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The Bombay of 1947 was awash with hopes of a new, better future, one pregnant with opportunities and some challenges. The British had made their intentions of leaving the country abundantly clear. On June 19 that year, Anis Ahmed Rushdie and Negin Bhatt were blessed with a boy, with less than two months to go to Indian Independence. Salman Rushdie then, was quite literally midnight's child. 

Young Salman received early enlightenment from some of the best institutions in Bombay and then Cambridge, his father's alma mater. While in England, he began working with advertising agencies to earn a living while he waited for literary inspiration to strike him.

His first book was rather ordinary. Grimus, a science-fiction tale based around immortality didn't generate any hype from fans and critics alike, thus going under the radar. Rushdie's next book however, became his shot to literary immortality.

Six years after the disaster of his debut, he published Midnight's Children, a book that combined the experience of India's tumultuous partition and complicated story of birth with the magic of its central character's powers.

> Midnight's Children went onto win the Booker Prize and James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1981 and then two Best of Booker awards in 1993 and then 2008, cementing it as one of the best books to have ever graced humankind.

He didn't have to go far for his next book. Shame, released just two years later, was based on neighbours Pakistan and the tumult that the nation had to go through. Here too, he came very close to bagging another Booker.

He consistently wrote award-winning books throughout his career, but he is remembered far more for the one that cost him his life. When Satanic Verses came out to positive reviews in the UK, Rushdie was on Cloud Nine. He was soon about to be dragged down to Earth, for he had committed sacrilege.

The Muslim world was deeply offended by the blasphemous references he had made to their deities in his book. There were riots, bloodshed, marches. offices were ransacked and academic spaces were with debates over whether Rushdie was indeed guilty or not.

> The nadir of the fiasco came when the Supreme Leader of Iran issued a *Fatwa* against him and called for Muslims all over to render them useful to their religion by making him pay the price of his deeds.

He was given round-the-clock security by the British government and escaped largely unscathed. His book, however, was banned in multiple countries. Instead of phasing out into obscurity, Rushdie rode the wave of bad publicity to the pinnacle of the world of Literature. 

Several books, awards and an impious text that is seen as the beginning of a cultural war later, Salman Rushdie has established himself as one of the most successful and outspoken litterateurs ever, right up there with some of the best to ever grace the field.

From winning the Best of the Booker to having a Fatwa issued against him, he has seen it all. Famous writer and provocateur Salman Rushdie, was born in the city of Bombay.