Boori Ma has been living in the doorway of an apartment building in Calcutta, informally working as a durwan (a doorkeeper) in exchange for a place to live. She is elderly, and she tells everyone stories of her life before Partition and her deportation, a time when she had a husband and four daughters in a two-story house. Every day while she sweeps the stairwell, she regales the building tenants with stories of her life of luxury; the people in the building, which is old and run down, are skeptical of her stories, but they treat her as something of a charming presence in the building and as someone who is a victim of circumstance. Plus, she stands guard in the doorway for them.

One day, Boori Ma is cleaning the rugs she sleeps on using the rooftop cistern when she runs into Mrs. Dalal. Boori Ma tries to convince her that there are mites living in her rugs, but Mrs. Dalal thinks she is imagining things and just has a case of prickly heat. Boori Ma begins to tell stories of the luxury she used to live in, and Mrs. Dalal says she knows no such life.