So!

I just finished reading Salman Rushdie's 'The Satanic Verses'. A great read, quite a bizarre story - the plot tends to weave in and out of view, hiding beneath periodic visits to other plots and stories from around the world, and whose relevance to the main story is only slowly revealed, layer by layer. For the most part, the plot deals with various characters coming to terms with their identity, with the identities of those around them and with the ever tenuous subject of 'spiritual awakenings'.

In the hands of a lesser author, the book may very well have turned into just another of the more shambolic examples of science fiction or magic and spells fantasy or into a one-dimensional religious fable. Through masterly craftsmanship, the plot veers skillfully away from being either an out and out criticism of certain religions* or, on the other hand, of being a (boring, to my view) wacky fantasy wherein whatever miracles that do (seem to) happen are cardboard cut-outs of reality - where the ordinary people see them as indubitably real and no questions are required. An exception must be made, though, for one particularly unquestionable example concerning the character Saladin Chamcha, and I shall leave that as a discovery for the reader!

[*Not that this at all deterred certain trigger-happy 'Fatwa-flingers'.]

Salman Rushdie toys with your senses, in a way. What happens and what does not truly happen can be hard to discern.

What was also interesting was that one or two of the aspects of the book's philosophising were echoed rather well in an (old) post I saw on Upasna's blog - regarding the notions and issues of 'home' versus 'other countries', and the behaviours and reactions and opinions of those people on either side of the divide (If I should call it that): between those-at-home and those-gone-out (and the latter perhaps also divided amongst those who have been only to visit, and those who have chosen to find a new home away from childhood home).

The various effects the character whom I named above is subjected to are of course rather more dramatic than those inflicted on anybody Upasna mentions (if not, then oh my god!), but the general opinions of himself (Chamcha, 'Spoono, me old Chumch') regarding the stay-at-homes are brilliantly illustrated by the last paragraph in Upasna's post.

"Even a hundred years of staying in the west, change of diction or the accent shall not make you a westerner. Lying through your noses won’t too. You are what you are. The sooner that is realized, the better."

Upasna - this is almost word for word the words of one of the characters berating the haughty Saladin Chamcha! You should most definitely pick up, and wade into that book.

I was going to post all this in a comment there, but then decided to collate my shredded, raggedy ideas into a proper blog post - and also to wait a few days until I had actually finished the book. ;-)