Jayson’s Reviews > Shalimar the Clown > Status Update

Notes:
(1) It's interesting how magical realism factors into the story: starting totally absent, it slowly crescendos—like a frog in boiling water—to a beyond-doubt event at the end.
- Mostly, it involves prophecy and telepathic intrusion—Boonyi, Kashmira and Shalimar the Clown could have really used some occlumency lessons!
(2) In sum: the book strives for maximum context, but spends too much time lost in the weeds.

Notes:
(1) "[Kashmira's] mother had stepped toward love, defying convention, and it had cost her dearly."
- Kashmira (FKA India) has seemingly been sold a bill of goods—I have no clue what "love" Boonyi stepped toward.
- With Shalimar the Clown, sure, marrying a Muslim defied Hindu convention, but it wasn't her choice and she left him as soon as she could.
- With Max, she was just his local sugar baby. No love there.

Notes:
(1) Re: Assassin, Sergeant Hilliker: "... we'll get him, ma'am, don't doubt it, this isn't Indian country, it's ours."
- Interesting to say to a woman named India, of Indian parentage, for whom an Indian connection was always denied.
- Interesting to say about an Indian assassin, who is indeed far from home and without kin nor refuge (unlike the rapist Gegroo brothers, who found sanctuary and escaped capture).

Notes:
(1) Shalimar's real name is Noman Noman. Around two-thirds through, it dawned on me how Noman is a play on "No Man." That's symbolic in several respects—Noman Noman is "no man" plural.
- As an anonymous assassin, "no man" both in terms of being inhuman, as well as being invisible—or even death personified.
- As a cuckold, "no man" in terms of being emasculated.
- As a family name, "no man" as in being no more.

Notes:
(1) It's interesting to consider acronyms (and/or initialisms) in this book.
- Previously, acronyms were posited as the language of post-war politics and bureaucracy: "Its aggressive uninterest in euphony, marked it out as power-speech. Power had no need for prettification, no need to make things easy."
- Fast-forward, and we see acronymic "power-speech" adopted by militant groups (e.g. JKLF, MNLF/MILF, HAJY).

Notes:
(1) Shalimar the Clown: "All I ever learned how to do is walk across a rope and fall over like an idiot and make a few bored people laugh ... the real bad dream starts when you wake up ... And now that I’ve woken up there is something important I need to do also..."
- An actor gets political. Why am I not surprised?
- And for the reason I assume most actors get political: They want to be more than just clowns.

Notes:
(1) This compares and contrasts willing and unwilling sexual pariahs.
- Giving birth at an orphanage, Boonyi is mocked by survivors of sexual slavery for pursuing a life of sexual servitude.
- Returning to her village, Boonyi learns she'd been declared "dead." A fate shared by her friend, Zoon Misri—"dead" from being gang raped.
- In all cases, willing or unwilling, the result's the same: you end up an orphan.

Notes:
(1) Is it just pretense? Or does Max honestly believe he can hide his serial infidelities from his wife, the former spy?
- Albeit retired, she still has top-level surveillance and intelligence contacts.
(2) It's interesting how Max's daughter India was originally named Kashmira by Boonyi.
- A bit on-the-nose, but a decent allegory of Kashmir's short-lived bid for independence and its forced accession to India.

Notes:
(1) Max's WWII resistance activities are described as "terrorism."
- Given the time of writing, this may have been meant to counter the idea of terrorism being strictly Islamic.
(2) I hate to sound Anglo-centric, but, whether it's European or South Asian, this book has way too many complicated foreign-language names for me to remember and keep straight.
- Moreover, most of these characters simply don't matter!

Notes:
(1) We get a sort of relay-race handoff where the narrative baton is passed from Boonyi/Noman to Max Ophuls.
- It's a handoff marked by sexually-charged eye contact between Boonyi and Max.
(2) Rushdie does his darndest to make Max seem super-cool, like a cross between Ian Fleming and James Bond.
- It all seems too try-hard. "The Flying Jew" isn't doing it for me as a super-suave and roguish resistance fighter.