Not a Time Travel Story

I loved Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. It resonated with me strongly, being an immigrant, an exile, as someone uprooted from my tradition. I think the greatest takeaway from the book for me was: “How you act in victory reveals your character.” We see the characters in the book in various situations: where they struggle to survive, and also where they are victorious. The book’s often-repeated refrain, “What kind of idea are you?”, hounds its characters, bringing the reader to reflection on our course of action. Do we bend with the breeze, or do we stand straight at the risk of breaking? This is the question that hounds the characters through the story. The resolution in the book comes from a second question: “How do you behave when you win? When your enemies are at your mercy and your power has become absolute, what then?” I think beyond the personal, these questions have something to say about how nations are built.