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Rushdie wants to make his home a writers' retreat

Salman Rushdie wants to make his ancestral home near Shimla a writers' retreat.

"My family and I want to use it, or make it a writers' retreat," said the Indian-born author who is now in the country after a gap of 12 years.

Rushdie, who won a legal battle over his ancestral home 'Anees Villa' near Solan in Himachal Pradesh only last year, spent two days there after he arrived in the country eight days ago.

The retreat idea would take off, he said, if he could get a good administrator. "I hope to retain the house," he said while chatting with reporters in New Delhi today.

The 52-year-old winner of the Booker prize, who spent the last 12 years in hiding following a fatwa from Ayatollah Khomeini, said he had hoped to buy a place in India with the earnings from his controversial novel, The Satanic Verses. But the 'difficulties' in living in the country following the threat on his life put him off.

The Bombay-born author, who is accompanied by his 20-year-old son Zafar, said "some threat" still exists even after Iran lifted the fatwa after an agreement with Britain.

Though he arrived in the country eight days ago, Rushdie appeared in public only last night, at the awards ceremony of the Commonwealth Writers Prize in New Delhi.

Rushdie, who reached here from London had visited Jaipur, Fatehpur Sikri and Agra, before going to Solan.

The London-based author, who lost the Commonwealth Prize for the best book to South African J M Coetzee last night, was more forthcoming on the ban on The Satanic Verses today. Last night, he had said at a press conference that he was not in India to lobby for lifting the ban.

"Yes, of course. I want to see the ban lifted," he said today. "I am not in favour of censorship."

The author of five novels beginning with the not-too-popular Grimus was dismayed that people forgot the fact that he had written 11 books other than The Satanic Verses.

"If they read them, they will understand me better," he said.

Rushdie said he had walked around the streets during this visit, and said he had found money in some places and intense poverty in others. "There are obvious changes in the middle class."

"I feel it is a safe place," he said of India, adding that he never wanted to get away from the country and used this visit to smell and feel the reality of the place to resume his relationship with his motherland.

"Bad luck," remarked Rushdie when a reporter asked him why he had not brought along Padma Lakshmi, the Indian lady he has been romantically associated with.

Asked about the BBC film project based on his novel, Midnight's Children, Rushdie, who had written its script, said the project was suspended.

"We don't have the permission to shoot the film in India. I am persuading BBC to once again push through the project," he said.

Both India and Sri Lanka, where an alternative location had been sought, had denied BBC permission to shoot the film.

Rushdie, who had cancelled a press conference apparently on the advice of the security personnel, came out of his hotel room to meet journalists apologising for the cancellation.

Does not Ayatollah Khomeini deserve half of his royalty for making him world famous, he was asked.

Pat came the reply, "Fortunately, he is not in a position to collect it." Khomeini died a few years after he issued the fatwa calling Muslims to execute Rushdie for his blasphemous remarks on Islam in The Satanic Verses.

Rushdie said regional writers misunderstood his praise of Indian writing in English as the best literature to come out of India in the last century, because his selection of Indian works in an anthology of Indian literature was made from the available quality translations.

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