He had preferred to surrender and get the degree. He could have refused to pay for the gravy damage to his room, could have refused to change his shoes, could have refused to kneel to supplicate for his BA. Ever afterwards, Rushdie reflects, he wasĪppalled by the memory of his passivity, hard though it was to see what else he could have done. Again, he gave in, sprinted to his freshly scrubbed rooms to change, and made it back in the nick of time to join his fellow graduands, queuing for their turn to beg the Vice Chancellor, on bended knee, for a degree. Plucked out of the parade by an eagle-eyed official, he was told that if he did not return, tout suite, shod in regulation black footwear, he would be debarred from the ceremony. But the injustice stuck in his throat and so, a few days later, in a calculated gesture of defiance, he turned up to his graduation ceremony sporting a pair of brown shoes – strictly proscribed. Despite Rushdie’s protestations of innocence, ‘King’s instantly held him solely responsible for the mess, ignored all his representations to the contrary, and informed him that unless he paid for the damage, he would not be permitted to graduate.’ In late May 1968, a few weeks after the riots in Paris and a few nights before Salman Rushdie was due to graduate with a History degree from Cambridge University, a vandal with Dadaist tendencies accessed his rooms at King’s College and redecorated the walls, furniture, his record collection and clothes with a bucketful of gravy and onions.

Joseph anton a memoir