Salmam Rushdie and Padma Lakshmi Divorcing

Posted on July 3, 2007

Sir Salman Rushdie is becoming quite the tabloid fixture. He's now getting divorced from his fourth wife, the much-younger and quite gorgeous Padma Lakshmi. Padma is a model, actress and also writes cookbooks. She is currently the host of Bravo's Top Chef. Apparently, after being together for more than seven years (and married since 2004), Padma dumped him.

He married Lakshmi, a former model born in 1970 in India, in 2004. She was his fourth wife and the couple had no children. "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. "He asks that the media respect his privacy at this difficult time," the statement said.

Rushdie hit the headlines two weeks ago when he was selected for knighthood by Britain's Queen Elizabeth, provoking renewed anger among some Muslims in Iran and Pakistan. 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. "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."

"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." Rushdie shot to fame in 1981 when his second novel, "Midnight's Children," a magic-realist exploration of Indian history, won the Booker Prize. The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's supreme religious leader, pronounced a fatwa, or religious edict in 1989 that called on Muslims to kill Rushdie because of perceived blasphemy in his fourth novel, "The Satanic Verses."

What an odd story. Usually a famous couple issues one of those "it's a mutual decision and we'll remain the best of friends" statements. But not this time. This one was more like: "my wife is dumping me, so I guess we're getting a divorce." That's harsh.

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