Although Mr. Kapasi seems to be attracted to Mrs. Das, he looks at her legs her breasts and feels flattered by her fascination with his job as an interpreter for a doctor's office, readers are not encouraged to find her attractive in the least. She is irritated that she has to take her daughter to the bathroom, and she barely pays attention to the girl when her daughter begs to have her nails painted too. She is even described as having "hands like paws" when the narrator outlines her appearance: a pretty unflattering image that seems designed to distance us from her. This irony serves to build suspense because we await Mr. Kapasi's realization that Mrs. Das is not a good, or even a nice, person. He continues to fantasize about her, believing that they might have some kind of correspondence when she gets home and that she will send him pictures of them together. The more he builds Mrs. Das up in his head, the more the suspense builds as we realize how much it will hurt him when he realizes that she does not care about him; she does not really care about anyone but herself.

The narration of the story is third-person with a limited point of view, meaning that the external narrator only knows the internal thoughts and feelings of one person: Mr. Kapasi. All information about the Das family comes through the "filter" of Mr. Kapasi's consciousness. That is why Mrs. Das's intimate secret near the end of the story shocks both Mr. Kapasi and the audience--he is not expecting her to say such a thing, and, thus, neither are we.  

The reader is given access to Mr. Kapasi's thoughts and feelings as he takes the Das family on tour, but again, we are limited to Mr. Kapasi's view of himself. It is up to the reader to realize that Mr. Kapasi may not view himself as he really is. The irony in the story arises when Mr. Kapasi behaves in a way that contradicts his inner thoughts, suggesting that he may not know himself as well as he thinks he does.