On first-name terms

Who do you want to be on the Internet? Salman Rushdie wants to be himself the name by which he is known in the land of kahanis and sought by readers looking for Saleem and Shalimar; the name against which the most famous fatwa of the literary world is issued. Rushdie also knows a thing or two about identity he has written about it,he has been harrumphed and hounded over it. Now finally he has been posed a few new questions about online identity.

When Rushdie joined Twitter,he found to his immense discomfort that the handle SalmanRushdie was already in use. Not content to be the Raja of Cooch Naheen,a non-Salman Rushdie,he wrested the handle and got that white tick mark in a blue blob which says verified account. Then he went to Mark Zuckerbergs hangout,Facebook. But there,it would seem,he got the digital variant of a midnight knock. On Twitter he made a hue and cry about his Facebook account being deactivated and proof of identity demanded,he sent a photograph of his passport page and the account was back,but as Ahmed Salman Rushdie. Give me back my name,he thundered,and went dauntingly highbrow: would Facebook reduce F. Scott Fitzgerald to Francis Fitzgerald? And Salman Rushdie was Salman Rushdie again.

Rushdie has rustled up issues of online identity and in this Facebook and Twitter represent two ends. Facebook insists on real names; in Twitter you are your handle. It was the Internet that liberated us from the compulsions of real world and enlarged the scope of anonymity,of hiding behind avatars and assumed names. In the vast hall of mirrors that the Internet is,identity tends to be blurred,fluid,and in all likelihood users would have the last laugh on the information they put out and remove,on who they want to be. As Rushdie insisted and Facebook found out.