47 pages • 1-hour read
A Guardian and a Thief
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Chapters 12-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence and death.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Phone”
Chapter 13 Summary: “Day 6”
As Dadu dies, he thinks about his parents when he was a child, his wife and their relationship, and his daughter’s childhood. Then, he is a stranger on a bus, free from his past selves.
Ma discovers Dadu dead in his bed in the morning. Ma calls the hospital but admits that Dadu is dead. She cannot remember her address for an ambulance. Mishti plays alone, and Ma says goodbye to Dadu. An ambulance comes, and Ma and Mishti follow it to the crematorium. Dadu’s body is cremated. Ma blames herself for his death, and Mishti asks where Dadu is. Ma remembers Dadu’s presence in the house, including plants and objects that have not been in the house for a while. A sparrow lands near Ma, and she recognizes it as Dadu.
The ambulance driver gives Mishti some protein paste, and Ma realizes she has not paid attention to Mishti. Ma resolves to overcome her grief to focus on being Mishti’s mother. Ma takes Mishti to the photocopy shop, and the driver asks if Dadu is staying home. A beggar asks Ma for rice, and she turns away from him to face Mishti, noting how Mishti is more “human” than the beggar.
The photocopier gives Ma the three passports, which look and feel correct. The forger jokes that he wants to leave but cannot forge his own documents.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Phone”
Chapter 15 Summary: “Baba’s America”
Baba, Ma’s husband, experiences America through different interactions with Americans, some of whom welcome him while others reject him. He feels an odd wound in that he wants to be seen as American but does not want to let go of his own city of Kolkata.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Day 7”
Mishti asks Ma if they are going to see Baba that day before declaring a dance party. Ma dances with Mishti and picks her up. Ma worries that she and Baba might not have a loving reunion after so long apart. She realizes that her body is a source of shelter for Mishti.
Ma notices that the ink in the forged passports is running, and she calls the photocopier, who does not answer. A neighbor knocks on Ma’s door and hands her the original passports and visa documents, which someone found in the trash heap. Ma feels that Dadu arranged this miracle from the afterlife.
Ma prepares to leave and feels she is saying goodbye to Dadu for the last time. She knows Dadu wanted Mishti to return to this house when Kolkata is restored to its former glory, though she does not believe that will happen. Ma and Mishti leave for the airport. Mishti continues to ask where Dadu is, and Ma tells her he is coming later.
Ma discovers that all flights to America have been canceled. After the looting of the hexagon, Americans increased their anti-immigration protests, though climate immigrants need to pass thorough background checks. Mishti is confused and asks if the plane is stuck in a tree.
Ma and Mishti leave with the crowd of well-dressed locals who thought they were leaving for a new life. Ma and Mishti return to the city, where people argue about the tragedy of the day.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Phone”
Chapter 18 Summary: “Day 7 (cont.)”
After Dadu expelled Boomba, Boomba climbed into Mrs. Sen’s house and hid.
Boomba sees Ma and Mishti board a rickshaw without Dadu, and he hopes Dadu is sick or dead. He called to tell his family to arrive on the day Ma and Mishti leave, but he does not know how to get into the house. Boomba uses the miniature globe and some cloth to break a window, but finds it barricaded by a table. He pushes the table slightly, but it strains his injuries.
Boomba steals Abba, pushes him through the window, and waits for Mrs. Sen to retrieve him. When Mrs. Sen unlocks the house with a borrowed key, Boomba darts inside and hides in the storeroom until Mrs. Sen leaves. Alone in the house, Boomba imagines his family living there. Boomba cleans the house, puts on one of Dadu’s shirts, and moves his belongings into a bedroom upstairs.
Boomba’s family arrives, and they seem invigorated by their trip to the city. They examine the house with admiration, and Boomba lies again about his boss giving him the house. His mother imagines growing a garden to feed many people, which irritates Boomba. Robi wants to sleep in the storeroom because it reminds him of home.
Ma comes home and sees movement in the house, so she grabs some shears and sends Mishti to Mrs. Sen’s house. Ma enters through the front door and confronts Boomba’s father, who claims the house is his. Ma attacks him with the shears, but he hits her on the head with the pressure cooker. Ma thinks about Mishti and hopes Mishti survives and grows old. Boomba takes the pressure cooker and tries to explain that Ma is a crook who attacked them, but his parents know that Boomba lied about the house.
Boomba finds Mishti at Mrs. Sen’s house and says her mother wants her to come home.
Chapters 12-18 Analysis
In a final deviation from the Phone and Day chapter structure, Chapter 15 is titled “Baba’s America,” detailing Baba’s life in Michigan. The chapter contrasts the overwhelmingly positive view Ma has of moving to America with the difficult reality Baba already knows about. For most of the novel, Ma regards moving to Michigan as the salvation of her family, removing them from the dangers of Kolkata and providing a fresh, new life for Mishti. However, Baba discusses how immigrating is a “wound,” noting, “The pride of having immigrated was also, in truth, the wound. Didn’t they understand that? Didn’t they understand that he wanted every opportunity to examine the wound?” (176). The “wound” is both the challenge of assimilation, in which Baba feels he will never truly be “American,” and the desire to avoid becoming “American.” In assimilation, Baba, like Dadu, feels he will lose a part of himself that is critical to his own identity and culture, but assimilating will also mean fitting more easily into the new culture. Baba, like Ma, is thus not completely honest over the phone, during which he echoes Ma’s excitement about America.
The Urgency of the Climate Crisis explodes in the final chapters, as Ma finds out that the United States has canceled incoming flights to undermine the process of climate immigration. Critically, the arguments used for and against this decision mirror the contemporary issues surrounding immigration in the United States. Opponents of immigration cite the hexagon riot as an example of how people leaving climate crisis areas are violent and desperate, while proponents note how “all immigrants underwent thorough background checks; that applicants supplied stacks of documents to prove who they were and what their life had been; that the consulates examined bank statements, tax returns, pay stubs, employment history, education history, family history, property ownership; that they were fingerprinted, and their eyes scanned” (185). This lengthy list of requirements serves to show the intensity of the existing immigration process, but it fails in conflict with “anger and outcry,” which cannot hear “reason.” The novel thus examines the emotional side of any disaster, in which those affected by the crisis plead for compassion, while others seek to distance themselves from them.
As the novel draws to a close, the theme of The Challenges of Parenthood and Protectiveness comes to a head with Ma’s and Boomba’s family confronting each other over ownership of the house in Kolkata. For Ma, after every chance to leave Kolkata has been taken from her, seeing Boomba’s family in the house represents the final push sending her into outright violence and malice. She ceases to see Boomba’s family as human, deciding to attack Boomba’s father with shears. Seeing Robi, though, forces her to hesitate, once more reminding her of the value of all children and individuals. Ma hesitates to destroy another family, even though it means the destruction of her own. The ending of the novel is ambiguous, since Boomba’s family discovers his lie and hide Ma’s body, while Boomba goes to retrieve Mishti. On the way to Mrs. Sen’s, Boomba is “afraid that the child was lost, and afraid that he would find her” (204), reflecting his own reluctance to confront the devastation he brought Mishti’s family. The final line of the novel: “The child looked a little perplexed, but calmly took his hand” (205), implies that Mishti will live with Boomba’s family in Kolkata. Boomba’s love and care for Mishti suggest that it is only by extending one’s compassion towards those outside of one’s family, and not just within it, that hope might be found in this crisis.
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