Love, Loss, Rock and Roll

Volume 2 Issue 1 Winter Edition 2022

Abstract

Aim: The paper, entitled Love, Loss, Rock, and Roll is focused on the iconic author, Salman Rushdie’s novel The Ground Beneath her Feet. The book presents the incredible worlds of the protagonists, OrmusCama and VinaApsara, both having acquired legendary, God-like status in the sphere of rock and roll music. Their love story is as much a tale of music and romance, as it is of loss and separation. Methodology and approach: The paper illustrates how Rushdie qualifies for belonging to the postmodern literary canon. The novel points out many features which establish him as a postmodern literary artist, one of the foremost of those being that he never takes his art too seriously. Nevertheless, he constructs an enchanting love story that combines not only passion and music, vigor and vitality, but also suffering and mythology. Outcome: The novel opened on the 14th of February- Valentine’s Day, in 1989, and the heroine, Vina, who is, by then, an aging rock goddess, is swallowed by an earthquake, and further washed down by a tequila chaser as a local distillery in Mexico, where she has gone for a concert, is destroyed. Incidentally, it was on the same date, earlier, when Rushdie’s world had fallen apart, following Ayatollah Khomeini’s announcement of his death sentence. This fatwa shook up his life just like the earthquake which killed Vina. But the book does for Rushdie as well as the readers what the mythical Orpheus did- it converts sorrow into happiness through the power of music and of love. Conclusion and Suggestion: The novel is a rich, all-encompassing work, including religion, race, myth, culture, wisdom, and life. These are woven into a modern myth, akin to that of Orpheus and Eurydice. It gives the message that true love may be human, yet it transforms itself, reaching for the divine.