Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 170
170 R E A L R E A SON FOR W R IT ING T HE S ATA NIC V ER SES Since his return from the self-inflicted exile, Rushdie must have felt quite naked and vulnerable without the Special Branch who had become part of his everyday life. But it was not long before he started to make noises again to make sure that he had not been for- gotten. But as surely as a murderer returns to the scene of the crime, so Rushdie could not resist re-telling the reasons why he wrote the infamous Satanic Verses, but just like in the case of the murderer, the real truth begins to emerge and so Rushdie also begins to put his foot in it time and time again, as we find out from his narratives to the media. The truth emerges from the very beginning when he wrote his first novel Grimus which was both a commercial and critical failure. He was never able to forgive and forget his critics and when sud- denly his very next novel Midnight’s Children became an overnight success, he was honoured with the ultimate of accolades within the writing fraternity, that of the Booker Prize, Rushdie in his accept- ance speech scathed his critics of his first novel so much so that it be- came regarded as a most ungracious acceptance speech. Egocentric, self-centred, pretentious, conceited, call him what you like, but this was the beginning of the “building block for his reputation as an ar- rogant, rather unappealing fellow”. (Ginny Dougary, The incredible lightness of Salman, The Times 09/2005). It was not his wont that he could be criticized in any way. And this is further supported by his criticism of others. For example: Rushdie wrote a “knocking piece about Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet , implying that there was only one way to write about India – and that if the author’s perspective did not conform to the orthodoxy laid down by Rushdie, it was unacceptable. As events unravelled – as we all know – it was the writer of The Satanic Verses and his supporters