Salman Rushdi’s
New Novel on Kashmir
By Dr Afzal Mirza
CA
Salman Rushdie
who had earlier written ten controversial books
including his infamous novel The Satanic Verses
has now come out with a new novel entitled Shalimar
the Clown. As usual all his favorite subjects namely
politics, religion and history are present in the
book but it has failed to make any headway in the
bestseller charts
In this book Rushdi has tried to show how Shalimar
becomes a terrorist. Besides Shalimar the Clown
there are two other important characters in the
story who are Bhoomi or Boonyi as he describes her
and an American named Max Ophuls. The story unfolds
in two small villages of Indian-held Kashmir named
Pachigam and Shirmal. Pachigam is an example of
a tolerant environment where Muslims and Kashmiri
Pundits peacefully co-exist. The two families of
Pundit Payarelal Kaul and Abdullah Noman run a Bhand
Pather – a troupe that performs acts and dramas
for entertaining the public on different occasions.
The heroine of the novel, an extraordinarily charming
and beautiful Bhoomi ( meaning Earth) whom the novelist
describes by Kashmiri name Boonyi, is the only daughter
of Pundit Kaul. Shalimar the clown’s real
name is Noman Sher Noman. He is called Shalimar
the clown because he performs the balancing act
of walking on a tight rope and also presents some
clownish antics. Otherwise he is a handsome Kashmiri.
The two young creatures fall in love with each other
and their parents as well as the village environment
is so liberal that in spite of being Hindu and Muslim
the parents agree on their marriage which is solemnized
by both Hindu and Muslim rituals.
On the marriage night Shalimar makes a pledge that
in case Bhoonyi ever betrayed him he would kill
her as well as her paramour and their offspring.
So far so good and the two lead a happy life when
Max Ophuls the American ambassador enters the scene.
Accompanied by Indian foreign minister Swaran Singh
he visits Kashmir and as part of his entertainment
the Bhand Pather is invited to perform for the VIPs.
A dramatization of the legend of Anarkali was always
a part of the performance in which the beautiful
Boonyi acted as Anarkali. The novelist has in a
separate chapter described the career of Ophuls,
a teacher by profession, who comes from Belgium
and when Hitler annexes Belgium he escapes to France
and participates in the resistance movement against
the Nazi invasion of France as a confidante of Gen.
de Gualle . On being traced by Nazis he slips to
England to join his boss. In the resistance movement
he meets his future wife whom the novelist calls
Grey Rat. Max has been shown to be a habitual adulterer.
From England he goes to America and works as a professor
and is picked up by the administration to replace
Galbraith as ambassador to India. Rushdie has in
the next chapter given a brief history of the Kashmir
problem. In Kashmir when Max watches Boonyi perform
he gets under the spell of her beauty and wants
to have her. He so maneuvers that the troupe minus
Shalimar is invited to New Delhi. After the performance
he discusses with Boonyi her future as a dancer
and lures her to stay back and learn dancing from
a famous instructor. She succumbs to his seduction
and stays back in Delhi while the troupe returns
to Kashmir.
In Delhi Ophuls makes her his concubine and puts
her up in an expensive flat. The luxurious lifestyle
and available leisure badly influences Boonyi who
gets addicted to drugs and in two years time becomes
what Rushdie describes as a ”vegetarian and
non-vegetarian, fish- and meat eating, Hindu, Christian
and Muslim, a democratic, secularist omnivore.”
He describes her physical appearance in these words,
”Inevitably her beauty dimmed. Her hair lost
its luster, her skin coarsened, her teeth rotted,
her body odor soured and her bulk—ah! her
bulk increased steadily, week by week, day by day,
almost hour by hour. Her head rattled with pills,
her lungs were full of poppies.” Soon she
gets pregnant and gives birth to a girl whom she
gives the name of Kashmira Noman.. The diplomatic
circles and media rattle with the scandal and discredited
Ophuls is ordered to leave for America. However
his wife comes to Boonyi and to latter’s chagrin
takes the girl away offering her some compensation
and safe passage back to Kashmir. The girl she names
India Ophuls and flies her back to America. Boonyi
returns to Pachigam.
She returns in an emotionally shattered state conscious
of the situation that her husband is surely going
to kill her but still there is a hope that he might
pardon her. Here the author is at his best. He describes
her arrival in snow-clad Pachigam in these words,”
She saw them all through snow storm circling her
like crows keeping their distance. She called out
but no body called back. One by one they approached
her …. and one by one they receded….Boonyi
thought she understood. She was being punished.
She was being judged in dumb show and ritually ostracized.
…the snow clouded her sight and finally was
her husband Noman Shalimar the Clown. What was that
look on his face? She had never seen such a look
before….May be she would die here beneath
her husband’s blade. She was ready to die.
She fell on her knees in the snow, arms spread,
and waited.” Shalimar was restrained by his
father and Boonyi’s father at that moment.
Boonyi was taken by another rape victim of the village
named Zooni to stay with her in her wooden hamlet
on top of the hill a little away from Pachigam.
Boonyi waited there for her husband to kill her
and the time passed. Boonyi Kaul Noman never went
back to live in Pachigam again. This long period
of waiting and state of her mind reminds of the
period Rushdie spent in hiding waiting for the lurking
death sequel to the fatwa against him.
Shalimar on the other hand became introvert. He
was performing but not with his heart. The politics
enters his mind in revenge for what an American
had done to his wife.“One day he proposed
that the scene in the Anarkali play in which the
dancing girl was grabbed by the soldiers who had
come to take her to be bricked up in her wall might
be sharpened if the soldiers came on in American
Army uniform and Anarkali donned the flattened straw
hat of a Vietnamese peasant woman. The American
seizure of Anarkali-as-Vietnam would, he argued,
immediately be understood by their audience as a
metaphor for the Indian Army’s stifling presence
in Kashmir which they were forbidden to depict.”
Then one day he suggested to his parents that he
wanted to meet his brother Anees who had joined
a group of freedom fighters. “Shalimar the
Clown left Pachigam the next morning carrying nothing
but his clothes he stood up in and the knife in
his waistband and was not seen in the village for
fifteen years”. His brother Anees and his
comrades who were working for the liberation of
Kashmir through a secular organization that turned
militant join hands with a religious liberation
movement headed by Maulana Bulbul Fakh whom the
author calls Iron Mullah also. This Mullah had earlier
spent some time as Imam of Shirmal mosque and sowed
the seeds of communal hatred. Fakh now addressed
these Kashmiri young men on the other side of the
border saying, “We know that the universe
is an illusion and the truth lies beyond the illusion.”
The author writes,”Shalimar the Clown rose
on his feet and tore off his garments. ‘Take
me.’ He cried ‘Truth, I am ready for
you.’ ” So Shalimar got trained in Camp
22 and befriended many Jihadi luminaries who had
fought with Afghans including Mullah Umar and his
assistant Zahir who were destined to lead Afghanistan
under the Taliban regime. In Kashmir the liberation
struggle entered a militant phase. On one hand there
were freedom fighters with their internal contradictions
as factions asking for an independent Kashmir and
those who wanted to follow religious path and wanted
a merger with Pakistan; on the other they were pitted
against a ruthless army headed by General Kachwa
who had spent all his active life in chasing Kashmiri
freedom fighters. Kachwa was for taking advantage
of these contradictions. No place in Kashmir could
escape the effect of this struggle and even Pachigam
— a peaceful village was affected. Taking
advantage of this situation the village was razed
to the ground by Indian forces.
Shalimar who did not like suicide bombing and entrapping
young boys and girls for the purpose by Iron Mullah
was happy when Mullah and his comrades were killed
by Indian forces. He returns to Pachigam, kills
his wife and then heads for America traveling through
Philippines and Canada and reaches Los Angeles where
Max Ophuls is living after his retirement with his
young daughter India Ophuls. The book begins with
Shalimar working as Max Ophuls’s driver in
LA and in the last chapter entitled Kashmira Shalimar
kills Ophuls and is caught and sentenced to death
and put in San Quentin. In a daredevil fashion he
breaks out of the prison and heads towards India’s
flat to kill her and is killed by her instead.”
There was no possibility that she would miss. There
was no second chance. There was no India. There
was only Kashmira and Shalimar the clown.”
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