On page 103 the old beggar woman is mentioned for the first time. The narrator sometimes sees her in the Civil Lines area, by the royal tombs or in the bazaar, where she doesn’t ask for alms, but streches her hands out if she is hungry.

On day the narrator finds the beggar woman lying on a refuse dump looking like she was dead.  She can’t believe that it was no one’s business to take her away from that spot, but neither does she bother to see what the condition of the old woman is like. “Later I wondered what had happended to me – that I had not even bothered to go close to see whether she was dead or alive” (p.104, ll.6/7)

In my opinion this is the first change in the narrator’s behaviour because in the beginning of her trip she was always the helpful and caring person, who was constantly concerned about other people like Inder Lal’s wife for example.

After finding the old beggar woman lying at the refuse dump, the narrator talks to Inder Lal about the incident and both go to the alley for a second time. This behaviour shows that the narrator tries to make up for the first time when she didn’t bother to look after the beggar woman. Consequently, in this paragraph there are still traits of the “old narrator” remained.

When Inder Lal warns her not to get close to the old beggar woman, she first can’t understand his behaviour, but afterwards admits that she “for the first time understood the Hindu fear of pollution.” In other words the narrator understands how easily one can get infected in India.

Another change of the narrator is to be found on page 106, where the narrator goes to hospital and asks an Indian doctor to help the beggar woman. She founds out that the only one who really cares for the beggar woman was she. “What I understood best was that the problem of the beggar woman if I wished to undertake it, was now mine. Everyone else had too many problems of their own” (p.106, ll.19-21) And there was another thing she realises – “the old woman was dispensable” (ll.30/31). The narrator admits that she is even surprised with herself while realising that she is changing and becoming like all the other Indians.

All in all, the story of the beggar woman truly shows that the narrator changes during her stay in India and starts to think and behave more and more like the Indians. Though she still tries to help the old beggar woman, she realises after a while that there is no sense in helping her because none of the Indians – except Maji – seems to care for the old woman. The story has shown how different the Indian’s view on poor old people is compared with the European one. Whereas in Europe we try to save everyone’s life, old people in India are dispensable – not worth taking care of any more.