Taj Mahal For Sale

 

 

In the modern consumer or market-based society, people are in a constant rat-race trying to outrun each other in search of a happiness that they never really seem to find. We try to see if material possession makes them happy. We buy one thing after the other always eyeing for things better than what we already have. We try to put a price tag for almost everything. Absolutely everything is for sale at the right price, even the family members.  This is the modern reality that Salman Rushdie is satirizing in his short story, “At the Auction of Ruby Slippers” from the book “East West Stories”.

 

 

 

The story starts with a description of place of auction. The main item is a pair or ruby slippers. The place is filled with Movie stars, auctioneers, memorabilia junkies, refugees, poets, bandit chieftains, conspirators and also, as odd as it may seem, there are creatures - sometimes animal, sometimes mythical – Wizards, Lions, scarecrows and Tin Men. They all have come there with their interpretation of the ‘magical powers’ the slippers hold and their high expectations of making it their own. For some it is just for possession, for some it is success in anything and for a few it is a form of recognition among the crowsd but it is clear that for many it is a wish for belonging, to be able to go home just as the power of the ruby slippers given in the story ‘The Wizard of Oz’.

 

 

 

The needy, the poor, and the homeless have also come from the dark just to admire the slippers. The orphans, “hoping that the ruby slippers might transport them back through time as well as space” to their unknown “Home”, to their lost parents and loved ones” are waiting anxiously. They are all desperately bidding for the slippers, willing to spend massive amounts of money, blind in the hope that magic of the slippers will save them. The narrator speaks of the panic and desperation inside the room being touching and pathetic. To an ordinary reader, this whole auction scene may seem absurd, but for a inquisitive critical reader this whole description seems to symbolize the whole notion of Slaman Rushdie’s satirical message to the materialistic modern society.  

 

 

 

Rushdie does not portray the narrator as a critic of the situation but instead makes him a part of the whole ‘auction’ with no exception. The narrator is also there with hope of buying the slippers. His shallowness is evident from the fact that he’s in love with his own cousin, Gale, and that he believes that by purchasing the ruby slippers, he would win over his love who is lost to an imaginary and uncivil caveman. He is so desperate that he is determined to do anything. It is a reminder to us readers how the society has demeaned ‘love’, the society’s mentality that we can ‘buy’ love.  And in the end, because so many people want the ruby slippers, the narrator does not get the slippers. But he stays optimistic and shows more hope than being a pessimist because he knows there’s another auction next week and he can buy something to impress Gale.

 

 

 

Apart from materialism, there are several other western themes apparent in this story. At this ‘auction’ in the west, everybody has their chance to win these slippers as long as they are willing to pay the right ‘price’. From my understanding, this shows that in western world anybody has the equal opportunity to gain success, how materialistic it may be, as long as they are willing to pay the ‘price’. By ‘price’ the writer may very well mean the efforts and sacrifices made in order to achieve what he/she wants. This is in such contrast to the East where social opportunities and privileges are restricted to only a certain class. Subalterns may never be allowed in the ‘auction’, that they’ll die as a subaltern even though they are willing to pay the highest ‘price’.

 

 

It also satirizes the competition in the western society, trying to outrun each other to achieve what they want.  Only few win, all the rest fails. But life goes on. They try again and again because there’s always ‘an auction’ on the following week. But amidst of the competition ‘The real people in need of a home are pushed aside for the people wanting the illusion of a home.. willing to squander their fortunes on an ideal.’ and ‘at the height of the auction’, they loose their touch on reality, get ‘detached from the earth’ and loose the sense of the purpose or seriousness of life. ‘There is a loss of gravity.’ And as the narrator sees it, it becomes ‘floating capsule of the struggle.’  

 

 

The reader may ask the question whether Rushdie’s literature reflects his own experience. I believe it’s apparent that it does. Rushdie has once described ‘The Wizard of Oz’ as his "first literary influence at the age of 10… When I first saw the 'The Wizard of Oz' it made a writer of me." So its natural for him to incorporate characters and ideas from it. In fact this story was originally published along with an essay in a small British Film Institute book as a kind of accompaniment to the film "The Wizard of Oz”.

 

 

 

In the story of “the Wizard of Oz” these Ruby slippers have the power to bring people back home. There’s indeed a connection to Rushdie’s life that this story was written in a time where Rushdie was forced to move every week, from one hideout to the other, under round-the-clock protection from Scotland Yard, after the ‘fatuwa’ was issued by the religious extremists for his anti-Quran work ‘Satanic Verses’. For him at that time the word “home” almost seemed as an illusion. In my opinion, Rushdie blended his despair to that of the spaceman stranded forever on Mars, showing "his slow descent into despair, his low-gravity, weight-reduced death" while he sings old songs from "The Wizard of Oz." And he wants to buy Gale the auctioned ruby slippers so she can go to Mars and bring back that spaceman who believes “There's no place like home."

 

 

 

Rushdie concentrates the essence of the story on to one sentence for all of us to seriously think about, ‘[the Ruby slippers’] achievement and our own survival become - yes!-fictions. and fictions, as I have come close to suggesting before, are dangerous. in fictions grip, we may mortgage our homes, sell our children, to have whatever it is we crave. alternatively in that miasmal ocean, we may simply float away from our desires, and see them anew, from a distance, so that they seem weightless, trivial. we let them go. like men dying in a blizzard, we lie down in the snow to rest.’’