During her appearance on Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? on Max and CNN this weekend, Padma Lakshmi opened up about her former marriage with Salman Rushdie and said that she was afraid for her life every day while she was married to the celebrated yet controversial author.
For those not in the know, Rushdie received a barrage of threats of violence following the publication of his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.
A fatwah demanding his execution was issued on Valentine's Day 1989 by Ayatollah Khomeini, the then-Supreme leader of Iran, who called the book “blasphemous against Islam.”
"I would be lying if I said, I didn't think about those things. I did think about the fatwah every day of my life, I couldn't not think about it," Lakshmi told Wallace. “But what I thought about more was very deep love between us. And that made me not afraid because I was with the man I loved. And I thought that was where it should be.”
The 54-year-old revealed that her family was against her getting married to Rushdie at first, however, gradually into the relationship, “they also really grew to love Salman.” "And that's really what I hope propels all of my important decisions," she added.
The former couple was married for three years from 2004 to 2007.
Also offering an update on Rushdie’s condition after he was stabbed at a literary event last year, Lakshmi said, "He is healing beautifully, valiantly. Like everyone else, when I heard about it, it catapulted me right back to things that I hadn't thought about for a very long time.”
Stay tuned to this space for more updates!
Bhumi Pednekar
