England limited-overs all-rounder Luke Wright is planning to miss the start of the domestic season, in favour of a stint in the Indian Premier League.

The dazzling state of Rajasthan has long lured travellers – and your children will love it too, says Amar Grover.

There were disagreements about the details – one said Rajasthan, another said Punjab – but the Indian media was in agreement yesterday that movie director Kathryn Bigelow is poised to film parts of her new movie about Osama Bin Laden here, rather than in Pakistan.

Was the author really at risk of attack at the Jaipur literary festival, or was he absent for a more cynical reason?

Salman Rushdie has accused Indian police of lying to him about a supposed death threat to keep him away from the Jaipur Literature Festival. "I've investigated, and believe I was lied to. I am outraged," he said on Twitter.

From modest beginnings it has become one of the biggest literary festivals on earth. This year the roster of big names talking about their work includes Michael Ondaatje, Tom Stoppard, Richard Dawkins, Annie Proulx, Hari Kunzru, Shashi Tharoor and William Dalrymple, the festival's co-director.

Booker-Prize winning author Salman Rushdie cancelled plans to appear at an Indian literature festival today after protests from Muslim clerics and warnings that he could be targeted for assassination.

The controversy over Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, written more than two decades ago, has again bubbled to the surface after senior Muslim clerics in India demanded that the writer be prevented from entering the country to attend a literary festival.

'I'll always come back to India. It is bewitching'

Fifteen months after striking a deal to sell a controlling stake in its Indian unit, Britain's Cairn Energy has received regulatory clearance and can complete the $6.5bn (£4.1bn) transaction.

Instant Andalucia:

Fly out next Friday to the Spanish city of Seville, which at this time of year offers warm weather along side its stunning Moorish architecture. Expedia will put you up for three nights at the luxurious Vincci La Rabida Hotel for £399 per person, room only. The deal includes Iberia flights from Heathrow on 4 November. expedia.co.uk

An elephant polo match has been cancelled in the northern city of Jaipur after animal rights activists objected. The group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, called it "a victory for the elephants."

Mani Kaul was a genre-hopping film-maker whose success came the hard and hard-line intellectual way, via India's so-called "parallel cinema". Like Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen and Kumar Shahani but more so, he never espoused the popular route to success, even though he enjoyed critical and some commercial acclaim. Not in the mainstream, not quite an outsider, his oeuvre embraced serious, non-commercial cinema – frequently based on books or dramas – documentary film, especially on musical subjects, and the culturally daring. Sen lauded him simply as "one of the finest film-makers in India."