Shalimar the Clown ***

Author - Salman Rushdie
2005 Random House
pages - 398

This is the third book I've read by Rushdie. Previously, I read Fury and Houron and the Sea of Stories. It's interesting, because my conception of what Rushdie is about has continuously changed. First I read Fury. It started out as a modern book with modern problems, characters etc. Then one of the characters had started a doll business in which an entire universe had been created for the doll characters and large portion of the book was spent describing this fantasy world of the dolls. I loved Fury, but that fantastical portion made me rate the book slightly lower. I preferred the profane portions and less so the mythological portions. Houron is one long fairytale so it is pure mythology. So my view of Mr. Rushdie is someone who has love for Indian mythology. He seems most interested in that element of his writing.

This last book, Shalimar the Clown is also a mix of modernism and mythology. He has some American characters setting and behaviors, but in the portion of the book that is set in Kashmir, he spends much time telling the tales of Kashmirian tales and mythology.

So the book is separated in five chapters each main character getting at least one chapter, and one character gets two. It's an interesting way to present the material, though the other characters are certainly included in chapters besides their own, since they do have relationships with each other. There is:

India / Kashmira - She gets two chapters. She's the daughter of The Ambassador Max Ophuls(see below) and Boonyi (also see below).

Boonyi - She's the wife of Shalimar and the mistress of Max Ophuls.

Shalimar - The husband of Boonyi and the assassin of Max Ophuls.

Max Ophuls - Father to India / Kashmira

And yes it is a little complicated so at this point I should summarize the events in the story.

It starts out with the death of Max Ophuls who is assasined, and India, his daughter, witnesses it. So most of the story is told in the past. Then Rushdie talks about Boonyi and her lover/husband Shalimar back in Kashmir. Their village's main source of income is acting, so there is lots of opportunities for Rushdie to tell old folktales since the village performs these tales. I should say at this point that because ALL the myths and stories are completely foreign to me (Literally and figuratively) they tend to be hard to follow.

Then we find out Max's tale. He is a survivor of Nazi occupied France and eventually becomes Ambassador for the United States. On one of his diplomatic trips, he visits Kashmir and becomes smitten with Boonyi (he is married at this time). Boonyi has dreams of escaping her provincial town even though she is married to Shalimar and leaves her village to become Max's mistress. She gets pregnant and has Kasmira /India. Ophuls and his wife dispose of her and take her baby whose father is Max. Boonyi goes back to her village disgraced and she is considered dead to everyone.

Shalimar, Boonyi's husband is outraged. He avenges to kill her, but before that can happen, he learns to become an assassin by fighting with the Muslim militia during the conflict in Kashmir. A large section of this book does talk about the conflict in Kashmir. I don't think Rushdie ever takes sides. If he does, then it's with the people of Kashmir. He tells of atrocities on the Indian side, who are supposedly protecting the Kashmir people and atrocities of the Muslim side, who are backed by Pakistan. The people of Kashmir are both Muslim and Hindi (not sure of that) and they have always been able to live in peace. But during the confrontation, they begin to take sides. This section also gets a little complicated and hard to follow, but I was able to glean some basic knowledge about the situation there.

The last section of the book takes place after the killing of Ophuls. It's basically how India / Kashmira deals with her fathers death.

I think I have already mentioned some of the problems I had with this book. I say "I" because perhaps they may not be not problems for anyone else but me. The large quantities of folklore as well as some of the discussion about the conflict in Kashmir were too frequently incomprehensible. Now I like history, so normally a discussion about Kashmir would be interesting. But this history is told in a more unorganized and haphazard way. I'm not saying that's bad because this is fiction and it is not a history book. I would expect that it is more effective, in the author's opinion, to give the information when it is necessary to forward or relate it to the plot. But over all, I enjoyed this book immensely.