Good Advice is Rarer than Rubies

Advice functions as a motif to support the story’s exploration of colonialism. Throughout the story, Muhammad Ali offers his advice as a gift: His position is analogous to that of a colonizing power justifying its exploitation on the grounds that it is bringing knowledge and civilization to the colonized. All the while, however, Miss Rehana knows she doesn’t need it and that it will not be good advice. Repeatedly, she asks what his advice will be, and Muhammad fails to give any because he is too busy working toward his own ends, or because he is enraptured by her beauty and perceived innocence.

In the end, the advice Muhammad offers (which is a British passport) is not only useless to Miss Rehana but potentially damaging. That good advice is rare is true; the story shows that advice is most effective when it’s given with true understanding of the recipient and without ulterior motives, but the ways in which hierarchies of gender and empire distort perceptions make such advice nearly impossible.

As precious stones, rubies have long symbolized power and wealth; they were also among the treasures looted by the British during their occupation of India.