A Guardian and a Thief explores these of class disparity and survival, focusing on the interactions between people coming from different backgrounds and social classes. Kolkata's urban environment helps explore these dynamics and even explain them at times. In a city where wealthier households rely on poor workers, relationships between employers and employees are shaped by imbalance and dependence. This social structure is reflected in the story's use of power, trust, and suspicion between the characters in Majumdar’s novel.
Had Majumdar not been from Kolkata, this novel couldn't exist. Kolkata is both a beautiful conglomerate of cultures and livelihoods, but also a breeding ground for corruption and disparity within power structures. Born and raised in a land full of such life yet also evil, the setting of Kolkata is the most important aspect within Majumdar’s novel- constantly pushing forward the narrative, providing relief yet terror at the turn of a cheek.
This tension between such opposing forces is made clear in the way Babu responds to Kolkata itself, simultaneously admiring the city's beauty while recognizing its rapid decline. Kolkata is not simply “good” or “bad”, but a place where beauty and injustice coexist. Such emotion-packed sentences depicted in A Guardian and a Thief are that of a resident- someone who lived and grew watching the land they learned to love fall around them. This layered, personal understanding of the city directly helps deepen the readers sense of how ones environment shapes perception and morals. 