Padma Lakshmi: Billion-Dollar Baby

The aim of those who organised the Blossom Ball in New York was that the guests should have a "magical" evening. It cost around Dh1,892 a plate to attend, and the setting, in the Beaux Arts graciousness of the New York Public Library, was certainly impressive.

There was a cocktail reception, auction, dinner, entertainment by a comedienne and dancing at the after-party. The star of the show, though, was the ravishing, doe-eyed TV chef, entrepreneur and former model Padma Lakshmi.

Padma, the former Mrs Salman Rushdie, is one of the founders of the Ball, which raises funds and consciousness for the Endometriosis Foundation of America. She attended, radiant in a hot pink maxi-dress, and when her time came she addressed the throng. What she said, though, was quite unexpected.

First, Padma spoke about her own experiences of endometriosis, which had made it a struggle to conceive a child. Then she said: "I am lucky to have someone who unwaveringly gave me love and manly support — and he is also the person that I love. So thank you, Teddy."

The "Teddy" in question, who received this heartwarming slice of public acknowledgement with a beaming smile, is Teddy Forstmann, a silver-haired eternal bachelor of 70, former admirer of Princess Diana and a billionaire Wall Street financier turned entrepreneur.

What makes Padma's declaration of love remarkable is that only three months ago she had a baby girl, Krishna Thea. But the girl is widely said not to be Teddy's biological child but the offspring of one Adam Dell — of the Dell computers family.

He is, you guessed it, another millionaire (as was Rushdie). It has been reported that Adam, 40, and 39-year-old Padma are communicating via lawyers. He wants access to the baby.

Convoluted

So what on earth is going on in this entertaining high-society tangle? After all, the plot is more convoluted than one of Padma's ex-husband's books. It's rather a murky mess, even for publicity-loving Padma, who posed topless on the front of one of her cookery books and was also pictured naked during her recent pregnancy.

And who will baby Krishna call Daddy? Christina Papadopoulos, Padma's PR, leaves little doubt that the only father figure in Krishna's life will be the man they are calling her "rebound billionaire", Teddy Forstmann.

She says: "Padma has always tried to keep her private life private, but I do know that Padma has now spoken about her love for Teddy.

"He has been a great support to her and I can confirm the relationship. They have known each other for around three years."

Friends say that this support extended to all of the tasks you might expect a father-to-be to undertake, such as being with Padma on hospital visits before the baby was born. He was, apparently, a very great help as she went through a difficult pregnancy.

And, the Mail has learned, Forstmann was at the hospital when the baby was delivered, too.

Would he have really done all of this if the child Padma was bearing was from another romantic relationship? Naturally, people are now asking: might the baby be Forstmann's?

Or is it possible, as rumour in New York has it, that there is an agreement between them that she could try to have a baby with a younger paramour, but that their own love story should carry on, regardless?

There is no comment of any sort from Forstmann's side.

Papadopoulos, meanwhile, is thoroughly defensive when the name Dell is mentioned and repeats, mysteriously and more than once, that Padma has never chosen to name the child's father, and won't do so now.

"She does not choose to confirm who the father of her child is. I would remind you that she has never named the father officially," she says.

This enigmatic behaviour has the presumably quite deliberate effect of relegating Dell, a venture capitalist, to the status of a sub-plot in the great, tangled novel of Padma's life. The unspoken suggestion, implied in her comments, is that Dell might not be the father after all.

The story of the beauty, her baby and the billionaire begins in 2007. By then, Padma had been married to Rushdie for only three years, but the union — his fourth — had seemingly been hanging by a thread for more than a year.

Instantly enchanted

They had met at a party in 1999 when the priapic Rushdie was still married to Elizabeth West. He was instantly enchanted by Padma, 24 years his junior and stunning, creative and ambitious.

At the time, Padma was seeking to establish herself as a cookery writer and TV presenter, following a modelling career which had seen her grace the pages of Vogue and also appear in a bikini in an Italian game show.

Padma and Rushdie were the toast of New York society. Their 2004 Hindu wedding was attended by streams of famous people, including comedian Steve Martin and singer Lou Reed.

However, there were problems — with Padma needing to stay in New York for her work, where she was becoming a star in her own right, and Rushdie wishing to spend time in London with his children and friends. He admitted that, over one four-month period, they had spent less than three weeks together.

In March 2007, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg was overheard saying: "I can't believe she's leaving him."

Any rift was denied, but only four months later Rushdie's spokesman, Jin Auh, released a statement that read: "Salman Rushdie has agreed to divorce his wife, Padma, because of her desire to end their marriage."

She had e-mailed Rushdie from New York that their relationship was impossible to continue and that they should separate. "I sat down and wrote him a long love letter by e-mail and said: "am writing to you as a woman who has loved you and stood next to you for eight years. And I am asking you to do the unexpected with me, to take my hand and not fight about anything."

She denied rumours that she did not get on with his children, and also denied rumours that she had become close to Forstmann — she had just signed up to his talent agency IMG, but said despite published gossip on the subject they were friends, nothing more.

"I was becoming less portable," she said. "We had two homes and Salman would go back and forth between London and New York. Our schedules got so crazy — he has a very big life, too." The 24-year age gap probably did not help either.

Padma said that the writer was "the greatest love" of her life. "We really tried to work it out. It was just getting very hard. There was no third party. I wasn't mean to his kids."

But Rushdie was noticeably more devastated than Padma was. Some said that he continued to be obsessed by her, and that he crumbled without her.

Actress Pia Glenn, who dated Rushdie in 2009, said that it was plain he still loved Padma, two years after the split. "He would talk about her night and day," Glenn complained. "He would talk about her so much I would ask him to stop."

But what of Padma? Unlike Rushdie, she played her cards closer to her chest.

In the spring of 2007, just as the marriage foundered, she arrived at a society event at the Waldorf hotel in New York with Forstmann. The story goes that a picture was taken of them together, but she apparently asked for it to be deleted because it was "blurry" — and then made sure that they were not seen together again.

Fabulous gifts

By the spring of 2008, though, diary columns on both sides of the Atlantic reported that she and Forstmann were discreetly dating. Forstmann had apparently wooed her for months after meeting her via IMG, and they were said to be an official item.

And what a catch he is. The Wall Street financier has homes in Manhattan, Aspen in Colorado and the exclusive Hamptons on Long Island. He keeps a corporate jet on stand-by and flies to the Caribbean as casually as other men take a bus.

He is fond of showering women with fabulous gifts. One of those on the receiving end of his largesse was his girlfriend, blonde model Debbie Hagerty.

When they got engaged, he gave her a seven-carat diamond ring — that's bigger than the engagement rings of Katie Holmes, Priscilla Presley or Sharon Stone and probably worth around £300,000 (Dh1.6 million). During their relationship, he also gave her a red Lamborghini sports car.

Big dates

But she was so troubled by his dalliance with Princess Diana that their romance foundered.

Raised in a wealthy Catholic family, Forstmann has spoken of wishing that he had got married and had children, but saying that circumstances never seemed to favour it. Other dates have included Elizabeth Hurley and Patricia Duff, the former wife of Revlon cosmetics billionaire Ron Perelman.

For Padma, life as Teddy's consort must be a new world indeed. For although she has a high profile, thanks to her work on the hit show Top Chef and her successful cookbooks, Forstmann and his like live on a different plane.

What a surprise it was, then, that when she announced last October that she was bearing a baby, Forstmann's name was not mentioned.

Soon after the baby was born, reports in the US named the father as businessman Dell.

Dell is a business and technology professor at Columbia Business School in New York and invests in technology companies. He has never spoken about the nature of their relationship.

It's all most curious, as he and Padma, had been seen out only twice together. Their friendship was reportedly "pretty casual".

But now, there is a baby, and a man with whom she wishes to bring that baby up — whether he is the father or not.

The question which remains is this. Will she be the one who finally marches the elusive Forstmann down the aisle? Rushdie, who is following events with interest from his homes in New York and Notting Hill, wouldn't bet against it.

What’s Padma Lakshmi’s defining feature?

Well, if it’s not her height, her beauty or her figure, it’s got to be her personality. But there’s another part of the Indian-American that often draws attention: the 14-centimetre scar on her right arm, the result of surgery on her arm which was shattered in a car accident when she was 14. Although once self-conscious about the scar, Padma has learned to embrace it.

“I had always stood out for my height, my skin colour, my very long hair,” she wrote in Vogue in 2001.

“But now, all people noticed was the scar. ‘It’s such a shame,’ they would say. ‘She’s so pretty, she could have modelled.’ It angered me that people saw me as a ruined beauty. Inside, I felt I was pretty.”

The former model eventually rose to fame after being photographed by Helmut Newton, emphasising her scar. “Ironically, the greatest gift fashion has given me is the courage to expose what is most vulnerable, to be proud of my body. Including my scar,” she wrote.

Did you know?

During the Salman Rushdie-Padma Lakshmi marriage crisis, Rushdie suffered serious writers' block which nearly caused him to abandon his latest book, the historical saga The Enchantress of Florence.Some critics said that the sexually charged heroine, Lady Black Eyes — a seductress who can "mastermind multiple orgasms across different continents" and make men insane with lust before breaking their hearts — was based on Padma.