Model turned celebrity cook Padma Lakshmi has opened up about her controversial marriage to author Salman Rushdie.
The 42-year-old told Playboy magazine that she wasn’t bothered by whispers surrounding her relationship with her former husband, who was 23 years her senior, when she became his fourth wife in 2004.
“Comments like that came out of ignorance,” she says.
“If you saw us together you would know exactly why we were together.”
She described the man she fell in love with as “somebody who has a great wit and is a great flirt”.
Although the unlikely pair’s marriage lasted only three years, the former model says she does not regret a day of it, but admits it was tiring.
“He has a big life, and it only got bigger when we were together,” she says.
“I’m happy to have stood next to him holding his hand, but we were in very different parts of our lives.”
Rushdie wrote about their relationship in his 2009 memoir. Writing in the third person, he describes the instant attraction he felt when the pair were introduced by journalist and editor Tina Brown.
“He came face-to-face with Padma Lakshmi and at once he realised he’s seen her before … and he remembered thinking, ‘If I ever meet this girl my goose is cooked.'”
Rushdie also describe the words of ‘blistering desire’ with which the Indian beauty seduced him.
Their marriage ended in divorce in 2007, reportedly at Padma’s request.
In the same magazine interview, Padma, who is currently single, reveals what she does and doesn’t want in a relationship.
“I don’t want to be your best friend. I don’t expect you to give me a birthday card or send me flowers … I love to be held. I love massages. I’m just not a Hallmark kind of gal.”
