Coincidences and paranoia

Wishing Salman Rushdie well

Although he has become more or less another smug New Yorker, very evident in his latest, mediocre, novel The Golden House, I do hope Salman Rushdie lives to write more beautiful prose.

The 75 year old author was the victim of a shockingly public stabbing attack in New York City yesterday. This seemingly perpetrated by a young man with Iranian sympathies.

It coincides closely with the 75th anniversary of Indian independence from Britain at midnight on 15th August 1947. (Becoming a Republic was about three years later).

Rushdie was of course the author of that book which Iran, most notably, condemned. It's an odd book which starts stormingly but then becomes confusing to readers unfamiliar with the Koran. Well: me anway.

Midnight’s Children is his best book (okay, there’s a couple I've missed) in terms of the beauty of the language and scope of the narrative. The novel uses as a narrative framework the lives of some of the people born at that exact time, midnight on 15/8/47.

Another of the author's beautifully written, but savage, books was Shalimar The Clown, which tells the story of the Punjab. This region is still disputed by the two adjacent states created by Partition in 1947.

With so many flashpoints around the world turning nasty right now it would be quite credible if Punjab were to flare up again. The Pakistan government was regime changed recently. India has defied the U$A/UKKK line on sanctions against Russia, and successfully warded off CronyVirus using actual medicines. If mischief were to be caused in that area to discourage further disobedience would that be so big a surprise?

With appalling irony, because any alternative explanation would be quite quite mad, Rushdie had been due to give a lecture on how America provides refuge for oppressed artists/writers from around the world.

Astonishing these coincidences keep happening.

Last I heard, Rushdie may be paralysed in one arm, has likely lost one eye, and is on a ventilator in NYC. That's a risky damn place to find yourself.