Setting

Physical setting

The events presented in the short story “The Free Radio” by Salman Rushdie take place in an unnamed town in India. The characters live in a small community, where people know private details about the lives of others. For example, the narrator knows about the thief’s widow’s life through gossip from other members of the community: “I won’t say where the money came from, but people saw men at night near her rutputty shack, even the bania himself they were telling me…” (p. 18, ll. 8-10).

Other parts of the physical setting are the Irani canteen, where Ramani and his friends drink illegal liquor (p. 18, ll. 26-27), and the caravan where men are forced to undergo vasectomies:

For instance, the local health officer had brought a big white caravan into...