mean, if I'd been good at games, I think I'd have been forgiven being foreign and clever.

Presenter9:51

Yes.

Salman Rushdie9:51

Yes, and and, you know, and so on, but to be all three was no chance.

Presenter9:55

What effect did it have on you? Did it upset you terribly?

Salman Rushdie9:57

Yes.

Salman Rushdie9:59

It made me certainly when I left rugby, it made me not want to continue to be in England, and I tried to persuade my parents that I should go to college in Pakistan, where they had then moved.

Salman Rushdie10:09

They

Salman Rushdie10:10

more or less bullied me back to to into England. And actually I'm very pleased they did because Cambridge was different from school.

Presenter10:16

Have you ever suffered any kind of persecution of that kind since, any racial prejudice?

Salman Rushdie10:20

Oh yes, I mean you get it all the time, you know, and I think this is this is kind of the small change of what happens if you're black or Asian in this country. And for you know, silly things like like going out with girls and having their parents make them break off the relationship and tell them to go and find somebody of their own kind and abuse in the street and you know people rough-handling, man-handling you on underground trains. It doesn't happen very often to me. It happens much less often to me than it happens to many other people.

Speaker 210:46

Yeah.

Salman Rushdie10:47

I well, I think actually in one word, because my skin is light. And I think I think if my skin was darker I'd get a lot more trouble. But um the fact that it doesn't happen that much to me doesn't mean that it's it's kind of not my struggle because it is.

Presenter11:00

Let's have another record.

Salman Rushdie11:02

Well, this is um when I was a kid, the first real writer that I knew as a great family friend was the the great Urdu poet Fares Ahmed Fairz. And he had a wonderful range of gift, which is that he was a great political writer. He was also perhaps even greater writer of love poetry.

Salman Rushdie11:17

Which is why a lot of his poetry got set to music and got sung and became very popular songs and love songs. And this, I think, is one of the most beautiful ones. It's called Tumai Hona, which means you've come, haven't you? And it's about a woman who spent an evening waiting for her lover. And finally, she says, you've come, haven't you? The long evening of waiting is over.

Speaker 311:39

It will

Speaker 311:40

Nasha ben tuzadu kuzuri hai.

Speaker 311:49

Uh

Presenter11:49

Tomae Ho Nachebe

Presenter11:59

And I should be Hey Sahari Bari Bari But

Speaker 312:07

I'm not sure.

Presenter12:10

Noor Jahan singing Tum I Ho Na by the Urdu poet Fez.

Presenter12:15

So, Salman, Cambridge wasn't as bad as you feared.

Salman Rushdie12:18

No, I mean it was a good time to be at university. I mean it so I was at university from sixty five to sixty eight, which was I suppose the years of of student power at

Salman Rushdie12:26

all the kind of turbulence of the time. And and it was also a an awakening for me in all sorts of ways. I mean, first of all, it was an awakening to the fact that there were other sorts of people in this country than the kinds that I'd encountered at public school, and that it was possible to to enjoy.

Salman Rushdie12:41

an English experience, so to speak. And I did. I had a very good time there.

Presenter12:44

I was at

Salman Rushdie12:46

I was a very tiny bulb in footlights, yes. There were lots of people who were much bigger. Did you flash on it?

Presenter12:53

Did you flash on and off?

Salman Rushdie12:54

No, I mean actually I did much more kind of straight acting than than footlights there. I mean I think I was only once on a footlight stage.

Presenter13:00

That you wanted to be a hack?

Salman Rushdie13:02

I did it was the other thing that I thought that I might have done. And actually, it was also a kind of cover in case I couldn't be a writer. Really, and I I was really quite terrified of discovering that I couldn't be a writer.

Presenter13:13

That you you read history, didn't you?

Salman Rushdie13:15

That is

Presenter13:15

You and and you left there with a good degree?

Salman Rushdie13:18

I didn't know. I left there with a very average degree, a sort of extremely undistinguished second.

Presenter13:22

And you went into advertising?

Salman Rushdie13:23

Well, no, first I went into acting in London and, you know, in the fringe theatre, I sort of tried, I spent a while doing that, and then when I was starving to death, I went into advertising. But in fact, I remember a show which kind of connects with the next bit of music, where we had to be in a Vietnam protest play called Viet Rock, which we sang various songs, including this one. But I remember it particularly because there was a part of it where it was very fashionable in those days to insult the audience. I mean, audiences didn't feel they'd had their money's worth unless they'd been insulted, abused a little bit. So there was a bit of this where we were supposed to improvise, abusing the audience about their passivity about the Vietnam War and so forth. And on this particular day, the entire segment of the audience that I was supposed to abuse consisted of a coach party of paraplegics.

Salman Rushdie14:06

And I was absolutely terrified. I thought, I can't do this. The director told me I had to go out and do it, it was the show.

Salman Rushdie14:11

And so of course you had to use what there was there, so you had to tell people that just because they were cripples didn't excuse them from having a political conscience and so forth. And I came out sweating blood and they came backstage afterwards and said they'd never had such a good time in the theatre because they was pleased to have been treated as as the rest of just like the rest of the audience.

Presenter14:24

Yeah.

Presenter14:26

I can't imagine you someone in in advertising. Did you get on very well?

Salman Rushdie14:32

The thing is I found it quite easy. I mean I wasn't outstanding at it, but I did I could do it to a kind of level of competence without without really s engaging my brain.

Presenter14:42

Well copywriting.

Salman Rushdie14:43

Copywriting, yes. So so I d could do it, you know, a couple of days a week and and make a living.

Presenter14:48

Come on, give us a jingle. You must have written a few.

Salman Rushdie14:51

Well I yeah, I did write a few I mean I suppose I mean I don't that I can say this on the B V C, but I did I did there were there were one or two chocolate bars and actually cream cakes was probably the most famous slogan that I ever was responsible for. Not even nice.

Presenter15:05

Uh

Salman Rushdie15:05

Exactly.

Presenter15:05

That you

Salman Rushdie15:05

Yeah.

Presenter15:06

Okay, f Uh

Salman Rushdie15:06

Yeah.

Presenter15:07

Right, let's have this piece of music.

Salman Rushdie15:09

Well, it's the Vietnam rag, or actually it's to give it its full name, it's the I Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die rag by Country Joe and the Fish, which just seemed to me to evoke a lot of the atmosphere of those years of yelling at Harold Wilson in demonstrations and yelling at paraplegics in Oval House.

Speaker 215:27

Oh no.

Salman Rushdie15:27

Uh

Salman Rushdie15:30

Laugh.

Speaker 215:30

Need your help again, he's got in

Speaker 215:35

Yeah, damn.

Presenter15:40

And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for?

Speaker 215:45

Uh

Speaker 215:46

I don't give a damn.

Speaker 215:48

Yeah, I am.

Speaker 215:50

Yeah.

Speaker 215:51

Saying like a dummy, holding up a turly game.

Presenter15:57

The Vietnam Rag by Country Joe and the Phish.

Presenter16:00

Well, now your first novel, Grimus, was not a great success.

Salman Rushdie16:04

Not in the least. No, sold not less than nine hundred coffees and got remained.

Presenter16:08

But the second, it has to be said, certainly was an international hit, translated into twelve languages.

Salman Rushdie16:13

It's twenty-one now.

Presenter16:15

It must have been a wonderful experience.

Salman Rushdie16:17

Well, it certainly was something I wasn't expecting. You know, and I I think there's the the trouble is that you know

Salman Rushdie16:23

I was in this position of having taken quite a risk, admitted that's general, of basically writing the most difficult book I could think of in the aftermath of a book that hadn't been a success.

Salman Rushdie16:32

And really I thought when I finished it, I mean I thought I thought it was all right, I mean I thought I'd done something which I liked, but I had really no way of knowing whether anybody on the planet would agree with me, let alone any let alone buy it.

Presenter16:45

It's a book full of political comment. I mean, did what did you hope? Did you hope to achieve anything by? Did you hope to change people in India?

Salman Rushdie16:52

Obviously, every writer, I think, hopes that their book has that kind of effect. But also, I felt that in the kind of historical dimension of the novel is that there were a lot of lies being told in India. And I think it's a curious phenomenon of the 20th century that politicians have got very good at inventing fictions, which they then tell us are the truth. And it then becomes the the job of the makers of fictions to start telling the truth.

Salman Rushdie17:16

And so, although the novel was principally really about memory, I mean, it's principally about trying to, about somebody remembering their life, there are moments when.

Salman Rushdie17:24

You can't help it when memory becomes political. I mean if I say such a thing happened and the our Prime Minister of India says no it didn't then I'm in a political quarrel. Whereas actually all I've done is remember the past.

Presenter17:36

You were very critical, as you said, of misses Scandy, who was the Prime Minister at the time. Did you ever meet her?

Salman Rushdie17:41

No, I never met her. I came very close, though. Shortly after the novel was published and had its success, I was wrung at this rather strange phone call, which I was convinced was a hoax, from somebody saying that they were speaking, a woman's voice saying she was speaking from the office of the Prime Minister of England, inviting me to lunch, a lunch in honour of Mrs. Gandhi, who was coming over for the opening of the Festival of India.

Salman Rushdie18:03

And I was completely amazed by this. And said, but this really isn't such a good idea. I mentioned this voice because I wrote this novel that's actually very rude about her. And maybe it would be embarrassing for the Prime Minister to introduce me to Mrs. Gandhi. And there's this terrible silence at the end of the phone. And the voice said, well, that is midnight's children, isn't it?

Salman Rushdie18:23

I said yes, and she said, Oh, well she said, Oh, well it's the Foreign Office that put your name forward. You think they'd have read your book, wouldn't you? I'm afraid we haven't read your book So so I said well, you know, perhaps you should go and think about this Um so they went away and I I was really longing for them to ring back and withdraw the invitation because they'd look like such fools.

Salman Rushdie18:39

Meanwhile, I'd sort of decided not to go anyway. So they rang back and said, no, no, you better come anyway. And were very relieved when I pulled out. So I didn't go.

Speaker 218:46

Good night.

Salman Rushdie18:49

And the next day there was another event that I didn't go to at which again Mrs Gandhi and Mrs Thatcher were there, which was about the Indo-British cultural connection, various speeches on that subject. And somebody I knew was there told me that Mrs Thatcher had stood up and made this extraordinary speech about the Indo-British cultural connection and how what rich things it had given us, you know, saris and curry and all that.

Salman Rushdie19:08

And then, you know, talked about Midnight's Children as a as a as a recent example of the value of this. misses Gandhi sitting next to her, stone faced, you see. And eventually she turned to misses Gandhi and said, And of course this is the novel written by the man you met at lunch yesterday.

Presenter19:22

Which he hadn't.

Salman Rushdie19:23

But you

Presenter19:24

Uh Yeah.

Salman Rushdie19:25

Um so I thought it was one of those stories which you couldn't make up, really. It obviously means I'm never going to be invited to Downing Street now.

Presenter19:31

Never again, that's it.

Presenter19:33

Let's have uh it's your fifth record, isn't it?

Salman Rushdie19:36

This is really a piece of music which I've chosen because it comes from one of my all-time favourite films, which is the the first film of Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy, the film called Phathar Panchli. There's a scene in the film when the father of this poor family comes back to his village to discover that the the girl, his daughter, has died in his absence, which is and the music is really carries the emotional way to the scene. And throughout the film the music is absolutely kind of central to it and I've never forgotten.

Presenter20:31

Ravishanko's improvisation of the theme music from the film Parta Panchali.

Presenter20:36

Salmon, are you now the complete professional? Do you get up every morning and write your statutory two thousand words, whatever the weather?

Salman Rushdie20:42

Oh my, two thousand words would be rather wonderful. Yes, I mean actually five or six hundred will do me usually. But I mean yes, and I think the thing is that that

Salman Rushdie20:51

I'm naturally very lazy. I mean, naturally, if I could if I could live a kind of uncontrolled life, I'd stay in bed till three o'clock in the morning in the afternoon and then, you know, read the papers and then stay up late and then go to bed and not do any work at all. So what I have to do instead is to is to be manically disciplined when I'm writing.

Presenter21:10

But how is the novel born in you? I mean, do you walk around feeling it kind of gathering momentum?

Salman Rushdie21:15

Novels are born out of sudden lightings up of light bulbs above your head sometimes. And in my case, usually they come from discovering that three or four different ideas that I've been kicking around are actually all part of the same idea. And they suddenly click together. And then I think, oh, that's what I'm thinking about. And that is always a kind of very pleasurable moment. But it doesn't happen by just walking around in the park. It happens by sitting at your desk and slogging.

Presenter21:39

You wrote, of course, shame um a year after you wrote Midnight's Children, a book about Pakistan this time and the rise to power of um President Zia, Zia Ulhaq, whom you despised.

Salman Rushdie21:50

Well, I didn't know. I think I didn't despise him. Actually, I think one of the problems with Zia is that we all underestimated him. That certainly he was a rather clownish figure when he first came to power, but he rapidly proved that he was a much more formidable person than any of us have thought. I mean, actually, although the novel does derive its sort of central political dynamic from the quarrel between or the dispute between Mr. Butto and General Zia, who executed Mr Butto, the characters in the novel, I mean, really, to my mind, are not them. I mean, they have echoes of them. But the thing that came to interest me, really, was that these two figures

Salman Rushdie22:26

civilian and military en encompassed a whole range of opposites, on the one hand hedonistic, on the other hand puritan, on the one hand very secular, on the other hand very religious, and so forth. And it was those kinds of conflict between the ascetic and the and the playboy really, which were in a way more interesting to me than just making portraits of of Butto and Zia, because I mean as portraits they're not particularly good.

Presenter22:49

Have you ever considered politics as a career?

Salman Rushdie22:51

God forbid, no.

Presenter22:52

I mean it's

Salman Rushdie22:53

Not interested enough really. And I think my my interest in politics is is just that it seems to me that it is a part of life. I mean exactly as much as love or food or sleep or work or whatever it might be. And so that if you're trying to construct books, it's natural that that should also be one of the dimensions that you you write about.

Presenter23:12

Let's have another record.

Salman Rushdie23:14

Well, I mean, this one's just cheer myself up music, um, because uh in the way that that the character in Burgess's novel Clockwork Orange and then in the film plays plays Beethoven's Ninth in order to kind of cheer himself up. Um I mean I'd play that too actually, but but uh but this this um piece of colours

Salman Rushdie23:31

The havaniera from Kerman is is something which you played extremely loud, sort of neighbor infuriatingly loud, um at moments when the writing isn't going well, as I've found is a very good way of kind of unclogging the brain.

Salman Rushdie23:50

Precipient of the

Speaker 324:01

Definitely auto celebrities.

Salman Rushdie24:05

Peace.

Speaker 324:09

Feel not the idea

Speaker 324:22

Oh yes.

Presenter24:32

It's not

Salman Rushdie24:33

Yeah.

Presenter24:33

Even what

Salman Rushdie24:34

Uh

Presenter24:46

Maria Callas singing the Abanera from Bize's opera Carmen.

Presenter24:51

You've now, um Salmanushdi, lived here in England longer than you lived in India, and as I said at the beginning, you've I, your motherland, from afar.

Presenter25:00

analysing her, searching for her identity. Why does identity which is a word that crops up with you more than any other perhaps why does identity matter so much?

Salman Rushdie25:10

I think probably it is just that you have a sense of identity being plural rather than singular, of it being made up of very many, very diverse elements. And then migration adds yet another element. And so

Speaker 225:21

Elephant.

Salman Rushdie25:23

So yes, I mean one does think about it a lot, but actually I think that the part of my writing which was to do with trying to work out what I thought about growing up in India or what I thought about my relationship with India and Pakistan, I have a feeling that it may well be coming to a close, that part. I mean I certainly felt with the completion of my new novel, which partly takes place in India and partly doesn't.

Salman Rushdie25:46

that I sort of felt I'd done it really. I mean I sort of thought that there was a body of work there which which said

Speaker 225:47

Uh

Salman Rushdie25:53

More or less expressed what what I had to say about that. And and that and actually that's a kind of feeling of liberation. I mean, it's you can go on and do anything else now.

Presenter26:00

But also, I mean, it's entirely part of your life, isn't it? You have a son who is half English, you've you've just remarried, you have an American wife.

Salman Rushdie26:06

That's right. Yes, I belong to more continents than you could imagine, really. I mean, it feels like being stretched, like a piece of elastic across the planet. But usually, and most of the time, I think of that as a real blessing. And I think of that as the most wonderful opportunity for a writer. The amount of things that one has access to and can therefore write about and write from.

Presenter26:28

Let's hear your seventh record.

Salman Rushdie26:29

Well, I suppose it's connected with the new novel because the new novel is called The Satanic Verses and one of the things it's about, to put it very simply, is the problem of distinguishing angels from devils. It takes its title from an apocryphal incident in the life of the Prophet Muhammad, who said that on one occasion, when he'd been up the mountain, instead of the archangel Gabriel appearing to him, the normal angel of the revelation, the devil had appeared to him in the guise of the archangel and had given him satanic verses, which he later discovered to be so and had to be expunged from the Quran when the real angel turned up. And it struck me that if the Prophet had such trouble distinguishing angels from devils, then the rest of us don't really have much chance. So the novel arises out of that incident. And so I thought it would be appropriate to choose a record which I actually like very much by The Rolling Stones called Sympathy for the Devil.

Presenter27:19

Please allow me

Speaker 327:21

Need to introduce myself. I'm a man of will and

Presenter27:26

Say

Speaker 227:28

Uh

Presenter27:28

I've been around for a long, long year So many men so to play

Presenter27:37

Uh

Speaker 327:37

I was round when Jesus Christ had his moment.

Presenter27:41

Uh

Speaker 327:41

The doubt is pain

Presenter27:45

Me damn sure the pilot washed his hands. Sympathy for the Devil from the Rolling Stones.

Presenter27:52

Salmon, how are you going to cope o on the island? Could you fend for yourself?

Salman Rushdie27:57

I don't think so, really. I think I'd have quite a difficult time grubbing for worms.

Presenter28:02

I mean, are you any good at home, or are you entirely looked after by your wife?

Salman Rushdie28:05

No, no. I mean, I think, you know, if you have a writer for a wife as as I do, um, then you really, you know, it very much is a relationship of equals. But she writes too. Marianne, yes, she's Marianne Wiggins, she's an American writer. And we we we work at opposite ends of the house and and try and not listen to the other each each other's typewriters going.

Presenter28:13

But she writes too.

Salman Rushdie28:23

Yeah.

Presenter28:23

Who cooks the lunch?

Salman Rushdie28:24

Well, nobody really is the answer. We all start.

Presenter28:29

Well, you'll have plenty of time to sort of ruminate on the island and sit back. You you'll build a shelter, will you?

Salman Rushdie28:34

Oh, I think probably, yes. I think it would be a bit exposed otherwise. I'm not quite sure what the facilities are on this island. I mean, it's.

Presenter28:40

Oh, practically not.

Salman Rushdie28:40

Practically none. Well, I think I'll dig a large hole in this case, crawl into it.

Presenter28:45

So you will be desirous of escape.

Salman Rushdie28:47

I think so, yes. I think any passing ship would be fine.

Presenter28:50

Let's see your eighth record.

Salman Rushdie28:52

Yeah.

Salman Rushdie28:53

Well, this is for no reason really, except that I think the flautist Hariprasad Chorasiya is one of the great artists of Indian music. And I mean, I could listen to him on the Desert Island, you know, for several years. So really, almost anything of his I would have been happy with. And I just think it's most the Indian flute, when played well, is the most melodic, haunting, kind of spectral melody. And I've never heard anything to touch it, so I just wanted some flute music.

Presenter29:50

The Indian flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia playing part of the Indian symphony Call of the Valley devised by Shiv Kumar Sharma.

Presenter30:00

The moments of decision here, Salman. The record, first of all. Which one of those eight are you going to choose in preference to all the others?

Salman Rushdie30:08

Well, I think I might have that one, actually. I think if if it's a question of of really being able to listen to something for a long time, I might just have that gentle flute music wafting along along behind me.

Presenter30:17

Mm. Very soothing.

Salman Rushdie30:18

Yes, very soothing. My bum might need soothing on the desert island.

Presenter30:22

And and the book. You have Shakespeare, complete works. You've got the Bible.

Salman Rushdie30:27

Yeah, the book was quite easy actually. I can't see that I would be dipping into the Bible a great deal, but I mean it's all right to have it there. There's some good stories in it. No, the book was very easy. It would be The Arabian Nights, because apart from anything else, it seems to me in a way to contain all other stories. It's also extremely long. It's one of those books which is sort of like painting the Albert Bridge. By the time you get to the end, it's time to go back to the beginning. You've already forgotten it. I could spend the rest of my life reading The Arabian Nights quite cheerfully.

Presenter30:56

And your luxury.

Salman Rushdie30:57

Well, I wasn't sure about the luxury item. And I think in the end it c it came back for me to this this curious schizophrenia of the writer, of of having on the one hand appreciating the solitude and on the other hand desperately needing to escape it.

Salman Rushdie31:09

But at the same time, not wanting to be disturbed when you were wanting to be by yourself. So I thought at the end, what I would like is an unlisted radio telephone.

Salman Rushdie31:20

The idea actually of a desert island with a with a telephone directory with no entries in it'cause the only phone was unlisted was rather pleasant. And it that allows me to ring anybody else up, but nobody can ring me.

Presenter31:30

But you can't ask for help when you ring.

Salman Rushdie31:32

No, that's all right, I won't promise.

Presenter31:34

As long as you promise you really have to promise. I suspect it is breaking the rules a bit. All right, we'll let you have it. Aren't you going to have any paper and pencils? I mean, I it would be much more appropriate and much more permissible.

Salman Rushdie31:34

You really have to

Salman Rushdie31:41

Yeah.

Salman Rushdie31:44

No, I thought it was boring. I thought I could be like the characters in Bradbury's novel, Ray Bradbury's novel, Fahrenheit 451, who have to memorize the books.

Presenter31:53

That'll take you some time.

Presenter31:55

Thank you very much, Salman Rushdie, for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thanks.

Speaker 332:06

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.