Sometimes, breaking news is so significant, it demands that I waste my lunchtime on it. This is not that kind of news story (thanks, Anon + Rose). Via Yahoo!:
British author Salman Rushdie and his wife Padma Lakshmi, host of TV show “Top Chef,” are getting divorced, his spokeswoman said on Monday, just two weeks after he was awarded a controversial knighthood.
Fourth time? Not a charm, it turns out.
He married Lakshmi, a former model born in 1970 in India, in 2004. She was his fourth wife and the couple had no children.
It’s not him, it’s her:
“Salman Rushdie has agreed to divorce his wife, Padma Lakshmi, because of her desire to end their marriage,” spokeswoman Jin Auh said in a statement on his behalf.
I don’t think it was just the British, who did:
When the Indian-born Rushdie started his romance with the model more than 20 years his junior, the British tabloids made much of their differences in age and intellectual stature.
But Rushdie always defended his wife.
Am I the only one who finds “not supposed to be permitted to be” awkward?
“Anyone who’s met Padma knows she’s as intelligent as they come,” he told The Times of London in a 2005 interview. “But, you know, it’s not supposed to be permitted to be gorgeous and really smart and also very nice.”
Okay, snark aside, I do remember feeling a bit sorry for him. Or at least wincing on his behalf. Once.
“It feels very odd to see newspaper articles saying ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘Why Do Beautiful Women Love Ugly Men?”‘ he said in the interview. “But at this stage, I’m kind of resigned to it at — as you say — pushing 60.”
While a few of you howled that these two were your top pick for the “One of these things is not like the other/THEY FREAKING DON’T BELONG TOGETHER”-prize, I still say that TomKat deserves THAT dishonor. Yes, more than AbhiShwarya, even. Back to reading Maximum City, if you’re not industriously doing something else. 😉
PadmaLakshmi, Come to Butthead!
I remember watching this food tv episode where PL went to Udupi, sat down for the temple’s lunch, in front of a banana leaf and tried to eat with her hand and I think she spoke a few words of tamil in that episode. And she was in a cotton saree.
His Shalimar and moor were not that great compared to midnight, may be he is losing his touch! 😉
Rahul, Lady and the Gramp – neat and succint!
Does she kind of resemble Jlo?? That scar is HOT btw.
http://22.tmz.com/2007/07/02/my-big-fatwah-divorce/
Catch the nips in that link.
it seems pretty clear that she used him. few in america had ever heard of padma lakshmi before she married salman rushdie. and only since marrying him did she get her top chef gig. they showed up together for the saja convention in new york a few years ago–he was the headliner and she was on stage at his side and kept grabbing the mic away from him during the q and a, cutting him off when he was trying to answer questions. (he didn’t seem to mind). she wanted to make sure everyone in the audience knew that she was an author, too–a cookbook author–and she blathered on about her book tour, when she had to go to “dreadful places– places like south carolina.” this didn’t elicit the laugh she thought it would. anyway, good luck to both of them.
“t seems pretty clear that she used him.”
well it would be stupid if she married him for nothing.He is no longer a stud. I keep feeling bad for young women who have to marry old hags to get what they deserve. If only the world were fair to women would they not resort such gold-digging behavior.(I hope she gets a few million dollars from him tho.) Such tragedies could clearly be averted by electing Hillary Clinton to office.
It’s stupid for people like Salman Rushdie to get married a 2nd or 3rd time anyway. After they’ve been married once, and have kids already, and then get divorced, then they should just enjoy multiple sequential affairs for the rest of their days. The dude’s not good-looking but there are plenty of good-looking women who would be interested in him just for his literary reputation, his intellect, and his fame. A lot of intellectual women can be quite attractive too. Why go through all this for no reason? Now of course, if he really finds someone he clicks with, or falls in love (not just lust) then sure he should get married again.
I have been separated from my wife for almost two years. We have two beautiful children together. I wouldn’t wish this kind of agony on anyone. I don’t care if they are rich or poor. I hope Salman and Padma both find what they are looking for in life and love.
“In the ways of my country. Those who love too much…lose everything. Those who love with irony…last.”
Yeah, Diamond Geezer…I can’t really begin to imagine that she (or anyone else for that matter, except complete psychotics like Anna Nicole Smith) would get married for such cynical purposes.
One of the things no one warns you about with marriage is that you actually do wind up caring about the other person, even when you don’t really want to anymore. And I can’t imagine someone who’d threaten a journalist with a baseball bat over an offhand comment about his wife feeling indifferent about his marriage…or her feeling indifferent about it, either.
As if just because you’re older, you lose the desire for permanent companionship, for someone to come home to. Hell, from what I’ve seen, that desire just gets stronger.
But hey! She’s on the market again. A boy can dream!
That’s different…o izzat di gall hundi. Doesn’t mean you necessarily care much for your wife.
but aren’t most people sure each time they get married that this time it will be forever? esp. considering SR had to pay out about $5m to his last wife in their divorce settlement. i would think that with PL either he got a pre-nup or he really did think this would be forever (or he didn’t care about the financial implications of divorce, but i doubt this scenario)…
a bit hard to say, rahul. theoretically, any stalker-type behaviour should be a major red flag signalling me not to go out with such men. in practise, sometimes i am too soft of a heart to be a stickler. plus, don’t we women like our men to take control?
Of course, goddammit, you do!
For you, Salil, Google is creating a special event button that says “I’m feeling Luck-shm-y!”.
Ewwww he is so ugly!
But that’s pretty much what happens, in a defacto sense. The marriage certs are for society, no one else.
I don’t know why you guys are going gaga over this Padma woman, she is anything but beautiful. She is too tall with an ordinary Indian face, and she has no curves, breasts, ass, etc….