How is their guide, Mr. Kapasi, characterized? (Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies)

Mr.
Kapasi is a romantic who empathizes with the pain of others. While these characteristics are
useful in his job as a medical translator, the interpreter of maladies of the title, they also
sometimes block him from accepting lifes practical realities. One of those realities is that his
earnings as a translator are inadequate so he must supplement them, which he does through
working as a tour guide.

In the second job, Kapasis empathy is less
advantageous. Imagining himself having the tourists lives, he romanticizes them and sometimes
places himself as a subject within their very different reality. Kapasi will probably never have
disposable income to travel the world. When he envisions himself in a relationship with Mrs.
Das, he soon learns that her life back home is far from idyllic. Although she enjoys material
comforts, her romantic yearningsin that case, acted upon through an affairhave not been
significantly fulfilled much more than his own, unstated desires. Through this interaction, he
has perhaps progressed as an interpreter of his own maladies.