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Rushdie finds new love in New York

Salman Rushdie has found a new flame -- in Padma Lakshmi, model and writer of Easy Exotic: A Model's Low-Fat Recipes From Around the World. She has also made a film, The Caribbean.

Lakshmi, 29, has modeled the creations of Giorgio Armani, Valentino, Isaac Mizrahi and Sonia Rykiel in the past six years, and has worked with photographers like Helmut Newton, Aldo Fallai and Fabrizio Ferri.

She has been featured in such magazines as Vogue, Elle, Mirabella and Glamour.

Rushdie, 52, who is still married to editor Elizabeth West, has been seen around New York with Lakshmi. The Sunday Times, London, said yesterday that he is planning to leave London for good and buy an apartment in New York.

Though a fatwa issued by Iran on Valentine's Day 1989, that forced him to go underground, has been withdrawn, the British government continues to spend approximately $ 15 million a year on his protection.

The pair has been seen together at various New York events including the premiere of Madonna's The Next Best Thing and Anjelica Houston's Agnes Browne. The first met at a party Talk editor Tina Brown hosted to launch her new magazine last autumn.

Rushdie, who has been married thrice, has two sons, one with West. He has signed a deal with Random House for four novels and a book of essays. The first, Repentance, is about a Kashmiri cabbie in London who assassinates an Indian diplomat.

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