Landlord Rushdie

YEARS before fatwa-friendly Salman Rushdie, father of 'chutneyfied' English, hit the literary jackpot, his father 'Moulvi' Anees Ahmed Rushdie already possessed a vast fortune. In addition to the now famous Solan bungalow which Rushdie senior inherited from his own father, and the house on Flag Staff Road in Delhi's Civil Lines which he bought in 1938 and which is now the focus of a legal dispute, he owned properties in Mumbai, including apartments on Warden Road and Walkeshwar. Says Vijay Shankardass, the Rush-dies' lawyer: "I can't possibly compare the wealth of father and son. Salman Rushdie, of course, is now in a class of his own, but let's just say the senior Rushdie was extremely wealthy." His business? "Difficult to say," says Shankardass, "he inherited a great deal and although a barrister by training, carried out a business in real estate."

 Earlier Anees himself looked after everything, but after his death in '87, Shankar-dass, a family friend, was hired to fight all their property disputes. "In the case of the Solan house which had been illegally occupied by the additional district magistrate, the government even produced papers to say the family had emigrated to Pakistan, but this isn't true," says Shankardass. Anees and his family never went to Pakistan but left for England in '63, where the family lived on Anees' income from his property. Salman's three sisters are all abroad, two in the US and one in England and though they visit India often, Salman obviously can't because of the death warrant against him.

Is he planning to return to Midnight Land? "He'd love to return to this country whenever he can," says Shankardass. He has been able to get the court to appoint a commissioner-receiver for the Flag Staff Road house to prevent illegal occupation. He's also won the Solan case and says that since he's now in India (he practices concurrently in England) armed with Rushdie's power of attorney, encroachers may find it difficult to take over sections of the houses.

The Rushdie family, says a friend, were part of the progressive rich Muslim elite that found itself increasingly alienated after partition, forced to emigrate to a country they didn't relate to. Salman's mother's family name was Butt, his maternal grandfather was the head of Aligarh's Tibiya College. Even as late as the '50s, Salman's maternal uncle Hamid and his wife Uzra (sister of actress Zohra Sehgal) were part of a group of friends among whom Hamid was the dazzling wit. "I don't remember much of Salman's father," says senior academic Dharma Kumar, "all I remember is he was a boring businessman, it was Hamid who had all the flair and wit." They were part of the same group, Kumar recalls: Iqbal and Amita Malik; Krishen and Renu Khanna; Hamid and Uzra; Lovraj and Kumar.

Midnight's Children mentions a brilliant uncle who committed suicide, a character based loosely on Butt. However, Butt didn't commit suicide; he wrote film scripts while Uzra gave dancing lessons. Another 'mamu' of Sal-man, Hamid's brother Mehmood Butt, was a committed IAS officer of the UP cadre, who married a half-Russian called Sofia.

Amita Malik, however, remembers Anees as extremely polished, westernised and handsome, owner of a huge car and heir to a highly successful family business which he ran efficiently. "From what I remember," says she, "Anees was certainly not a moulvi, as he's been described. He was educated at Cambridge. Negine too was an educated woman, but a housewife, who dressed Sal-man in velvet pants and frilly tops." Hamid, she says, though charming, was in fact a failed script-writer and jealous of his wife Uzra who, along with sister Zohra, worked in Prithvi theatre. "Even Prithviraj Kapoor was supposed to have a crush on her," recalls Malik. Hamid and Uzra bought a petrol station once they arrived in Pakistan and Uzra now lives off its plentiful earnings.

Negine, who now lives in Karachi, was pretty but less so than her elder sister Tahira who married a Pakistani general whose hatred for Indians was well known. Former diplomat Uma Shankar Bajpai is said to relate how this general kept effigies of Indians who he'd pump with bullets in his spare time. "Of course, on the face of it they were the soul of charm," Kumar recalls. Salman's eldest aunt was a communist, "and the entire family was very good looking," she adds. But will Salman Rushdie return to India? Why else this sudden reclaiming of property? "It's not sudden," says Shankardass. "These cases have been going on for long. People have been taking advantage of Rush-die's absence, but they've now been stopped in at least two cases." Anees' only son may no longer need his father's money, but clearly isn't willing to give up his home.