28 pages • 56 minutes read
Jhumpa LahiriA Real Durwan
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Power of Voice
The importance of voice, especially a voice that others will heed and believe, takes center stage in the plot. The narrator describes Boori Ma’s voice as being the most “three-dimensional” thing about her (in other words, she is so thin that she appears “two-dimensional”). Boori Ma’s voice is what allows the residents to follow her movements along the stairs, almost as though her body and voice are one: “It was with this voice that she enumerated, twice a day as she swept the stairwell, the details of her plight and losses suffered since her deportation to Calcutta after Partition” (147). In addition to her suffering and loss, the older woman recounts the luxuries she knew before Partition. The residents consistently question the veracity of her claims, and the truth of her origins has been a frequent topic of conversation among them. Rather than deciding for themselves, they turn to Mr. Chatterjee for his opinion. The residents listen to and believe Mr. Chatterjee, the opposite of how they often treat Boori Ma.
One of the story’s warmest moments also illustrates the power of voice: On the rooftop, Boori Ma speaks with Mrs. Dalal about the spirit living in her bedding that makes her itchy and keeps her awake. Mrs. Dalal listens to Boori Ma but suggests an alternative to the presence of a spirit or mites: Perhaps it is prickly heat that is irritating her at night. Mrs. Dalal then offers Boori Ma a cream to help. While Boori Ma verbally denies that the cause is prickly heat, she accepts Mrs. Dalal’s offer and even begins to change her mind about what might be the cause of her sleepless nights. In short, the protagonist feels heard. Mrs. Dalal’s promise of new bedding sets Boori Ma’s mind at ease as the rains come, though the bedding never appears.
The centrality of voice emerges most clearly in the ending: Before, Boori Ma has bid the residents to believe or not believe her, but she now asks them only to believe her. But none of them speak to Boori Ma directly—they do not acknowledge or engage with her voice. Instead, they turn to Mr. Chatterjee, Boori Ma’s foil in the power of his voice, and ask what should be done. Mr. Chatterjee weighs the matter and repeats what he has said previously, that Boori Ma is not speaking truthfully. However, while he previously said Boori Ma is only “a victim of changing times” (151), he now uses the power of his voice to condemn her to an unknown fate by proclaiming that it is time for the building to have a “real durwan.”
The Connections Between Place and Identity
The importance of place is a prominent, recurring theme in Lahiri’s work. Her characters often feel unmoored from their identity as they are separated from their (or their family’s) place of origin. This same theme unfurls in the story of Boori Ma and her own sense of displacement. In “A Real Durwan,” the protagonist’s character and her living circumstances are almost inextricably tied to her past and her identity as a Bengali refugee displaced by Partition. The three-dimensionality of her voice depends upon her point of origin, and her lost home is a memory both painful and treasured. This identity is not only how the building residents see her but how she sees herself.
Boori Ma exerts herself in her stair-sweeping, but her mind remains embedded in her former home—a home that, if her stories are true, involved privileged luxury. Assuming that she was indeed once wealthy, she is not prideful in voicing that such work was unnecessary for her for the vast majority of her life. However, her words may be inadvertently demeaning to the other residents, as she insists they could never even imagine the opulence she once enjoyed. The narrator provides a brief glimpse into Boori Ma’s consciousness when she denies that her itchiness is prickly heat: “[…] Boori Ma preferred to think that what irritated her bed, what stole her sleep, what burned like peppers across her thinning scalp and skin, was of a less mundane origin” (156). Boori Ma’s origin is not mundane, and neither, in her mind, should be her afflictions.
Place also plays an important role in Boori Ma’s life and livelihood—she depends upon her work as a stair-sweeper and on the kindness of the building’s residents for simple betterments to her life such as ginger paste for her stews. Her singular dedication to her role, to the building, sets her apart as well. The narrator describes the breadth of Boori Ma’s services, explaining that they “came to resemble those of a real durwan. [… S]he honored the responsibility, and maintained a vigil no less punctilious than if she were the gatekeeper of a house [… in a] fancy neighborhood” (152). As the building around her shifts, once again Boori Ma faces displacement, unable to escape the connection to place.
The Importance of Stories
“A Real Durwan” returns again and again to the power of story. In this case, it is not the extra-literary (also known as extra-diegetic, meaning “outside the text”) awareness of the story and its influence; it is in the stories the characters tell themselves and the stories they tell about one another.
Boori Ma is the strongest example of this theme. Her repeated telling of her own story and experience gives a sense of purpose and history to her life and a sense of rhythm to her days. The stories—and the tragedy she’s experienced at their heart—provide a sense of security and self-defense. When the residents press her for details about her plight, Boori Ma responds, “Why demand specifics? Why scrape lime from a betel leaf? Believe me, don’t believe me. My life is composed of such griefs you cannot even dream them” (150).
Mr. Chatterjee, as the foil to Boori Ma, also exemplifies the importance of story. Unlike Boori Ma, he seems to have gained the residents’ respect by virtue of doing very little if anything at all: “He had neither strayed from his balcony nor opened a newspaper since Independence, but in spite of this fact, or maybe because of it, his opinions were always highly esteemed” (151). Mr. Chatterjee passes judgment on Boori Ma’s circumstances twice in the story. In both cases, he places her at the whim of larger forces around her, whether changing times or a changed building.
Gossip and rumors are another powerful form of story. The Dalals’ private water basin initially provokes a great deal of envy, and other residents make up stories about how Mrs. Dalal spends her days with her private water basin, undoubtedly washing her hands in it all day long (164). But from these stories and jealousy, they decide to make their own improvements to the building. These improvements set the stage for a turn of events in which Boori Ma becomes the subject of slander. As part of that slander, the residents tell themselves a story about Boori Ma’s whereabouts and absence, and the power of that story determines her fate. The residents are so busy with their own story and experience that they neglect to directly speak to, much less believe, Boori Ma.
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