She was the ultimate male fantasy, not the woman "of big breasts and a small brain" that boys dream of, but an emperor’s erotic fantasy... who she?
Nailbiting Twist
The
Jodhaa Akbar controversy has suddenly taken a literary twist, with Salman Rushdie's short story in the
New Yorker recently. Believed to be an extract from his forthcoming novel,
Enchantress of Florence, Rushdie sheds new light on the epic love story. Did Jodhaa really exist? Yes, says Rushdie—in Akbar's imagination. She was the ultimate male fantasy, not the woman "of big breasts and a small brain" that boys dream of, but an emperor's erotic fantasy dreamt up by a bored Akbar, stealing traits from his many queens in the harem: sensuous, mistress of the kamasutra, especially the art of unguiculation ("using the nails to enhance the act of love").
De-light Robbery
Penguin's cash cow is being lured away, or at least sleeping around in other stables. Hay House's Ashok Chopra has signed up Shobhaa De for a two-book deal for an undisclosed advance running into several lakhs. And as if poaching wasn't sore enough, here's more bad news for Penguin: her book with Hay House, Sixty: A Celebration, comes close on the heels of Superstar India, De's book on India—and herself—at 60, which Penguin will launch next month.
Long-Lost Parcel
How many writers can boast of writing so many books that they've forgotten the existence of some of them? Khushwant Singh recently got a package mailed from London. Inside was a neatly typed and bound manuscript of a book he'd compiled 30 years ago on Britishers who stayed back in India after independence. All he had to do was to think up a new title and call his publisher here.