Salman Rushdie: Shalimar the Clown

Salman Rushdie's latest novel bears the fingerprint of its author: like his previous works, it is an expertly implemented, well paced story that swings dexterously between different times, places, and people, and yet maintains a continuity. I read the book quite rapidly, in a few long sessions. The novel certainly grips the reader.

Like always, Rushdie has done his homework well: the book is full of minute detail and paints a vivid and life-like picture of its multiple scenes. Yet, after completing the book I was dissatisfied. Why is that?

At surface, the book is a story of a triangle of people: a man, his daughter, and the mother's deceived and furious husband, Shalimar the Clown. A bit deeper it is a story of India and Kashmir, a lost paradise utterly devastated by both external and internal actors.

The man is one of the forces: while acting as the USA ambassador to India, he meets a Kashmir dancer and falls in love with her; thus, the daughter is born. Of cosmopolitan middle-European origin, the ambassador is painted a man of many admirable qualities: he is a hero of French resistance during WWII, he is an accomplished economist connected with creating the post-war western world from ashes, he is a star diplomat, he is a spy-master par excellence. Yet he also is an amoral womaniser whose love to the Kashmiri woman rapidly causes her ruin.

The subtext of the ambassador as a representative of the entire Western world is easy to read: his compassion and love to India and Kashmir, even if genuine, is shallow and ultimately empty. What puzzles me, nevertheless, is why the author chooses to call him Max Ophuls. I know who the real Max Ophüls was, and I know some of his work. I expect that those readers who are not movie freaks will not know the late 40's-early 50's movies of the German-French director, semi-obscure if influential as he was. So why this name? Is Rushdie under-estimating, or over-estimating the reader? I cannot see his point here, unless it is to create confusion in some readers.

The deceived husband, Shalimar, is the bête noir of the story. The actor-acrobat turns to an international terrorist who kills his targets with skill and vengeance. He is pictured as the mirror image of the ambassador, his eventual victim. He is fanatical, skilful, strong and dangerous. In his single-minded devotion, he is more like the Terminator character than a real human being. All in all, Rushdie makes little attempt to explain or understand Shallimar. Perhaps this would have been too much to expect from an author who was himself for years a living target of religious fanatics.

In my reading, the daughter, India Ophüls. also becomes more an amalgam of ideas than a real novel character. Cast in Los Angeles, the city with no center or sense of proportion, she is depicted as rootless and uncertain of what she is. Only after she reaches out to her hidden past, to her mother and Kashmir, does the find the strength to face Shalimar in the eventual and predictable showdown. To underline this, Rushdie makes her adopt the name her mother had whispered in her ear after birth, Kashmira.

Indeed it may be that Kashmir itself is the only genuine character of the novel: her nature and landscapes; her trees, flowers, and animals; her villages and customs; and her suffering people. Only here Rushdie is expressing real compassion and warmth towards his creation.

Perhaps there are more sophisticated ways to read Shalimar the Clown; I don't know. For me, nevertheless, the shallowness of its characters left a unpleasant feeling. They did not stand for themselves; instead, they stood for something else. I felt manipulated, and I do not like that feeling, irrespective of the direction I'm manipulated to.

I could not help comparing this reading experience to the recent novel of another popular and skilled author, the Until I Find You by John Irving. Like Rushdie, Irving too is a story-teller who likes to spread his novels over wide distances in time and space. However, Irving's characters, even if fantastic, are more complex and less easy to explain. More than that, I sense more warmth and compassion in his work. He likes his characters, and wants the reader to like them too.

Punch Churchill FR OCSU

Measures: 175 mm x 18 mm

Age: The boxcode dates the cigar to July, 1998. It came from the cigar stash of another Finnish cigar lover.

Setting: Today was the date of Finnish parliament elections. The day started sunny and mild: a perfect early Spring day. By noon, however, the skies had become cloudy, and by mid-afternoon the first snowflakes started to fall. Soon this developed to a snowstorm.

I was glad that I had cast my vote before the snowfall. So my resolve to celebrate the occasion by smoking a good cigar was firm. Therefore, I placed myself on the covered balcony, with plenty of coffee, one-and-half fingers of Larsen VSOP cognac, and the Punch Churchill I had received from trade with a Finnish cigar lover. As things turned out to be, it was actually quite nice to watch the snowfall and puff away, and contemplate how the election results may turn out given that due to the weather some voters will elect to stay home and watch TV instead of voting.

The cigar I had chosen was clad in very smooth and tender colorado wrapper. It exhibited a clear box press. The cigar felt quite light and supple in my hand: somehow it did not feel the big cigar that it actually was. The cigar had a strong rustic and pleasant smell. I cut the cigar and found the draw to be fairly light. The cold aroma matched the smell of the cigar: ripe tobacco with a hint of sweetness.

The cigar launched surprisingly strongly. The first puffs released a concentrated "meaty" flavour that reminded me of a 2001 Punch Punch 2001 I had smoked just recently. After the first inch this nevertheless receded, and the cigar became more creamy and integrated. By the time it was reduced to corona gorda size, the aroma had become very pure and dry tobacco flavour with a nice bite. After half-way, the grassy sharpness of the taste nevertheless increased, and I found that I had to pace myself to keep it it bay: the cigar was burning a bit too fast. Slow smoking kept the cigar in balance and I was able to enjoy its integrated, pure flavour all the way to the end. At the final stages, some of the "meatiness" came back and gave the final inch depth and strength.

All the way, the draw of the cigar was a bit on the light side. Nevertheless, the cigar burned perfectly: I just had to rotate it while smoking. The ash was light and surprisingly brittle: it fell off after every inch, leaving flat surface instead of the more familiar conical shape.

This was a fine cigar that presented the qualities expected of the marca: pure and clean tobacco flavour in an expertly realised package. It appealed to me in a quite different manner from the RyJ Churchills that I have from the same period: instead of the noble finesse of the RyJ, I had the overall impression of a straight-talking, direct cigar that did not speak to me in allusions and subtext.

I believe that this particular cigar, fine as it was, probably did not give its absolutely best performance: it must have been a bit too dry. I still have a cabinet version with almost the same age waiting for a good moment, and I expect it to confirm the high expectations this experience created.

El Rey del Mundo Petit Corona EAT CCUA

Measures: 125 mm x 16,5 mm

Age: The boxcode dates the cigar to April, 1999.

Setting: During a recent visit to Stockholm, I had the opportunity to visit one of the nice cigar shops that the city is blessed with. I had come by the ferry boat from Helsinki, and the shop was just a 10 minutes walk away, and along a path I was taking.

It's not a large shop, but the atmosphere is nice, the shopkeeper knows his business, and usually they have something that makes the visit worth making. This time an open box of El Rey del Mundo Petit Coronas caught my eye. The box code dated the cigars to 1999. More than that, they looked nicely aged and felt good in my hand with just the right amount of suppleness. So I bought three of them.

Later the same day, already on board of the ferry en voyage back to Helsinki, I felt lucky and decided to smoke one of the cigars. While cigars straight from a shop often are too humid for best enjoyment, these cigars had felt just right. So why not?

I cut the cigar and tried the draw: it turned out to be just right. Even more encouraging was the cold aroma I sensed: nice sweetness over aged tobacco.

I lit the cigar and started to smoke away. I was rapidly immersed in the aroma of the cigar: surprisingly intensive honey-like sweetness over aged tobacco. But what really caught my attention was the sense of quality and style that the cigar emitted: while this was not a strong cigar by any means, it conquered my attention quite completely. I found it useless to try to read the book that I had taken along, and decided to focus on the cigar and its story instead. So I and the cigar immersed in a conversation for a full hour.

I have smoked several aged ERdM's before. Still this may have been the first time that I realised just how fine these cigars indeed can be if caught at the right moment. I should have bought the whole box. Fortunately, another Stockholm visit is just around the corner.

H. Uppman Coronas Major tubos, late 1990's

The first full box of cigars I ever bought was a box of H. Uppman Coronas Major. I acquired them in early 2000, from the tax free shop of some or other European airport that has escaped my memory in the way airports do. The cigars therefore must have been late 1990's make.

The cigars came in nice tubos with crisp green text on them. I suppose I selected tubos cigars because I did not plan, green newbie as I was, to buy a humidor. The memory of the first tries has it that the cigars were quite tight. Therefore, I bought some others and put these aside. And soon a humidor followed.

Today I decided to smoke the last survivor of the set. It had escaped the aluminium container already years ago. The sample looked pretty wild: wrinkled and multicoloured, with the oils having partly vanished from its thickish wrapper. The cigar felt light and firm in hand.

I was unsure of what to expect from the cigar. The next to last - that I had more than a year ago - had been quite disappointing. Very light flavour, very light draw. The little what remained of the flavour nearly vanished around 2/3 of the cigar and the rest was almost like sucking air with a straw. The cigar must have been much too dry.

So I cut the cigar and tried the draw. This time it felt nicely resistive, and the cold aroma was good: bit of burnt sugar over tobacco. So I lit the cigar with heightened expectations.

The change from the previous encounter turned out to be significant indeed. The aroma was rich, deep, and satisfying. Molasses and cacao, even chocolate. It blended perfectly with the coffee I was drinking. I couldn't help thinking that the cigar tasted "warm" and "brown": for some reason these adjectives seemed a perfect fit. It was in perfect harmony that smoked the cigar to the nub.

So it turned out that the cigar's last year of rest had been spent in attractive conditions that made the old-timer bloom again.

It is satisfying that the last cigar from a box leaves a good memory. Perhaps I should buy a few more. Or perhaps not; one can have the first kiss just once.