There are so many versions of him. The Salman Rushdie present  at Bangalore’s Taj West End tonight however was someone tangible. Someone who with great ease settled in an uncomfortable chair on the podium, not aware or maybe aware of the discreet logistics and forbidding security measures that had finally made his presence possible in the city for a promotional event of  Deepa Mehta’s adaptation of his cult classic Midnight’s Children.

**

Not aware that a fan of his work had taken an urgent flight a day before to meet him in Delhi and had then rushed back to run into him in Bangalore and had appeared at the event regardless of the absence of his name from the guest list. He made it to the venue and found a seat.  Livid at the way, Rushdie has had to deal with the spineless silence of  Indian State in the face of intolerance, he said clutching at least three of the author’s books, “My State has abdicated the power to protect. Now it only defends itself and those who attack.”  Rushdie faced the audience, not knowing this.  Or that a fan in Chennai had asked a friend to get a book signed by the man she fights for on online forums.
**
And so it was a bit breathtaking. The fullness of the circle. The fact that on the eve of Republic Day, the famous child of India’ s most memorable midnight  was here, promoting his adaptation of a seminal classic about the country of  his birth.  And there he was. Affable. Present. Quite unlike media’s often self-conscious, often caricaturish or grovelling representation of him. The flash bulbs and chandelier lights bouncing off his surprisingly genial and unsparingly intelligent face,  he looked every minute of his well-lived 65 years. Unconscious of things that do not matter. Like trying to live upto his own fame. And conscious of what really counts. An organic eyeball to eyeball connection with those who hear him, read him. And so he did not like the photographers blocking his connect with the audience.
**
What also came across was his absolute unwillingness to dominate the conversation. Really? He is Rushdie remember? This book in question, as he incredulously recalled, has sold millions of copies in 50 languages and has won the mother of all Bookers but he did not rub it in. It was an aside. Unlike lesser authors who  speak of themselves in the third person, or are in love with their own inarticulate voices on every forum available, he was detached from what being Salman Rushdie really means. Like a guest remarked under her breath, “he is so young.”  He absolutely is because he is not jaded, obviously travels light, without lugging the baggage of being one of the most celebrated and most hounded authors on the planet. And he remains a bloody good writer because he is open to the world despite the hate he has faced, the loss of freedom he has had to deal with. He still listens. He still is interested in what others have to say and thank God, he is not an insufferable snob.
**
He has always defined his own reality and that is what real writers, good writers do regardless of what is happening around them. It was also obvious why he would bond with Deepa Mehta, the woman who has had to face poster burning, vandalising mobs over her films about disenfranchised Indian women. Yes, the same women who can be raped as a matter of course or stay trapped in love less marriages or in hell holes earmarked for widows but must never show sexual volition or God forbid, fall in love or lust.
**
He knows a bit about this struggle to be creatively unfiltered. And that regardless of which warring Gods you claim to protect, if you threaten an idea or a person over a film or a book, you are on the same side. The irony that the shooting of  the film took place in Sri Lanka as the makers feared religious fundamentalism in Pakistan and  in India was explicit though no one commented on it.
**
To a question posed by this writer, Deepa said, “One does not make films to prove a point. Freedom still means that I make the films that I want to. That is what you do, without being conscious of filters everytime an idea  comes to you.” And had the meaning of freedom changed for Rushdie after all these years? “Absolutely not, ” he said. So maybe the new normal for Rushdie means coming relatively unannounced to a city to promote the international release of his film and leave before trouble sniffs his trail but he has made peace with this life. And he loves what he does and cannot be stopped because, “writers are stubborn people.”
**
How was it revisiting the book after almost 30 years? “I don’t spend too much time reading my own books!” he said and added, “There were parts I did not remember at all. Parts where I said, “That’s quite good!” And yes, there were parts he did not like and even introduced a rather cinematic confrontational scene (in honour of the spectre of Manmohan Desai!) between the grown up men swapped at birth!  But he wrote the book at 27. It was published when he was 33 and so he is now half- a -lifetime away from it. He smiled, “It is a young man’s book. I cannot write it now. And though I enormously admire that young man..he cannot write what I do now!” And who would have thought that a strange book with no white people in it would be so wildly successful? To accusations that he probably fashioned it for best selling success, he quoted Umberto Eco (author of The Name of the Rose)  who after being accused of populism said, “Yes, that’s how you write a successful book. Set the story in an Italian monastery, among celibate monks and throw in large quantities of Latin!”
**
And this film? The rights to the book, Rushdie and Deepa joked were sold for a dollar. It was more of a handshake and an unspoken understanding that books of this scale and expanse must be made in an environment of absolute trust or not at all. So yes, through the four years of the film’s making, there was no screaming at each other. Rushdie even wanted to play the part of the fortune teller in the movie but realised that in the middle of a key dialogue, people would point excitedly at the screen and say, “Isn’t THAT Salman Rushdie?” But he did chip in with the narrative voice in the film. He had to be the voice of the older Salim because no other voice could fit the character and his gravitas. He has even sung for the film!
**
And he was humble enough to realise that if a book embedded in millions of memory banks was left untouched, it would run for four-and-a-half hours as a film.”Though in India, that may not be a problem,” he quipped!  And so much like the figure trapped in a block of marble that comes to life with an intuitive chipping away at the superfluous, the  screenplay was constructed around the leaner, tauter and more supple movie version running in his head. And no it wasn’t that tough because, “I am steeped in cinema.”  The question he said, always was, ‘What is the essence of the story?”  “The shining thread” that runs through the theme and unlike the richly digressive novel, the film was crafted to quite simply, “grab the audience.” He doesn’t want people to remember the film as a good adaptation  of the book but as a film with its own authentic voice.
**
Being Rushdie also means that gem like anecdotes fall from your mouth everytime you open it. So he recalled going through Satyajit Ray’s production notes with their detailed drawings a long time back and how they helped him to construct the screenplay of Midnight’s Children. He also recalled (with respectful amusement) watching Ray buttonholing his actors to multiple spots during the Ghare Baire shoot and then leaping from point to point and enacting each line for them with the instruction, “do it like that!”
**
Deepa agreed that making this film was daunting  but that her primary commitment was to remain faithful to the “sensitivity and sensibility” of the book. It was going to be tough because the film spanned multiple decades. It was technically challenging to put the  periods together but they did within a tight budget and with stirring authenticity as was visible from the teaser shown at the event.  Seema Biswas as Mary, Shabana Azmi as Naseem, Deepa’s lucky mascot Kulbhushan Kharbanda as Picture Singh, Shriya Saran as Parvati (present at the event), Siddharth as Shiva and Darsheel Safari as the young Salim practically walked into roles tailor made for them and then there were surprises like Satya Bhabha who auditioned for the role of Salim and was nervous about meeting Rushdie even though his parents knew the author. And Ronit Roy as Ahmed Sinai was practically hand-picked from Indian soaps by Deepa’s  mother.  “And no Salman Khan was not considered, ” Rushdie grinned with mirth.
**
And ofcourse the joy of  Rushdie’s  wit.  After Midnight Children’s screening in the US, someone quipped, “Oh, it was like Forrest Gump with brown people! ”  And he responded, “Midnight’s Children was written far before Forrest Gump so maybe Forrest Gump is Midnight’s Children with  white people!”  He also helpfully suggested that maybe his movie was Forrest Gump meets X-Men!
**
However, it was frightening to realise during the course of the evening.. with sudden clarity that we live in a world where authors and film makers are threatened and have to create and celebrate their work in secrecy while vandals have the freedom to stop cities, burn books and film posters. Yet, just the fact that this book was written and this film was made and we were face to face with two people who  know the value of the work they do and are willing to take on anything to protect it, gives one hope. There must be something right in the world that has a Salman Rushdie as a counterpoint to every kind of ism.
**
Reema Moudgil has been writing on art, theatre, cinema, music, gender issues, architecture and more in leading newspapers and magazines since 1994.  Her first novel Perfect Eight ((http://www.flipkart.com/perfect-eight-9380032870/p/itmdf87fpkhszfkb?pid=9789380032870&_l=A0vO9n9FWsBsMJKAKw47rw–&_r=dyRavyz2qKxOF7Yuc )won her an award from the Public Relations Council of India in association with Bangalore University. She also edited Chicken Soup for Indian Woman’s Soul and runs  unboxedwriters.com.  She has exhibited her paintings in Bangalore and New York,  taught media studies to post graduates and hosts a daily ghazal show Andaz-e-Bayan on Radio Falak (WorldSpace).