47 pages • 1-hour read
A Guardian and a Thief
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Chapters 7-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Day 4”
Boomba brings Ma to a trash heap where people are searching for food. Boomba flees, and Ma fails to find the passports, taking solace that she is not as bad off as the other searchers.
Mishti refuses to eat and cannot sleep, so Dadu goes to a ration shop after Ma returns empty-handed. He refuses to go to community kitchens, which he thinks are for people in greater need than himself.
Dadu lies to the shop owner, saying Mishti has diabetes. Dadu knows he must do anything for his granddaughter. The other shoppers attack the shop owner, who refuses to sell anything, and Dadu thinks about how people present different versions of themselves to different people.
Dadu leaves the ration shop and finds a painter selling a painting of a rhino. Dadu refuses to buy it at first, then decides to contribute to the value of the city by purchasing it. He knows he will die, and he hopes the painting carries his memory for Mishti.
Dadu goes into a bank and finds an orange on a desk. A boy tells him to leave it, but Dadu takes the orange and searches for more snacks before leaving. The boy cries, reminding Dadu of Mishti, and he struggles to walk away.
Dadu starts coughing and stops at a house to ask for water. A man answers and brings water, but Dadu tries to steal some cauliflower near the door. The man and his wife knock Dadu back, hitting his head on the pavement. Dadu trips the man while his wife is distracted, stealing some cauliflower and canned food. Dadu flees and hears other thieves attacking the couple.
Dadu wakes Ma, and they eat canned fish. Dadu refuses to tell Ma how he got the food, and they save the cauliflower for Mishti. Mishti laughs and eats cauliflower, and Ma and Dadu laugh with her.
Ma and Dadu put up posters offering a reward for the passports. Ma pays a woman to put up additional posters, but the woman says the passports must be gone by now and tears up the posters. Ma thinks of something that could save them, but she worries that it is too risky.
Ma goes to a photocopy shop owner who shows her a variety of passports and visas. He offers to make her passports in 48 hours, but he will only accept payment in gold.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Phone”
Ma’s husband tells her about the new, two-bedroom apartment he applied for in his building. He plans to use a bookcase to make a room for Mishti, giving Dadu one of the full bedrooms. He hears Ma crying, but she says everything is alright. Her husband suggests buying new clothes and items when the family moves to America. Mishti tells her father about her crayons, and they joke about making a mess with watercolors.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Day 4 (cont.)”
Boomba arrives at Ma’s door and demands to stay in the storeroom from which he took their food. He wanted to go home, but his mother reported that their shack collapsed, forcing them to live under a tarp. He threatens to tell the police and the shelter about Ma’s theft if she does not let him and his family move into her house. Ma laughs at Boomba, but she knows she cannot let him try to stop her from leaving the country—Ma already gave her mother’s gold for the chance at fake passports. She lets Boomba come inside.
At night, Boomba struggles to sleep. He knows he is not willing to expose Ma, and he is worried that she will gather the neighbors to assault him. He wanders the house, grabbing a sheet of stickers to use to woo Mishti and a pressure cooker to use as a weapon. He sees the house as his new kingdom and wonders if his mother will cook when she moves in.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Phone”
Boomba calls his mother and tells her that his boss is moving to America, leaving his house to Boomba’s family. His mother is suspicious, but his father says not to ask questions in the face of good luck. Boomba says he will call them and tell them to take a bus when the house is ready, adding that the house has air conditioning.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Day 5”
Mishti and Boomba are gone, and Ma cannot find them. Mrs. Sen’s camera reveals Boomba taking Mishti in a rickshaw, so Ma and Dadu start searching for the driver.
Dadu and Ma find the driver from the consulate, who finds the driver who took Boomba and Mishti to the jetty, thinking Boomba was Mishti’s uncle. The drivers say Boomba is going to the billionaire’s feast on the hexagon island. Earlier that day, Mishti had got out of bed to watch Boomba, who lured Mishti with her toy truck and told her they could go on a boat to get food. Ma and Dadu arrive at the jetty as the last ferry leaves.
The ferry driver is Shanto, Boomba’s former coworker. Shanto tells Boomba how his own son died of malaria. They arrive at the billionaire’s hexagon. The hexagon has clean air and lush grass. Boomba and Mishti go with the other guests to a hall, where they are served a variety of foods. Boomba helps Mishti eat, noting that he is not a monster. The billionaire visits everyone and orders more ice cream for the children, then she allows the children to play on the grounds. Boomba thinks about stealing, but guards line every path. The garden reminds them of how the city looked before the worsening climate change, even though neither Mishti nor Boomba were alive to see it.
After eating, the guests, led by Shanto, charge the billionaire’s facilities, stealing food and valuables. Boomba steals a miniature globe made of gemstones and a bag of rice. The guests flood back onto the ferries, and Shanto tells the billionaire she is greedy. The boat sinks. Boomba chooses to lose the bag of rice rather than let go of Mishti. Boomba and Mishti are rescued by Boomba’s former boss. Shanto drowns after helping children onto a rescue craft.
Boomba brings Mishti home. Ma rushes Mishti to the bathroom, and Dadu beats Boomba with his walking stick. Dadu ejects Boomba from the house, and Boomba calls him a villain.
Dadu’s head injury bothers him. Ma asks Mishti about the feast, but Mishti cannot remember the day and throws a tantrum. Dadu and Ma barricade every entrance to the house to prevent Boomba from returning. Dadu faints and hits his head on the table. Ma revives him with water and helps him to bed. Dadu refuses to go to the hospital.
Chapters 7-11 Analysis
The Phone sections in this part of the novel become increasingly dishonest, as Ma and Boomba lie to their respective families about what is going on in Kolkata and how they are dealing with Survival Ethics in a Collapsing System. Though Baba hears Ma crying, she denies that anything is wrong, having already lied about the passports and visas: “No, nothing like that. I’m just—a bit tired from packing. There’s so much to do. It feels overwhelming” (123). In part, Ma is telling the truth, since she is stressed about preparing to leave Kolkata, but she does not tell Baba that she needs to find passports and visas, ward off Boomba, feed the family, and pack to leave. Boomba, similarly, tells his family a partial truth. According to his arrangement with Ma, he will have a house in which they can live, but he lies about how he got the house. He tells his family that his boss gave him the house, adding: “I know, I know. I am using up all my luck” (131), which deflects even the good news of acquiring shelter away from Boomba’s own actions. Much like Ma, Boomba avoids discussing too many details of his actions in Kolkata, since even he is not proud of how he is treating others.
Dadu also goes through a massive change in his character due to the desperation of his family’s situation, invoking The Challenges of Parenthood and Protectiveness. Though Dadu has retained a specific optimism about his situation and the future of his family and Kolkata, he starts breaking away from his own morals, which leads to him robbing a family. Early in the chapter, Dadu refuses to go to a community kitchen, thinking he is not sufficiently desperate to accept charity. However, he then lies about Mishti having diabetes to try to get ahead in the ration shop, followed by stealing an orange from a child. In doing so, he is struck by the injustice of his action: “He began to cry, and Dadu heard Mishti crying […] child of his child, pulse of his heart, and stomped down the part of himself that wanted to turn around and return the orange. There was such a part” (110). Dadu struggles to hurt the child by stealing the orange because he knows that Mishti, and all children, deserve care and help. While Dadu tries to persuade himself that Mishti is worth the theft, just as Ma does while stealing from the shelter, the way the child’s cries echo Mishti’s suggests that all children are equally valuable and equally worthy of protection. Thus, choosing to protect only one’s own family does nothing to help ease the wider injustices the community faces, allowing the cycles of need and desperation to continue due to a lack of unity.
Boomba and Mishti’s trip to the hexagon is full of commentary on how wealth changes the impact of climate change for different groups, reflecting the vast inequality that helps to trigger The Urgency of the Climate Crisis. The guests are all impoverished families coming to the feast because they are starving, while the billionaire is holding the event as a lush expenditure to celebrate her daughter’s wedding. A grand wedding is something the guests could not possibly imagine for themselves, since any money or food they have needs to be rationed between floods and droughts. The billionaire’s luxurious, excessive lifestyle emblematizes the systemic injustice that helps to fuel and perpetuate climate change, with her excessive consumerism disproportionately using up the planet’s resources while others struggle for the bare necessities and endure the harshest effects of the climate crisis.
The hexagon also seems immune to climate change, with a verdant forest, abundant food, and armed guards to protect the billionaire’s goods. While the city starves, the billionaire continues to hoard and waste. Shanto accuses her directly, saying: “Remember this day, madam, as a demonstration of what happens when you hoard food and give us crumbs […] This feast is nothing but an insult to the people of the city” (151), evoking the injustice of such inequality. Though the billionaire funds the shelter, Shanto is seeing how everything the billionaire gives away is only a small fraction of the excess she possesses. Even in donating some small fraction of her wealth, she is only “insulting” the citizens of Kolkata by maintaining the disproportionate distribution of wealth from which she benefits, and ignoring the climate crisis her own lifestyle is helping to fuel.
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