A Real Durwan

True to form for Lahiri, “A Real Durwan” revolves around human relationships, miscommunication (or lack of communication altogether), and displacement. As is also consistent with her larger oeuvre, the story ends without a clean, easily digestible message. Instead, there is the messiness of humanity and, particularly in this story, multiple perspectives for readers to understand and internalize. Many literary critics have remarked upon the simplicity of Lahiri’s writing style, but behind the readable prose lies a complex fabric of conflicting desires and motivations that readers then must untangle.

At its most straightforward, “A Real Durwan” is a tragic story of an older woman who, if her stories are true, was ousted from her Bengali home and a prosperous life by forces much larger than herself and beyond her control. Her only vestige of this life is the stories she tells as she maintains the stairwell, and though most of the residents are incredulous, they treat her kindly because her hard work benefits their own living circumstances. But this reading overlooks much of the story’s irony and does not account for the great unraveling that occurs in Boori Ma’s life after the seemingly positive turn of Mrs. Dalal’s promise of new bedding. Ostensibly, it is Boori Ma’s careful custodianship that partially inspires Mr. Dalal to install a communal water basin after his promotion. The other residents’ jealousy over the water basin is eventually channeled in a more constructive direction as they invest in their home—much as Boori Ma has done—to make improvements. These same improvements, however, lead to Boori Ma’s second displacement when the residents dismiss her and decide, instead, to hire “a real durwan” (170). In this dramatic turn from benevolence or luxury leading, rather quickly, to ruination, the story bears resonance with Nikolai Gogol’s “The Overcoat” (1842) and Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace” (1884). Gogol is one of Lahiri’s literary influences, and the Russian author is even the namesake for the main character, Gogol, of her novel The Namesake.

When introducing Boori Ma, the narrator describes her voice as her most notable characteristic—and it is only through Boori Ma’s voice that readers or other characters can understand her, as the third-person narration is highly restrained despite its omniscience. It occasionally describes a character’s emotionality or their personal history, but it does so obliquely and, on the whole, offers only a surface-level account of the plot action. Consequently, for whatever the reader knows of Boori Ma, they know largely because Boori Ma has said as much. The reader and other characters must trust her report; as the protagonist herself says, “Believe me, don’t believe me” (149, 150). This narrative situation places the reader in the same position as the building’s residents, enhancing the mystery of the short story in general and Boori Ma in particular.

Still, Boori Ma has the most dialogue and actions of any character, and even with the narration’s controlled distance from her, the narrative focus on Boori Ma grants readers a more compassionate understanding of her character than the building residents seem prepared to give. As the Dalals leave for their vacation, the narrator says that “[o]f all the people who lived in that particular flat-building, Boori Ma was the only one who stood by the collapsible gate and wished them a safe journey” (165); the other residents don’t see Boori Ma’s act of kindness, but the reader does. Readers are likewise the sole caring witnesses to the change in Boori Ma’s speech at the end of the story, when the residents accuse her of aiding the burglars who stole the water basin. Throughout the narrative, Boori Ma has repeated a single phrase regardless of the story she is telling: “Believe me, don’t believe me” (149, 150). At the story’s climax, when she insists upon her innocence, her wording shifts: “Believe me, believe me” (168). The story gathers yet more pathos with the small detail that none of the residents “[speak] directly to Boori Ma” (168) about the burglary, instead forming a mob and bellowing incoherently in her general direction.

The story opens with Boori Ma ascending the stairs, but the ending reverses that course, symbolizing both the protagonist’s reversal of fortune and the downward trajectory of her plot arc:

So the residents tossed her bucket and rags, her baskets and reed broom, down the stairwell, past the letter boxes, through the collapsible gate, and into the alley. Then they tossed out Boori Ma. All were eager to begin their search for a real durwan. From the pile of belongings Boori Ma kept only her broom. ‘Believe me, believe me,’ she said once more as her figure began to recede. She shook the free end of her sari, but nothing rattled (170).

Though the promise of new bedding at first seems to herald a welcome turn of the tide for Boori Ma, her fate is foretold more clearly by the coming monsoons, yet another inevitable force shaping her life. The monsoon rains cause the older woman’s joints to swell, making her already difficult job more difficult. The rains also destroy her bedding, forcing her to sleep on newspapers at the bottom of the stairs.

Bringing these pieces together, any reading of the story must address the ambiguity that Lahiri leaves. The third-person narrator almost always remains at arm’s length from the characters. Similarly, the dialogue tags don’t include emotional language, and at the end of the story, readers do not know the tone in which Boori Ma asks the residents to believe her; there is no “beseeched” or “begged,” but “said.” There is only her repetition of her request, the shift in her wording, and the detail about her other habitual action—shaking the end of her sari where her skeleton keys and coins should rattle. But the end of her sari is now empty. In this absence, Boori Ma has lost two homes: the place she lived before Partition and the place she lived after, the building where she tended the stairs.

Faced with the narrative’s openness for interpretation, readers may feel compassion for the protagonist, or they may side with the skeptical residents. This will depend on the individual reader, but Boori Ma occupies the central space of the story for a reason: Though the residents see her as one of many refugees, she is the only refugee in this story.