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Padma Lakshmi was spotted out in public for the first time since her ex husband Salman Rushdie was attacked by a masked knifeman and hospitalized for his injuries. The Top Chef host stepped out in the Big Apple for a lunch date alongside her pet puppy on Sunday, August 14, as seen here, just hours after it was announced Salman was on the mend.
In a statement shared on Sunday, Salman’s son Zafar Rushdie said “We are extremely relieved that yesterday he was taken off the ventilator and additional oxygen and he was able to say a few words.” He added, “Though his life changing injuries are severe, his usual feisty & defiant sense of humor remains intact. We are so grateful to all the audience members who bravely leapt to his defense and administered first aid along with the police and doctors who have cared for him and for the outpouring of love and support from around the world.”
Salman remains in critical condition after a man identified as Hadi Matar rushed the stage at the Chautauqua Institution two days ago and stabbed Salman 10 times as he was about to deliver a speech. The ‘Midnight’s Children’ author will continue medical treatment for his injuries, which include a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and an eye.
Though Hadi’s motive remains unclear, it should be noted Salman has had numerous death threats over the years after Iran’s late supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini set a $3 million reward for Salman’s death in 1988. The bounty on the author’s head came after Salman published his controversial novel The Satanic Verses, which many believed was blasphemous ideology.
Padma and Salman married in 2004 only to divorce three years later. Since the split, the exes have said some disparaging words against each other in their respective memoirs, with Salman accusing Padma of ‘majestic narcissism’ and Padma saying Salman needed “constant attention and sex.”
