Interpreter of Maladies: "A Real Durwan"

Whether there was any truth to Boori Ma’s litanies no one could be sure.

Still, the residents of this particular flat-building could not reconcile Boori Ma’s claims to prior wealth alongside the more likely account of how she had crossed the East Bengal border, with the thousands of others, on the back of a truck, between sacks of hemp.

So she garbled facts. She contradicted herself. She embellished almost everything.

...she probably constructs tales as a way of mourning the loss of her family, was the collective surmise of most of the wives.

Her throaty impostures hurt no one. All agreed that she was a superb entertainer.

Still, the residents were thankful that Boori Ma patrolled activities in the alley, screened the itinerant peddlers who came to sell combs and shawls from door to door, was able to summon a rickshaw at a moment’s calling, and could, with a few slaps of her broom, rout any suspicious character who strayed into the area in order to spit, urinate, or cause some other trouble.

In short, over the years, Boori Ma’s services came to resemble those of a real durwan. Though under normal circumstances this was no job for a woman, she honored the responsibility, and maintained a vigil no less punctilious than if she were the gatekeeper of a house on Lower Circular Road, or Jodhpur Park, or any other fancy neighborhood.

It was true that prickly heat was common during the rainy season. But 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.

And that, following an assessment of his sedulous performance over the years, the distributor was promoting Mr. Dalai to manage the College Street branch.

As soon as the Dalais were gone, the other wives began planning renovations of their own.