Who Is Padma, The Food Queen Who Defied Rushdie's Death And Assassination Attempts? Also With His Body Tiscali

Lakshmi, the writer’s wife, was a television and editorial celebrity associated with flavors, recipes and the fusion of cultures. And it is still close to him today

Padma Lakshmi with Salman Rushdie (Photo Shutterstock)

“Worried and out of breath” but happy, because now “he can breathe again”. A signal to the recorder was expected Salman Rushdiehit by a curse and an assassination order (fatwa) issued almost 40 years ago by theIranian Ayatollah Khomeiniand ended with the stabbing attack that shot Rushdie dead. Taken to hospital in serious condition. Everyone expected a signal from Padma Lakshmi and this signal has arrived. there Food star, TV and publishing star dedicated to the flavors of the world. The woman who challenged Islamic fundamentalists and who persisted even when her respective celebrity put a stop to it his marriage to the author of the cursed book The Satanic Verses.

Shutterstock and Instagram photos

star of the kitchen

Padma Lakshmi continues to direct the TV show Taste The Nation and has been a judge and producer on Top Chef since 2006. one of the most visited cooking formats in the world. For her dissemination work she was nominated for an Emmy, the Oscar of television. He wrote six books the latest of which, which combines food with children’s literature, Tomatoes For Neela, is a bestseller. With two degrees and four perfectly mastered languages (Tamil, Hindi, Italian and English) Lakshmi is the center of a small empire based on flavors, recipes, the fusion of different tastes and cultures. Her very success made her life incompatible with Rushdies. But he’s never forgotten it, even now while he’s in intensive care after being repeatedly stabbed and put on artificial respiration during a literary event. There Padma Lakshmi was Rushdie’s wife during the most difficult years of the Anglo-Indian writer’s life.

The tweet for Padmas Rushdie, now a food star (from Twitter)

Defy death and fundamentalists

It was 1986 when Iran sentenced him to death for blasphemy following the publication of The Satanic Verses, in which Salman Rushdie satirically reread part of Islamic tradition and the figure of Muhammad. This fatwa was renewed in 2005 and essentially never ended. For years, Rushdie lived a life under guard where every move was at very high risk. 1999 meeting Padma Lakshmi, then a model with small experiences in television (also in Italy, where she acted in Domenica In and starred in some fictional episodes). From 2004 to 2007 the marriage was sealed with a marital “yes”. Padma was the woman who accompanied Rushdie everywhere, risk with him, who even challenges would-be killers with his body. Wrapped in elegant and sensual dresses, sometimes in a play of transparencies another challenge for those who, in Indian and Arabic cultures, would like women to be lifted up and hidden from the view of others as much as possible. Death, Padma Lakshmi is used to challenging him from a young age when it was like that involved in a serious accident in which her right arm was devastated, leaving her with a large scar which she wears today as if it were a tattoo. “It’s a part of me, I couldn’t erase it,” he said several times. And as she continues her successful career as a food star, she remains close to the man who was almost shot for his ideas and literary genius.