A Real Durwan

“A Real Durwan” is the fourth story in Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut short-story collection, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award. The story recounts the daily lives of the stair-sweeper, Boori Ma, and the families who share a building of flats in Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) after the Partition of India in 1947. An English-born American author raised by Bengali parents, Lahiri is known for her characters’ emotional dimension—however indirectly portrayed—particularly as it casts light on some of the immigration and refugee experiences of East Indians.

This guide refers to the 2019 Second Mariner Books ebook edition of Interpreter of Maladies, which includes a foreword by Domenico Starnone, translated from Italian by Lahiri.

A third-person narrator describes how the main character, Boori Ma, works as the staircase sweeper of a building in a less affluent neighborhood. She is 64 years old, and the physical task of maintaining the building’s four floors is becoming difficult for her, especially as the rainy season nears. Still, she has diligently taken up many duties even beyond sweeping: In addition to having a knack for hailing rickshaws the second a resident wants one, she routinely shoos away unsolicited salespeople or any dubious characters who wander too close to the building (often to spit or urinate on it). However, her most striking feature is her voice, which is somehow both raspy and high-pitched and enhances her storytelling. While she sweeps, Boori Ma recounts her experience in Bengal before Partition when, as she claims, she was married, had four daughters, and was extremely prosperous, experiencing everyday luxuries beyond the comprehension of the building’s residents: “Believe me, don’t believe me,” she repeats, “such comforts you cannot even dream them” (149). Some of her stories feature profound hardships, too, such as being torn from her family when she was driven from her home. Tied to the end of her sari, Boori Ma keeps her life savings as well as some skeleton keys, which she says are from the coffer boxes of her Bengal estate. When children question her origins, she likes to tease them by playfully shaking the end of her sari, making the coins and keys rattle.

Boori Ma’s accent confirms she is from Bengal, and the residents don’t doubt she is a refugee, but they debate the veracity of her claims of wealth. However, because she does such an excellent job maintaining their building, they do not argue with her. Occasionally, they even invite her into their rooms for tea and biscuits. Boori Ma’s careful attention to the building causes the residents to see themselves as having “a real durwan” (152), or a live-in doorkeeper, a loftier status symbol than any of the residents would expect or could afford.

The residents’ fortunes begin to change. The first portent is the coming monsoon season, particularly in how it causes Boori Ma’s knees to ache. The stair-sweeper has also slept poorly for several nights due to an intensely itchy back, which she blames either on mites or on a spirit living in her bedding. While she stands on the building roof and beats her bedding with a broom, hoping to dislodge the offender, Boori Ma speaks with one of the residents, Mrs. Dalal, who feels somewhat tenderly toward Boori Ma and has sometimes given her ginger paste.

After hearing Boori Ma’s suspicions about the bedding, Mrs. Dalal suggests the itchiness may simply be a heat rash. Alternatively, Boori Ma may be imagining things. Boori Ma dismisses both of these possibilities, believing a heat rash is too “mundane” a cause for such an extraordinary burning sensation. She then shares more stories of her former affluence in Bengal—luxuries, she says, beyond Mrs. Dalal’s wildest dreams—and Mrs. Dalal agrees that she cannot imagine the luxuries Boori Ma once knew, as Mr. Dalal is in the unlucrative profession of selling toilet parts. Rather than taking offense at Boori Ma, she comments on the worn state of Boori Ma’s bedding and offers to purchase new bedding and a cream to help with the itchiness. Boori Ma accepts the offer and proceeds downstairs to continue sweeping.

When she is halfway down the stairs, the monsoon rains break, drenching her bedding, likely beyond repair. She spends the night at the base of the stairs, sleeping on newspapers. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Dalal returns from work to announce that he has received a promotion and has purchased two water basins, one for his and Mrs. Dalal’s private rooms and one for communal use by the other residents. Mrs. Dalal is upset at first because she thinks this is a waste of money, but, after a day of loud arguments, she warms to the idea and begins to enjoy their newfound prosperity. The basin causes quite a stir among the residents, and the women in the building grow envious of Mrs. Dalal’s private basin as they wait in line to share the second. There is a brief spate of rumors among these women, who invent gossip about all the profligate frills the Dalals must indulge—costly cooking ingredients, sumptuous saris, and other absurd extravagances. Their envy turns to resolution, however, and they decide to add their own improvements to the building.

The Dalals leave for a vacation without yet having replaced Boori Ma’s bedding, but Mrs. Dalal promises they will bring back a special blanket for her. While they are gone, the building’s renovations continue. The sheer number of workers displaces Boori Ma from the base of the stairs, and she takes her newspapers to the roof to sleep. During the day, because of the noise and many people on the stairs, she walks around the neighborhood, mingling among those whom she used to keep away from the building. She can no longer attend to her stair-sweeping duties because the stairs are so busy and overcrowded. Boori Ma begins to spend the life savings she has kept in her sari since she fled Bengal and buys herself small treats. But one day, as she wanders through the market, she feels a tug on the end of her sari, and her life savings and the skeleton keys disappear.

Boori Ma returns to her building, where there has been a burglary—in Boori Ma’s absence, someone stole the basin Mr. Dalal paid to have installed. The residents accuse Boori Ma of conspiring with the burglars, yet they do not actually speak with her about it; instead, they form a crowd and shout at her, collectively howling about her culpability. Boori Ma denies the accusations: “Believe me, believe me” (168), she says. She has repeated almost exactly these lines throughout the story, but she now shifts her refrain: “believe me, believe me” (168) instead of “believe me, don’t believe me” (149, 150).

After she consults with Mr. Chatterjee, one of the building’s older male residents, he reflects that Boori Ma’s “mouth has always been filled with ash” (170), meaning they all believe she has lied about her origins, so she is probably lying about her part in the burglary; the falsehood, or “ash,” remains unchanged. What has changed, Mr. Chatterjee explains, is their building. It is now much nicer and needs “a real durwan” (170), not Boori Ma. They expel her from the building, the home she has carefully tended for years, and plan to hire a real durwan—precisely how they once described Boori Ma and the additional services she provided as the sweeper of the stairs.