Who would win the inevitable war? And when,eventually, he was able to reemerge into public life, he refused to lie low.
Why would I do this? Theanthem of the Rushdie nation, a song Gibreel Farishta sings in the opening pages of The Satanic Verses, is 'Mera Joota Hai Japani' from Shree 420,starring a Chaplinesque Raj Kapoor.
He flamboyantly set aside questions that to this day are asked of all writers who are not white men of European extraction—what gives you the right to tell this story? And now, finally, I know what vibrators are really for: reading.
Its unruly mix was what Rushdie strove to replicate in the language he invented in Midnight's Children, the voice he found for his most famous novel and sustained through so much of his career.