The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Majumdar, Megha. A Guardian and a Thief. Alfred A. Knopf, 2025.

The novel opened in a near future Indian city where water had become scarce and heat waves were routine. Ma retrieved three passports from a hidden storeroom and prepared to visit the American consulate with her father Dadu and her toddler Mishti. They had secured coveted climate visas that would allow them to join Baba, Mishti's father, in Michigan. As Ma cooked and Dadu wrote opinion pieces about climate and politics, the family imagined grocery stores full of abundant food and breathable air. Phone calls between Mishti and Baba stitched their distant households together, even as power cuts, water shortages, and the threat of disease reminded Ma and Dadu of the fragility of their lives.

Over the next days, the family's routines showed both neighborhood ties and deep inequality. Dadu climbed to the roof to coax a trickle of water into their storage tank while rich neighbors paid private tankers. Ma worked at an animal shelter that doubled as a social media project for a wealthy influencer, where strays became props for online branding. Nearby lived Mrs. Sen, a professor who shared fruit, stories, and the noisy company of her parrots. These connections became vital after Ma discovered that someone had broken into the house and stolen items from their storeroom, where she had hidden the passports.

Security footage from Mrs. Sen's cameras showed a thin boy in a Scooby Doo T shirt creeping through Ma's house. Following leads from the ironing man and other neighborhood workers, Ma and Dadu traced the boy to the shelter where Ma worked. There they confronted Boomba, an orphaned teenager who had migrated from a flooded village and slept in a corner of the shelter. Boomba confessed to the theft and explained that he had wanted money to build a house for his family. Ma was furious and frightened, knowing how much depended on the passports, but she also recognized his youth and desperation. Dadu persuaded her to bring Boomba into their home as a temporary guard and helper rather than send him to the police.

Living in their house sharpened Boomba's longing for stability. He saw their modest rooms as a palace compared to his own childhood of hunger, unsafe work on riverboats, and shared beds. He agreed to help them search the neighborhood trash heaps for what he had thrown away, and after a night of heavy rain he led Ma to a garbage mound where they found the passports soaked and filthy but still usable. While Ma scrubbed them clean and steeled herself for the consulate interview, Boomba studied every corner of the house and began to imagine that it might one day belong to him.

As the fourth and fifth days unfolded, monsoon winds battered the city and the family's departure date drew closer. Ma juggled consulate appointments, police reports, and errands while watching Mishti and keeping a wary eye on Boomba. One night, exhausted, she fell asleep beside Mishti and woke to find the child gone. Mrs. Sen's camera log showed Boomba lifting Mishti into a rickshaw and vanishing into the dark streets. Ma and Dadu rushed to the police, who filed a kidnapping report but offered little practical help. Fighting panic and self blame, Ma followed information from vendors and drivers who had seen the pair near the river and on ferries heading toward the outskirts.

Chapters from Boomba's point of view recounted his flight with Mishti. He tried to entertain her with stories and food as he moved her between cheap lodging houses, ferries, and half built structures. His plan shifted between using her as leverage to secure Ma's house and imagining that he could offer her a better life with his own family. A near drowning in the river and Mishti's fear cut through his fantasies. Gradually he understood that he had repeated the violations that had marked his own childhood, when adults had dragged a woman's body through the yard while he tried to shield his younger sister Jhimli.

Eventually, guided by rumors and the help of sympathetic workers, Ma and Dadu located Boomba and Mishti. After a tense confrontation, Boomba returned the child to Ma. Mishti clung to her mother, screaming, while Ma and Dadu wrestled with anger, relief, and exhaustion. They chose not to hand Boomba over to the police, in part because they needed to concentrate on leaving and in part because they saw how poverty and climate disaster had shaped his choices. Boomba slipped away from their house, nursing dreams of a future home and feeling both rejected and indebted.

On Day Six, grief compounded the strain when Dadu died suddenly after days of sleepless searching and worry. Ma had to navigate predatory crematorium workers and religious rituals while caring for a confused Mishti. She reduced Dadu's body to a small pouch of ashes and faced the decision of whether to continue with their plan to emigrate. With the climate visas about to expire and Baba begging them to come, she decided to carry Dadu's ashes with her and leave the house behind.

Day Seven followed Ma and Mishti through a farewell dance party in the courtyard, a chaotic journey back to the airport, and a day of cancellations when crowds of would be migrants were turned away. At last they boarded a rescheduled flight. A final phone call between Mishti and Baba captured his excitement as he promised home cooked meals and a small apartment full of secondhand furniture in Michigan. In parallel, an extended chapter traced Boomba's attempts to occupy Ma's now empty house and, through a flashback to his childhood with his sister, showed the early entanglement of care and theft in his life. The novel ended with Ma and Mishti on the cusp of a new life in America and Boomba still searching for a way to become a true guardian rather than a thief.