Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies is a short story which was first published in the collection East, West in 1987.

This short story is told in third-person narration and is about a young Indian woman who is about to get her papers to move to London, but receives a free piece of advice from an old trickster and con-man named Mohammad Ali.

This short story is about the new self-confidence of Britain's former-colonies.
It begins with Miss Rehana, a Pakistani woman, getting off the bus in front of the British consulate on a Tuesday morning.
On Tuesday, women in Pakistan can apply for a permit to expartiate to England. Most of those "Tuesday-women" are accompanied by men, either uncles or brothers. Miss Rehana stands out because she comes alone and doesn`t even wear a veil. Mohammad Ali, an old man who makes money by giving advice to wealthy women wishing to emigrate, is stuck by her fascinating personality and her beauty.

M. Ali finds himself offering Ms. Rehana his advice. She tells him that she can't afford to pay for his advice. M.Ali is so enchanted by her charisma that he gives her advices for free. He warns her about all the tricky questions she might have to answer and says that he could get her an illegal permit through an acquaintance of his. However, ms. Rehana refuses his offer and goes into the consulate. She is in a very happy mood when she comes out of the offices and offers M. Ali a pakora. M. Ali congratulates her assuming she had answered all the questions correctly. However, he is very surprised when she tells him that she got all the questions wrong on purpose and thus got rejected.

One of the main themes of this short story is emigration from Pakistan to England. Many Pakistanis emigrated to England as they saw their future in Britain, even though life in Pakistan could still be good. Women gave up their life, said farewell to their families, knowing they might not see them again, and not knowing how their further life might be.

Miss Rhena is a truly emancipated woman: she declines the offer of a "safe" future with an unknown man in England and chooses to stay in Pakistan instead, preferring to live with her family and leading her basic lifestyle than rather than submitting to the former colonizers.

The other main theme is female emancipation from men. The man traditionally rules in the family in Pakistan and that makes women completely dependent on their husbands or other male relatives. Arranged marriages are very widespread and even miss Rehana is supposed to marry a man she doesn't know. She knows that if she marries him and goes to England to live with him, she will lose her freedom. The fact shat chooses Pakistan with her freedom than living in the supposedly civilised western world, makes her more modern than the other Tuesday women who consider England as the finest expression of modern life.