Good Advice Is Rarer than Rubies Analysis

“Good Advice Is Rarer than Rubies” is told in the third person, but it presents events from the point of view of Muhammad Ali. It is a short and deceptively simple tale that has only two main characters. Nevertheless, in a few pages and a sparse style, Salman Rushdie manages to present an ironic view of life in contemporary Pakistan.

Rushdie’s work is often characterized by the style known as Magical Realism, in which fantastic and wildly imaginative events occur within a realistic setting. Much of the effectiveness of this style lies in its ability to draw readers into accepting unlikely or impossible events as occurring in the normal course of daily affairs and in the surprises made possible by unexpected twists of plot. “Good Advice Is Rarer than Rubies” owes its impact to the fact that its characters and its events stay on the level of realistic fiction, presenting nothing impossible or even out of the ordinary, while disrupting the ordinary world in a way that seems magical.

Muhammad Ali’s corrupt, sordid life is interrupted by the radiant young woman, and he finds himself unexpectedly changed. The advice that he gives her is good advice, based on the point of view that creates his reality. This point of view suddenly appears to be an illusion, though, along with much else in the story. Evil intentions are transformed into efforts to help. His efforts to help, seen from another angle, are rejected as illegal actions. In the...

Because one theme of the story concerns how people are happy living in an Eastern environment, the setting is very important. The story takes place outside a British consulate in an unnamed town in India, which establishes a contrast between Eastern and Western culture. Women, accompanied by male family members, arrive at the consulate every Tuesday to obtain permits to immigrate to England to meet their husbands or fiancés. Inside the consulate, “sahibs” eat their breakfast while Indian women wait outside in line to see them. “Sahib” is a term Indians used during the Raj period to refer to British rulers, and in this context it indicates the postcolonial setting of the story, where vestiges of old attitudes that privilege British over native people remain. The “coolies” who tie the bedrolls to the top of the bus are as much of a reminder of the caste system in India as the power system established by British rule. Symbolically, the British consulate functions as a site of bureaucracy, while the streets of India represent the business of and vitality of life.

A preponderance of Indian terms lends reality to its culture. Although the area is “dusty,” the bus that transports the women is “brightly painted in multicolored arabesques” and other decorations, giving it a visual charm, especially in contrast to the guarded gates of the consulate. Various stalls outside those gates sell food, including pakoras, a fried, dumpling-like snack filled with curried ingredients. A “bearded lala” wearing a colorful “gold-buttoned khaki uniform with a cockaded turban” guards the gates to the consulate. Muhammad’s office is merely a “low wooden desk in his own special corner of the shanty-town.” Miss Rehana does not wait in line to see him, as women must do in front of the consulate, but instead Muhammad Ali approaches her. Rather than sit on a chair as they talk, Muhammad provides a cushion “on the dusty ground” for her to...