No 'splitsville' between Rushdie and Padma Lakshmi

LONDON: Setting at rest speculation that he and his actress wife were separating, author Salman Rushdie has said there is no "splitsville" between them and they are together and extremely happy.

"All I did was say to some journalist that in the last couple of months we haven't seen much of each other because she's been making a TV series in LA.

"It's kind of difficult. It's difficult for any working couple to deal with this question of separations. But actually, there is no 'splitsville'. We are extremely happy. We are here. She is here. We are living in the same place in New York. Anish had lunch with us yesterday. Everything is fine," he said in an interview to 'The Times' newspaper on Tuesday.

Rushdie gave the interview with London-based NRI Sculptor Anish Kapoor. Both Rushdie and Kapoor were born in Mumbai and moved to Britain in their youth. For the first time the novelist and the sculptor have collaborated on a work of art, Blood Relations, to be shown at London's Lisson Gallery.

The piece comprises two bronze boxes, each containing representations of male and female genitalia, with text by Rushdie inscribed into the surfaces.

The Times Correspondent James Bone met them at the Carlyle Hotel in New York when Kapoor was visiting the city for the unveiling of his massive reflective Sky Mirror at Rockefeller Centre.

Though both of them do not live in India, they said they feel very deeply connected to the country.

Rushdie said: "I don't feel like an expatriate. I obviously don't live in India. But I feel very deeply connected to it. I go all the time."

To a question why British Prime Minister Tony Blair has got into such a trouble, Rushdie said, "Clearly part of it has to do with the disillusion about Iraq. But a lot of it has to do with politicians hanging on and being less than they promised. I've never voted for anything other than Labour. What happens is a decade of disillusion. By the end, you think: 'Enough already.'

"History is a long time. You can't say right now how people will think of Blair even in five years from now, ten years from now. It could be that Blair is completely justified by events, that ten years from now everybody who has been protesting against him looks pretty dumb. Or not."

To a question whether art is political, Rushdie said "because they won't allow it. There was a period a couple of years ago where there wasn't a single novel published the whole year because they would not give permission. In order for art to exist properly there has to be a culture that not just permits it but understands that it needs it. There are depressingly few countries in the world of which you could say that these days."