'The Eleventh Hour' Book Review: It Is Almost Ten-Thirty

Salman Rushdie needs a new introduction, moreso after the fatal knife attack three years ago that had left him blind in one eye. But the writer in him has evolved as an extraordinary imaginative exponent with words since then. The knife incident has given the iconic writer a new identity to stay relevant without repeating himself. It was only a matter of a genius writer like Rushdie that he made positive use of this unfortunate murderous attack on him to explore psychological and philosophical insights on existence. 

 In contemporary usage, The Eleventh Hour means the moment when it is almost too late. One is therefore advised not to miss any moment to even repent, not later than ten-thirty perhaps. The quintet of stories by Rushdie may seem written in that context, but the outcome is difficult to describe. Isn’t age just a number? Else, ‘why would an old man rise helplessly from his chair with his beer in one hand and his sandwich in the other’ in the story The Old Man in the Piazza. It is clear that the old man was witness to change, both temporal and generational, but as single person audience only. It is at that age one gets to draw judgement(s) based on insights and experience. 

The shadow of death stalks every living being. It is almost involuntary but its realisation fuels distinct energy that it reaches a state of wisdom that is close to immortality. The result is open to interpretation. No surprise ‘everyone (else) was experiencing his or her version of the same phenomenon…. before settling back into his/her chair…’ Perhaps, the quintet of stories are Rushdie’s flirtation with ideas that may have eluded his imagination in the past. No wonder, it is a realisation now that death and life were always on adjacent verandahs.  

 In different ways, the stories are meditations in themselves. The characters are trapped in fateful coincidences, unable to escape the consequences of chance. In the South, Senior and Junior are two characters who are gentlemen neighbours but bicker endlessly. Both would continue to drag the other down to him. As a result, both were too unsteady to trust each other as if trust was a casualty of age. As luck would have it, Junior was sucked-in by the dreadful tsunami waves while Senior, who had perhaps asked for death, was left untouched. It made him wonder if life had any meaning other than in the verandah one was occupying.  

In this elegant collection of stories, Rushdie revisits the places that shaped his life and made him what he eventually became. Much has changed in the old places, as these stopped being the old places that these were once known to be. Isn’t it wrong to temper with history? The old name has its inherent relationships to beauty, whereas the new name has more materialistic orientation. Without getting into the nomenclature imbroglio, the author terms his memories as kahani because it gives him a conext to write about. The erstwhile city of a certain period comes of age in The Musician of Kahani, rebuilding relationship with an erstwhile city called Bombay.  

 The Eleventh Hour is an imaginative parable of the time lived through. Each of the five stories are about how life gets accommodated against death. In Late, the protagonist discovers the remnants of an imperial past by developing friendship with a ghost, and pulls out revenge from his tormentor. Oklahoma could easily have been destined as full novel but Rushdie restricted it as novella and brought in Kafka to build an imaginative/thoughtful narrative. Some or perhaps all stories may seem incomplete, but the writer expects the reader to provide a reasonable closure. Each story has a distinct and engaging plot, leaving the reader to end it differently.    

Rushdie’s spellbound narrative(s) leaves much to the reader’s imagination. Shouldn’t the present ethical decay around the world be a matter of serious concern? Why replacement of ‘knowledge’ with ‘ignorance’ is no longer shameful? In fact, are there not days in which ‘shamelessness’ is king? The stories raise many compelling concerns which neither is anybody listening nor anyone willing to care. The stories, despite their wandering, are a slow-burn of a kind that makes the reader long for respite from emerging realities. 

 It isn’t clear what we must do now to cut through the crap. Where we are heading and what will become of us? Rushdie, a master of metamorphosis, has conjured up generational concerns for the Gen G to be concerned about. Else, we will remain close to The Eleventh Hour. 
 

 Sudhirendar Sharma is an independent writer, researcher and academic.