For those of you too young to remember, before Padma Lakshmi was famous for Top Chef, she was famous for being Salman Rushdie’s young, beautiful fourth wife. The pairing was somewhat scandalous back in the day – she was 28 and he was 51… and married to his third wife. Once he got a divorce, they married and they were happy for a brief time. Then it all went to hell, they got a divorce and now Padma is famous in her own right. Padma has written a memoir, Love, Loss and What We Ate, and the NYDN had some juicy excerpts this weekend. You can read the full NYDN piece here, but here are the scandalous Rushdie parts:

“Top Chef” host Padma Lakshmi recalls her years with author Salman Rushdie as a once beautiful meal that ultimately left her with mood poisoning… The ever-demanding Rushdie needed constant care and feeding — not to mention frequent sex, according to the book. And Lakshmi wrote that Rushdie was callously insensitive to a medical condition that made intercourse painful for her. Rushdie once became so enraged by her rejection of his overtures that he denounced Lakshmi as a “bad investment,” she wrote. When her undiagnosed endometriosis diminished Lakshmi’s sex drive, the unsympathetic Rushdie became furious that she was unavailable for the fevered, urgent intimacy they’d once enjoyed, according to the book.

Their May-December romance began when she was a struggling model-actress and Salman Rushdie already a global symbol of free speech after the Muslim backlash against his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses.” Lakshmi was 28 and single, Rushdie was 51 and married to his third wife. A bit part in Mariah Carey’s disastrous 2001 movie “Glitter” was the apex of Padma’s big screen acting career. The pair first met in 1999 at a party. On their first real date — Rushdie initially wooed her by phone since she lived in Los Angeles — the pair fell into bed.

“At 3 a.m., I woke with a start. I’m naked in a married man’s bed,” she thought before sneaking out of the hotel room. They were wed in 2004, and divorced three years later. After Rushdie left his wife, their next few years were idyllic. The couple lived half the year in London to be close to his two sons. In Manhattan, they restored his townhouse to Gilded Age glory.

Rushdie brought her breakfast in bed every morning before she bolted off to the gym. Lakshmi became comfortable with his friends, “literary giants” like Susan Sontag and Don DeLillo, by preparing feasts for them. At parties, people would breathlessly ask what it was like to live with a man so brilliant. It was blissful, she writes. And then it wasn’t. For one thing, her career was taking off. She had already appeared in two shows on the Food Network when Andy Cohen called from Bravo. “Top Chef,” with master chef Tom Coliccihio, was in its second season. He wanted her to join the cast. Newsweek then put her on the cover illustrating a story about the “New India.”

“The only time Newsweek put me on their cover was when someone was trying to put a bullet in my head,” came Rushdie’s less-than-enthusiastic reaction. Each year when the Nobel Prize went to another writer, Rushdie took it hard. Lakshmi would console him.

Then came her medical condition, which took too long to properly diagnose. Eventually, Lakshmi would undergo more than one surgery to treat her severe ailment. According to Lakshmi, Rushdie appeared more worried about himself.

When Lakshmi said no to sex because of the pain, the author would reply, “How convenient.” Their arguments escalated, with Rushdie as “lethally eloquent” in battle as in print. Rushdie was often away. After one five-hour surgery, Lakshmi came home with stitches in four major organs and stents in both kidneys. Rushdie left the next day for a trip.

“The show must go on, after all,” he said on this way out the door, according to Lakshmi. Lakshmi’s first post-op trip out of the house was to a divorce lawyer.

[From The NYDN]

Rushdie sounds like an ass. Also, he sounds rather old-school, like he believes “genius” writers should live glamorous, sexy lives with an assortment of beautiful wives and lovers, all of whom make it their mission to stroke his ego on a daily basis. I’m not sure if Padma is writing this for sympathy or not, because I don’t really feel that sympathetic towards her. Like, of course I think Rushdie sounds like an a—hole. But I also think… yeah, what did she expect? She wasn’t complaining when he divorced his third wife to be with her.

Padma also details her relationships with billionaire Ted Forstmann and Adam Dell, including some details about her pregnancy, etc. I remember being slightly scandalized by that stuff at the time, but nowadays… I just wish her well.

Photos courtesy of WENN.