Rushdie's third marriage `on the rocks'

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, FEB 25. The controversial novelist, Mr. Salman Rushdie's third marriage is reported to be on the rocks thanks to his heavy involvement with Ms. Padma Lakshmi, a pretty former South Indian model, nearly half his age and hailed in New York's gossip columns as the ``new'' Sophia Loren.

A £ 5 million divorce settlement with his wife, Mrs. Elizabeth West is, being discussed, according to The Sunday Times which said the couple's relations had come under ``severe strain in the past 18 months while he partied in New York with Padma Lakshmi.''

Mr. Rushdie met her in New York and the two have been a part of the city's party circuit provoking speculation about their relationship. He moved to New York last year saying London had become ``too bitchy'' and ``incestuous'' but the real reason could have been the young woman in his life. He has since returned to London and quickly got back on the social scene.

Mr. Rushdie has a son from Mrs. Elizabeth West, a London-based publisher and writer, whom he married in 1998 when he still faced the fatwa imposed by the late Ayatollah Khomeini for writing The Satanic Verses. He called her the ``most important person in my life'' and ``my good luck''. They met when she was an editor at Bloomsbury and the two jointly edited an anthology of Indian writing. She has been markedly low- profile than Mr. Rushdie's second wife, Ms. Marianne Wiggins, the American novelist, who left him after the fatwa was imposed saying he was ``impossible'' to live with. He had married her after dropping his first wife, Ms. Clarissa Luard, credited with his literary breakthrough. When Ms. Wiggins left him, it was greeted as poetic justice for what he had done unto Ms. Luard.

The Sunday Times quoted a friend of Ms. West as saying that Mr. Rushdie's relationship with Ms. Lakshmi was a ``symptom rather than a cause of the marriage breakdown.'' ``The rift was caused by his insistence on moving to America while she felt that London was better for bringing up a young boy.''

Unlike his two previous wives, Ms. Lakshmi has no literary pretensions excepting a book on dieting:``Easy Exotic: A Model's Low-Fat Recipes from Around the World.'' She has also appeared in a few TV films, but back home in Chennai she is believed to have become a celebrity after her association with Mr. Rushdie.

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