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 life’s 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, Kapasi’s 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 yearnings—in that case, acted upon through an affair—have 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.