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Rushdie to play Hindu mystic

Novelist Salman Rushdie is all set to make his big screen debut! He will play the character of Shri Ramram Seth — a soothsayer who floats six inches above the ground

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Controversial novelist Salman Rushdie is all set to make his big screen debut! Yes, Rushdie will play the character of Shri Ramram Seth — a soothsayer who floats six inches above the ground and hangs pictures of Vishnu’s avatars on his walls — in the screenplay adaptation of his own Booker-winning novel, Midnight’s Children. The novel which also won the Booker of Bookers prize recently, is being directed by Oscar-nominated Deepa Mehta and will go on the floors next year. Deepa is looking to release the film in 2010.

Ostracised by Islamic fundamentalists after the publication of Satanic Verses, Rushdie got a fatwa issued on him on February 14, 1989, by Ayatollah Khomeini, the then spiritual leader of Iran. Sources say that both Deepa and Rushdie seem undeterred by the fact that his character might again stir a hornet’s nest as the Hindu seer is always seen “munching aniseed and drinking from a bottle of Vimto” (see box).

“It was actually Rushdie’s idea to play the character and he told Deepa that he identified with the character while they were jointly scripting the screenplay at Rushdie’s House in London. Rushdie also told Deepa that the physical description of the character also matches him because he is described as ‘a heavy man with several chins’. Deepa immediately cast him in the character,” says a source.

Sources close to the film also reveal that Rushdie already had a narration of the film with Deepa and Shabana Azmi (who stars in it) before Deepa declared to the media that she was making the film last November at a film festival in New York.

Though it is not known who’s playing the lead of character of Saleem Sinai, the narrator of the film, Deepa has already signed on Shabana to play the character of Jamila Singer (Saleem’s sister) and director-actor Nandita Das for Padma Mangroli (Saleem’s girlfriend and the listener).

According to Nandita, Rushdie is very kicked about his best work being turned into a movie. “He was the one who introduced my film Firaaq at all the screenings in the Telluride Film Festival (Colorado, USA). There, while conversing with me, he told me about Midnight’s Children being adapted into a film. He was excited about the prospect of seeing his book translated into a film and that he is doing it with Deepa Mehta,” she says.
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