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.