In the South: A Story by Salman Rushdie
On 16th May, 2026, Literati Lounge, Bhopal’s leading Book Club, hosted a discussion on The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie. Anshu Vaish chaired the well-attended session.
Nishi
Agrawal initiated the discussion with introductory comments on each of the five
stories after which several members shared their thoughts about the stories,
and other recent works by Rushdie.
Here is a brief review of “In the South”, the lead story in The Eleventh Hour by
Salman Rushdie.
The story
opens ominously: Junior falls and dies, yet the day is otherwise ordinary—don’t
people die every day? Rushdie begins with a sprawling 81‑word sentence, setting
the tone for the story’s meditative pace.
The lead
story is about two old men, “eighty-one years old. If old age was thought of as
an evening, ending in midnight oblivion, they were well into the eleventh
hour.” The quintet of stories gets its title from this sentence.
The old men
live in Chennai – in the South, which is not merely geographical since Hindus
also associate south with Yama or Death.
Senior is
waiting to die – “[E]ach morning he regretted that he had not died in the
night.” Junior isn’t bubbling with zest for life, but he’s happy to be alive.
Senior has lived a fulfilled life, but is now lonely. His large extended family
is a nuisance, a swarm of mosquitoes. Junior, a clerk, had an uneventful life,
never married, but has no regrets or complaints, though he is enthralled by the
much younger D’Mello’s enchanting descriptions of Mumbai – the legendary
bitch-city - and looks forward to his periodic visits which Senior much
resents.
Both men are
frail, their health in decline. Junior shuffles slowly when he walks. Senior
has “multiple health problems of the very old, the daily penances of bowel and
urethra, of back and knee, the milkiness climbing in his eyes, the breathing
troubles, the nightmares, the slow failing of the soft machine.”
Senior is
erudite. He taught scriptures, maths, and much else besides post-retirement,
and enjoyed the lively discussions on politics, chess, poetry, and music at a
local coffeehouse with his ten friends in the park. But all were gone now. He
is lonely.
Senior’s
wife with a wooden leg, his second after the demise of his first wife, is
Aarthi; “but he never used it [her name] …To him she was always ‘Woman’ or
‘Wife.’” She retaliates Senior’s lack of love and courtesy by totally ignoring
him, refusing even to get him a glass of water when asked. She invites her
cacophonous clan who invade the premises forcing Senior to flee to Junior’s
home for quiet and peace.
Rushdie
layers domestic disquiet atop existential loneliness. Senior is now friendless,
but for Junior’s argumentative company. But their quarrel is feigned sparring,
not unlike the playful teasing in Carnatic musical duets. Life won’t be worth
living but for the daily quarrel, exchange of insults and repartees from their
adjacent verandas.
Senior had
scholarly, thoughtful views about life after death, soul, and similar stuff.
Junior’s views were mundane and laughable. He wasn’t a well-read man, nor did
he think deeply about such matters.
“Junior’s
life had been a disappointment to him … The discovery of his affliction by the
incurable disease of mediocrity might have cowed a less ebullient spirit,
but he remained bright-eyed,
with a ready smile for the world.”
When they
are on their way to the post office to collect their weekly pension, the sun is
at their back, and their shadows fall in front — ‘like lovers’ — the thought
occurs to both of them, but neither one voices it. At the crossing, Junior
stumbles, falls, and dies instantly; Senior regrets not saying what he could
have said.
What was the
special bond between the old men?
Both were shadows.
“The old move through the world of the young like shades, unseen, of no
concern. But the shadows see each other and know who they are. So it was with
us.”
After
Junior’s death, Senior reminisces mournfully about the dear departed.
“He who knew me knows nothing now and therefore I am not known. What else,
woman, is death?”
Regardless
of Senior’s scripture-supported views on life after death, Junior’s ghost
appears on the adjacent veranda when Senior feels lonely.
Is the story
about the meaninglessness of existence, the banality of life—the routine
progression from adulthood, marriage, family, friends, work, and thereafter,
decline, decrepitude, and death—the inevitable fate of all who live?
Or, is it about the loneliness of the old who pass like shadows in the world of
the young?
Rushdie
wrote this story in 2009, long before the near fatal knife attack on him in
2022; but under the shadow of the fatwa calling for his death issued in 1989.
Not surprising that mortality is a brooding presence in this story.
Is this
story a swan song—depressing, melancholic, and mournful? The looming spectre of
shape-shifting death—sometimes visiting quietly in sleep, sometimes as a small
fall and a little bump on a sidewalk, sometimes as a giant wave of tsunami
which the author calls Death. The ultimate indignity of an ordinary,
uneventful, inconsequential death; regardless of the life lived—ordinary or
extraordinary, meaningful or not so meaningful.
When
life-breath leaves Junior’s body, Senior unhesitatingly picks up the pension
slip from Junior’s pocket and proceeds to the post office to collect the modest
sum. There is enough time to mourn for the dead during the thirteen-days long
ritual; why forego the weekly pension?
Each
morning, Senior regrets that he had not died during the night; yet he dons his
formal attire for the weekly sojourn to the post office to collect the meagre
sum, pleased to note respect and deference in the postal clerk’s conduct.
Ultimately,
the story is less about death itself than about the duet between life and
death—two verandas, two shadows, inseparable.
***
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