63 pages • 2 hours read
Interpreter of Maladies
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Story 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 4 Summary: “A Real Durwan”
Boori Ma has been living in the doorway of an apartment building in Calcutta, informally working as a durwan (a doorkeeper) in exchange for a place to live. She is elderly, and she tells everyone stories of her life before Partition and her deportation, a time when she had a husband and four daughters in a two-story house. Every day while she sweeps the stairwell, she regales the building tenants with stories of her life of luxury; the people in the building, which is old and run down, are skeptical of her stories, but they treat her as something of a charming presence in the building and as someone who is a victim of circumstance. Plus, she stands guard in the doorway for them.
One day, Boori Ma is cleaning the rugs she sleeps on using the rooftop cistern when she runs into Mrs. Dalal. Boori Ma tries to convince her that there are mites living in her rugs, but Mrs. Dalal thinks she is imagining things and just has a case of prickly heat. Boori Ma begins to tell stories of the luxury she used to live in, and Mrs. Dalal says she knows no such life. Still, she insists on getting Boori Ma some new bedding and says she will speak to her husband when he gets home (though he has a meager job selling toilet parts). As Boori Ma works at sweeping, it begins raining heavily—her rugs are still on the roof getting soaked, but she is tired, and she believes Mrs. Dalal will come through for her, so she takes a nap on a pile of newspapers.
After lunch, Mr. Dalal arrives home in a rickshaw with a job for Boori Ma: He has been promoted, and to celebrate he has bought wash basins that he wants carried upstairs. Mrs. Dalal is less than pleased, as he has promised her much more, and they don’t have a telephone or a refrigerator; two basins seem unnecessary to her. Mr. Dalal agrees that one should be installed in their apartment and the other in the stairwell for common use. It will be a big improvement to the building, and the residents are pleased, but Boori Ma is disrupted by the workers and retires to the roof, where she tears her rugs into strips to polish the banisters.
The washbasin in the stairwell breeds resentment among the residents, which is compounded by the Dalals’ going on vacation. On leaving, Mrs. Dalal tells Boori Ma that she hasn’t forgotten her promise and will return with a new blanket for her. The other wives in the building begin to hire workers to make more improvements to the building, forcing Boori Ma to live on the rooftop, where she is still sleeping on newspaper. More rain comes, and Boori Ma is miserable, hoping for the day when the Dalals return. She begins walking the neighborhood, spending what money she has on small treats for herself, going farther each day. Someone pickpockets her, taking her life savings and the keys she carried that she claimed were to her savings back home. When she returns home, the residents are furious with her—the basin has been stolen, and she was not there to stop the thief. They take her to the roof and yell at her, saying that she colluded with thieves and has always been a liar.
The group turns to one resident, Mr. Chatterjee, to ask what to do. He looks at the building, noting the improvements that are being made, and says that they need a real durwan now. The residents expel Boori Ma from the building and pile her belongings outside. She takes the broom she has used to sweep the stairwell and walks off.
Story 4 Analysis
The tragedy of “A Real Durwan” is rooted in the way that people fail to care for each other, particularly those who are less fortunate. Boori Ma is accepted as part of the building’s life, but she is still a homeless refugee, and her position in the building is more precarious than she knows (though she does know that her being welcome is conditional, as she makes a point of not sitting on the furniture). The residents also don’t believe her, though they pay that fact no mind, a point that is key to understanding how little they value her—she is beneath even their suspicion.
Mrs. Dalal has a genuine desire to help Boori Ma, but it is undermined by her husband’s promotion and the exciting vacation, and she does not see the urgency or the indignity of Boori Ma’s situation. She and her husband also inadvertently set into motion the events of Boori Ma’s downfall, as their attempt to better themselves breeds resentment, leading other people in the building to try to better their situation as well. Ultimately, the residents’ socioeconomic striving leads them to a point where they are willing to cast off those who are beneath them. The story takes a grim view of humanity: The society of the apartment building is held together primarily by mutual benefit, leaving little room for those who make mistakes or don’t contribute, and even those who want to help the less fortunate do so in self-serving or half-interested ways.
Boori Ma comes to understand the need to be believed; belief in a person is an affirmation of their human worth. Her initial refrain, “Believe me, don’t believe me” (71), is rooted in her consideration of herself as someone who is still special because of her previous station in life; it’s only once she has been cast out that the apartment residents’ belief is needed. The residents aren’t willing to consider the price of their own actions, choosing instead to take the parts of Boori Ma they find distasteful at face value. The story is a microcosm of the problem of the poor in India after Partition; the political changes in the region had devastating economic consequences for many, and progress and rebuilding left many more behind in the aftermath. Mr. Chatterjee represents the people untouched by this change and eager to lead the charge into a more prosperous time, while Boori Ma is what he sees as the necessary victim of progress.
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