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Part 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Clear Light of Day, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family, Love, and Forgiveness
Memory, Change, and Identity
Gender and Indian Culture
Art and Social Divisions
Summary
Analysis
It’s the summer of 1947. Bim watches the flames in the distance from the terrace each night, then reports what she sees to Raja, who is too sick to climb the stairs. As she gives him sponge baths, he asks for any signs of Hyder Ali, whose house is empty. Bim figures that Ali and his family left quietly and would return when it becomes safe, but Raja said that India will never again be safe for Muslims.
The summer of 1947 is the summer of the Partition and Indian Independence. British India is being split into two states: India, which is legally secular but demographically Hindu-majority, and Pakistan, which is a legally Islamic state for South Asia’s Muslims. Non-Muslims—particularly Hindus and Sikhs—are fleeing Pakistan for India, and particularly Delhi. Meanwhile, many of Delhi’s Muslims are fleeing to Pakistan and the Muslim-ruled princely state of Hyderabad, in part because they are facing violent riots. These riots are why Delhi is on fire, and why Raja is worried for Hyder Ali. It’s telling that Bim can watch them at a distance, from the comfort of her family’s large home and bourgeois neighborhood.
Themes
All summer, Bim sooths Raja by reading him poetry. He loves British writers like Byron, Tennyson, and Swinburne, but he invariably gets tired of them and starts quoting couplets in Urdu instead. But Bim doesn’t know Urdu, the language of Delhi’s literature and Muslim rulers, which Raja learned in school as a child. Upon learning of the neighbor child’s interest in poetry, Hyder Ali had invited Raja to visit his vast library. He started spending hours there every day, perusing Ali’s books under the librarian’s supervision and borrowing some to take home. As he grew up, he started attending parties and even reciting Urdu poetry in Ali’s home. Soon, he began writing his own poetry.
Bim and Raja’s close relationship as children contrasts with their cold, distant one as adults. While Bim is taking care of Raja because she is the only capable adult in the household, it’s still telling that this responsibility falls on her, as a woman—and that Raja will never repay her in any way. Raja’s childhood interest in Urdu poetry and relationship with Hyder Ali demonstrate how it was possible for Hindus and Muslims to live side-by-side and share culture before the Partition. But much of Das’s work—and Raja’s life in this novel—revolves around the desire to reclaim this lost sense of harmony. Similarly, Bim and Raja’s diverse choice of poetry demonstrates how several different cultural influences have shaped India in general and its longtime capital, Delhi, in particular.
Themes
The summer after finishing school, Raja asked Raja’s father to sign his application form for the Jamia Millia college of Islamic studies. His father refused and tore up the form. They argued fiercely all summer until his father finally explained one day that, with the struggle for independence raging and calls for the formation of Pakistan spreading, it would not be safe for a Hindu boy in a Muslim college once riots inevitably broke out. Both Hindus and Muslims would probably try to kill him. For the rest of the summer, Raja’s father took any opportunity he found to debate Raja about the risks of studying at Jamia Millia. Raja eventually gave in, and his father went back to ignoring the whole family, like he used to.
Raja’s father is probably right that it would be too dangerous for a Hindu boy to study in an Islamic college. But he goes about proving his point in a stubborn, combative, and authoritarian way, which demonstrates that he clearly was not a nurturing or capable parent. Indeed, he doesn’t seem to take any interest in his son at all when power and control are not at stake. In contrast, Hyder Ali serves as a truer father figure to Raja: he spends time with him, educates him, and takes his interests and desires seriously. Where Raja’s father sees only the potential for Hindu-Muslim strife, Hyder Ali sees an opportunity to raise a young man committed to religious harmony.
Themes
One day that summer, the family’s mother felt sick, so she stayed home instead of going to play bridge at the club. The father returned home to find her in a coma, and the ambulance brought her to the hospital. The father visited her every night, but she never reawakened and soon died. The kids neither saw her in the hospital nor attended her funeral. But her absence made little difference at home, because she scarcely saw the children even when she was alive.
The circumstances surrounding the mother’s death underlines the great emotional distance between the Das parents and their children. The father didn’t bring the kids to visit her, and they scarcely would have wanted to. Readers will learn more about the mother’s life, personality, health, and parenting in Part III of the novel—but none of it will be particularly flattering.
Themes
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When the father decided that Raja would study English literature at the Hindu College, Raja locked himself in his room for a week, refusing to visit Hyder Ali’s house or play with his siblings. But he eventually befriended the Misra brothers, who went to the same college. He took a liking to English poetry, which he started sharing with Bim. He avoided talking politics with his classmates, who were mostly Hindu nationalists, but he started telling Bim that he would become a hero, like Lord Byron, who died after joining the Greek War of Independence.
Raja turned to English poetry when he could no longer study Urdu poetry—which parallels the way Delhi was first ruled in Urdu by the Mughals and later in English by the British Empire. His love for literature is one of the many autobiographical elements in this novel: Anita Desai has discussed how she grew up in a multilingual environment and scarcely spoke English, but she discovered a passion for the language through literature. (This is why she writes in English as opposed to any of the other languages with which she grew up.) Raja’s dream of Byronic heroism shows how literature can inspire people, but also raises the question of how gender shapes notions of heroism and power: Bim will develop similar dreams, but only one of them will get the chance to pursue them.
Themes
When Raja resumed going to Hyder Ali’s house for parties, Aunt Mira began whispering that it wasn’t safe for him to mix with Muslims. Raja ignored this, but he noticed that Hyder Ali’s gatherings were getting smaller and Hyder Ali’s friends were reluctant to discuss Pakistan in his presence. Meanwhile, upon realizing that he accepted the idea of Pakistan, his classmates turned against him and called him a traitor. His closest school friends even tried to recruit him into Hindu nationalist terrorist groups.
Hindu-Muslim tensions grew even in the Das family’s well-off, progressive neighborhood. This happened not because either group felt any animosity toward the other, but rather because both feared for their safety and reputation. Of course, this is similar to the resentment that drives Bim and Raja apart as adults. In fact, the Partition and the conflict between Bim and Raja serve as metaphors for one another throughout the novel.
Themes
Raja fell ill and stopped going to school. When the doctor diagnosed him with tuberculosis, Raja’s family and friends scarcely believed it. Raja blamed stress and fatigue from the intensity of literature and politics. His school friends visited to try and convince him to take up arms, but he rejected them and threatened to inform the police. They reported him to the police instead, and an undercover officer started lingering outside the house every night. Raja was thrilled, then worried, and finally frightened for Hyder Ali’s family. After discussing his fears with Bim, she would either read him poetry or go to the roof and report on what she saw. But nothing ever happened in the area or in Hyder Ali’s empty house. When she pointed this out, he would scream at her to go check on Hyder Ali.
The undercover policeman initially seems to fulfill Raja’s dreams of merging his two great loves, politics and literature, through a kind of Byronic heroism. But he then realizes that it represents a serious threat to his safety and reflects the dangers that people who try to bridge the Hindu-Muslim divide will start to face in the future, as the periodic religious violence that has marked India’s past give way to the constant, explosive tensions that will mark its future. Raja foolishly takes his anger out on Bim, his caretaker, apparently failing to realize that such behavior may have repercussions in the future.
Themes
Besides Bim, nobody else was around to take care of Raja. Aunt Mira didn’t understand his illness, so she withdrew from him. Tara, meanwhile, spent most of her time with the Misra sisters. Aunt Mira would wait for her to return on the porch, then go to bed in the early evening, at which time Bim would take her place. Baba would sit near her on the steps to the veranda, playing with pebbles and saying nothing, as usual. Bim would stare uneasily at the gate, waiting for Tara to return and wondering why she would spend time with the boring, unsophisticated Misra girls.
Bim ends up taking care of Raja simply because he has no other option. Notably, his father is scarcely present—likely because he sees caretaking as women’s work—and Aunt Mira is incapable, even though she has been the children’s main nurturing, maternal presence. But there is a reward in this caretaking for Bim: besides Bim and Raja, everyone in the family is isolated and unhappy. Bim’s thoughts about the Misra sisters explain why, in Part I, she preferred to chat with their father: she has never much liked them. But her feelings may be as much about Tara failing to care for Raja as her genuine opinion of the Misras.
Themes
One evening, Tara returned with Bakul. They had gone together to a dance at the club with the Misra sisters. Bakul politely asked if Tara could come to a party at his house. Bim and Aunt Mira agreed, awestruck that Tara had met such a handsome young gentleman. After Bakul left, Bim asked Aunt Mira if he and Tara might get married. Drinking liquor from her tumbler, Aunt Mira said yes.
Tara and Bakul meet through the Misras, which helps explain why they all remain close later in life. Bim, Tara, and Aunt Mira all seem to tacitly understand that Tara is attracted to Bakul because he offers her a way out of her otherwise unhappy life in Delhi.
Themes
Soon thereafter, the father dies when his car hits a bump, the door opens, and he flies out and breaks his neck. But as with the mother, his absence makes little difference at home. He leaves behind his clothing, files, and car—which Raja sells to a nearby garage. It ends up in the junkyard. When the gardener has to return to his village, the driver takes over his job.
Like the Das mother, the Das father dies in an unpredictable accident—which would constitute a tragedy in most families, but scarcely registers in this one. Indeed, the novel describes coping with his death as more of a logistical challenge than an emotional one. Still, the children are now on their own, and Raja becomes the family’s patriarch. This context can all help readers understand the great breach that has formed between Raja and Bim by the events of Part I in 1980.
Themes
The father’s junior business partner, Mr. Sharma, visits to offer Raja his father’s role in the insurance firm. Raja refuses and proposes Baba take the position, but Bim protests, noting Baba’s cognitive limitations. Sharma assures her that they only need the family name and Baba’s signature, and Raja concludes that Baba can go into the office and sign papers as needed. Sharma agrees and admits that this is all their father had done for many years: his employees did all the real work. Raja returns to bed, and when Bim comes to take his temperature, he insists that business and money don’t matter like the riots and Partition do. But Bim reminds Raja that they have to pay rent, feed the family, take care of Baba, and get Tara married.
While Bim clearly understands the financial necessities involved in running a household—perhaps because she is a woman who has been forced to take on caretaking roles—Raja overlooks them because of his idealistic obsession with politics and literature. This leads him to reject the role that is both his birthright and his obligation. While it’s deeply ironic that the job goes to Baba—who is incapable of most everyday activities, not to mention running an insurance company—it’s also telling that the Das father did very little serious work over the last several years. This indicates that he wasn’t distant from his children because he was too busy with work—rather, he arguably tried to appear busy with work so that he didn’t have to deal with his children.
Themes
Worried, Bim sits Dr. Biswas down later that evening to ask about Raja’s condition. The nervous doctor promises that Raja’s infection is mild and that he will heal with time. The doctor starts to awkwardly stutter when Bim mentions her father. When the doctor says he knows that the family is in difficult circumstances and Raja must take their father’s place, Bim laughs and calls Janaki for tea. The doctor again promises that Raja will improve, especially once the summer passes, and that it won’t be necessary to send him to a sanatorium in the hills. Bim doesn’t fully believe him. The doctor drinks his tea in a single gup and leaves.
The doctor and Bim couldn’t be any more different: he is awkward, conventional, and blindly optimistic, but he enjoys the social advantages of being a man; she is confident, freethinking, cynical, and trapped at home by the obligations associated with Indian womanhood. These differences will become more important later. Bim laughs at the suggestion that Raja will take her father’s place because she knows that she is the only one truly capable of leading the family.
Themes
Bakul and Tara return home and chat with Bim, who looks weak and grim. Bakul explains that he’s being sent to a posting in Ceylon, and Bim asks when the independence and partition will happen. He admits that it will be soon, and “there will be trouble,” but he claims that the government is making preparations and that this neighborhood will be safe. He comments that Hyder Ali’s family is probably safe, but he promises to ask for more specific information soon. After Bim leaves, Bakul asks Tara to follow him and leave her worries behind.
There’s a great symbolic importance to Bakul leaving India as soon as it achieves independence: along with his nonchalant predictions about the coming violence, this further shows that he is completely disconnected from the realities of the country he represents as a diplomat. Still, he finally promises to give Tara the escape from Delhi that she has been seeking—and Raja the information he needs about Hyder Ali.
Themes
As riots spread, Raja gets a letter from Hyder Ali Sahib, who reports that his family is all safe in Hyderabad and asks Raja to check on his house. Since Raja is too sick, Bim and Baba go to the house, which is eerily dark and empty, with only some furniture remaining. They check every room except the library, which Bim doesn’t want to open because it’s so sacred to Raja. Hyder Ali’s daughter Benazir’s room is a mess. Baba notices Benazir’s gramophone and her collection of British and American records. He refuses to leave them, and then Bim starts to walk away. They find Hyder Ali’s dog Begum on the veranda and decide to take her home.
Raja ends up hearing from Hyder Ali directly, rather than learning about his whereabouts through Bakul. It’s significant that Hyder Ali chose to move not to Pakistan but to Hyderabad—a princely state ruled by a Muslim Nawab, which will soon be annexed into India. Bim and Baba’s visit to Hyder Ali’s house also reveals the backstory behind Baba’s gramophone, even if it isn’t clear why Baba finds the record player so fascinating. It’s also noteworthy that most of Benazir’s records are British and American songs: this speaks to both the global influences that have shaped Indian life and the colonial past that India is in the process of leaving behind.
Themes
Bim and Baba find a servant (Bhakta) in his quarters. He tells them to be quiet, lest the police find and torture him to get information on Hyder Ali, who is hiding because fellow Hindus will kill him if they learn he was working for a Muslim family. Bim offers to let him stay with them, and they pass back through the house. On the way, Baba runs off. He returns with Benazir’s gramophone and records. They all return home, where Raja is standing on the veranda and notices the gramophone. He tells Bim to go visit Aunt Mira, who is unwell.
Bhakta’s fears show that, unlike the wealthy Das family and their neighbors, working-class Hindus and Muslims alike face serious threats from the riots. This reflects how Partition has led to a serious deterioration in Hindu-Muslim relations—which Hyder Ali’s empty house arguably represents. Like Bim’s decision to take Bhakta in, Raja’s insistence that she go check on Aunt Mira (and his refusal to do it himself) reflects the way that caretaking obligations have taken over her life and come to define her.
Themes
Bim finds Aunt Mira stumbling about, with her blouse torn and her sari half unraveled, clutching a bottle of liquor. When Bim approaches to hug her, she steps away and then trips over her clothes, spilling her bottle. As the gramophone starts to play in Baba’s room next door, Aunt Mira feels that her life is overwhelming her, but can be contained in a bottle. She drinks, which burns her insides, and she thinks that Raja and Bim are like two flames trying to be heroes, casting menacing shadows on the walls. Frightened and desperate, she reaches for the bottle again.
While readers have already seen Aunt Mira drinking, they don’t know how long she has been doing so, whether it has been steadily worsening, or why she hits a breaking point now. Perhaps she has lost her sense of purpose because the children have grown up. This reading is supported by the fact that her episode coincides with the first sounds of Baba’s gramophone, something that he has chosen for himself, he does independently, and separates him from others. Regardless, Desai’s rich description of Aunt Mira’s delirium reflects many of the central patterns her life shares with the children’s, including people’s failure to achieve their dreams and their strategies for coping with isolation.
Themes
Dr. Biswas starts visiting the family more often to treat both Aunt Mira’s drinking and Raja’s fevers. Baba’s records play constantly, and Bim rushes around the house, trying to hold things together. Dr. Biswas asks how Bim can tolerate Baba’s music and invites her to a classical concert on the weekend. She declines, since she has three sick patients to attend to, and she starts to laugh at the absurdity of the situation.
With her time split among three patients (Baba, Raja, and Aunt Mira) and no other family members around to support her, Bim must put her own needs and life plans on hold and give herself up entirely to caretaking. This shows how Indian culture’s default assumption that women serve as caretakers greatly limits their potential. Meanwhile, Dr. Biswas draws a contrast between the refined classical music that he appreciates and the vulgar popular music that Baba listens to, but Bim has little interest in this idea—and Desai raises the question of whether one is a more valid or valuable form of culture than the other.
Themes
After bringing Tara home, Bakul asks why Bim is already greying. She doesn’t believe it until he shows her. Bakul then asks if he can marry Tara, and Bim says he doesn’t need her permission. He offers to wait, in case Bim needs Tara at home, but Bim encourages him to marry her now. He says his parents have agreed, so that he and Tara can get married in time to go to Ceylon together. And he jokes that he’ll buy Tara hair dye before the wedding.
Bim has essentially become the head of household. Bakul treats her as such by asking her permission to marry Tara (as he would ordinarily ask her father), and her grey hair suggests that this new role is already taking an emotional toll. Bim clearly knows that moving away will be best for Tara, so selflessly pushes for this to happen, but it’s unclear if Tara ever learns about it. Thus, while this scene gives important context to Bim and Tara’s separation and conflicts later in life, it also shows their underlying love and good will.
Themes
Tara’s marriage, Baba’s gramophone, and Aunt Mira’s alcoholism bring Raja and Bim closer than ever. They spend their time reading and writing poetry, but Bim eventually gets tired of Raja’s Urdu verses. She invites Dr. Biswas to play his violin for them, but he awkwardly declines and invites her to a concert instead. She agrees. After the concert, they get drinks at a restaurant where a band is playing German waltzes. Dr. Biswas explains how Mozart changed his life. He reminisces about his medical school days in Berlin, and laments losing his music habit when he moved home to India. Bim jokes that she should be a nurse but explains that she would rather finish her history degree and become a teacher.
Raja and Bim’s close relationship is perhaps their only consolation in an otherwise brutally difficult summer. Much like Bakul does for Tara, Dr. Biswas offers Bim a way out of the house—even if she can barely tolerate their evident lack of connection. Dr. Biswas’s attempt to override Bim’s career choices reflects both his inability to see her as his equal and the way gender norms confine women to certain female-coded professions (like nursing). Lastly, while Dr. Biswas’s passion for classical music further demonstrates how varied artistic influences enrich Indian culture, it also suggests that his obsession with Western culture may lead him to lose track of India’s own traditional cultural richness.
Themes
The bus ride takes Bim and Dr. Biswas past the huts full of new refugees. When they reach Bim’s house, Dr. Biswas tells Bim how much he enjoyed the evening and asks her to meet his mother. She half-heartedly agrees and rushes inside to Raja, who jokes about Biswas playing the violin and singing Tagore.
The refugees’ huts demonstrate how Partition is reshaping life in Delhi. While the newcomers face urgent humanitarian needs—and Bim will soon start dedicating her precious free time to helping them—Dr. Biswas remains engrossed in his romantic fantasies. He simply doesn’t realize that Bim has no interest in him.
Themes
With cooler weather, Raja’s health starts to improve, and Bim goes back to school and starts volunteering at a clinic for refugee women. Aunt Mira now spends most of her time drunk in her room. One day, Raja and Bim start wondering where she finds the alcohol. Bim blames Bhakta. One day, Aunt Mira drops a glass and cuts her hands. Bim rushes over to help her, and then Dr. Biswas comes to bandage her up. Aunt Mira feels trapped in her bandages and yearns to break free from her bed. She feels that her room is like a prison cell and that only the bottle can save her.
Aunt Mira’s drinking has rendered her infirm: she cannot even care for herself anymore, not to mention anyone else. Her dreams of freedom parallel Tara, Bim, and Raja’s: everyone seems to want to escape the Das family house, but so far, only Tara has succeeded. Desai intentionally doesn’t share Aunt Mira’s backstory—and thus the reasons for her alcoholism—until Part III of the novel.
Themes
Bim regrets going to tea with the overdressed, heavily made-up Mrs. Biswas. Dr. Biswas doesn’t touch his plate of biscuits and sweets, and Mrs. Biswas scowls and complains about her dead husband, her arthritis, the servant boy, and how hard her son works. She tells him to play the violin. He tells her to sing her Tagore songs instead, and their disagreement grows into a heated argument. As if this weren’t uncomfortable enough, Bim gets up to leave at precisely the same moment when Mrs. Biswas agrees to sing. Mrs. Biswas judgmentally agrees that Bim can go, and Dr. Biswas insists on following her home, even after she refuses. They pass a crowd listening to a radio in a tea shop—Gandhi has just been murdered. Dr. Biswas briefly stops to listen to the news. Bim runs to catch her bus and waves goodbye to him.
Not only does Dr. Biswas’s close but combative relationship with his mother explain his immaturity and difficulty relating to others, but it also provides a significant contrast to the Das siblings’ relationship with their own distant parents (which forced them to become self-sufficient at an early age). Dr. Biswas’s insistence on following Bim may seem chivalrous to him, but it looks like an uncomfortable invasion of privacy to her. Finally, the news of Gandhi’s murder again brings 1947 India’s fraught social and political context to the fore of the novel.
Themes
As soon as she gets home, Bim runs into Raja’s room to tell him of Gandhi’s murder. Raja jumps violently out of bed, turns on the radio, and predicts that anti-Muslim riots will soon follow. They are relieved to learn that the assassin was a Hindu man, not a Muslim man, but they still assume that India will descend into chaos. Raja later asks about Bim’s tea party, and whether Mrs. Biswas will let her marry Dr. Biswas. But Bim replies that she never wants to see him again.
This conversation between Bim and Raja captures the fear, uncertainty, and tension that characterized life in India at the time of the Partition. Namely, it was clear that violence would follow, just not where or against whom—and so Indians could only wait with bated breath. Raja’s questions about Mrs. Biswas demonstrate that not even he understands Bim’s true feelings toward Dr. Biswas.
Themes
Unfortunately, Bim does meet Dr. Biswas one more time. By spring, Raja is mostly healed but still stuck at home, which makes him impatient and restless. He complains about the house’s upkeep and taunts Bim while she studies. She tells him to go to bed, and he replies that he will go to Hyderabad instead to be with Hyder Ali. He runs to his room and starts packing, but he grows feverish and goes to bed instead. In the mid-afternoon heat, Aunt Mira runs naked out of her room onto the veranda and starts yelling that “rats, lizards, [and] snakes” are devouring her. Bim wraps her in a blanket, and Raja calls Dr. Biswas.
The image of both Raja and Aunt Mira running frenzied around the house, while Bim tries to pick up the pieces, succinctly captures the obligations that have been unfairly placed on her. Raja takes his frustration out on her, which suggests that he does not truly appreciate the sacrifices she has made to care for him. While it’s understandable that he would prefer to live with Hyder Ali instead of remaining at home, this will also mean shirking his obligations to his family.
Themes
Dr. Biswas comes to give Aunt Mira an injection. He hands Bim a bottle of brandy and tells her to give it to Aunt Mira little by little, lest she die from withdrawal. On the way out, he says that he sees why Bim doesn’t want to marry: she has already sacrificed her own life to care for Baba, Raja, and Aunt Mira. Shocked and offended, Bim attributes this comment to a “grotesque misunderstanding” and tries her best to forget it.
Dr. Biswas probably makes his comment out of spite, but there is an element of truth to it: caring for Baba, Raja, and Aunt Mira has taken over Bim’s life. However, she fully intends to get her life back in the future, and her care duties are not the reason she refuses to marry—rather, she wants to maintain her independence instead of having to answer to a husband.
Themes
Aunt Mira declines into a stupor. Bim reads D. H. Lawrence’s poem “Ship of Death” and measures out Aunt Mira’s brandy day after day. One night, Aunt Mira tears off her clothes and starts to scream about jumping into the well. Bim brings her brandy, but as she drinks, she drops her glass, and her head falls to the side. Aunt Mira is dead. For several nights, Bim dreams of finding her body floating in the well. After dressing Aunt Mira in her striped silk sari, Bim and Raja cremate her and spread her ashes in the Jumna river. For years, Bim sees Aunt Mira’s spirit wandering through the garden, which reminds her of a verse about “the third who walks always beside you” from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.
Aunt Mira dies, but unlike the Das parents, she gets a dignified funeral, and her sprit lingers around the house. This is because she was the only true parental figure in the household—besides arguably Hyder Ali, to Raja. So even if the circumstances of Aunt Mira’s life and death are less than dignified, she will always remain a respected figure to the Das family. She and Bim both associate her death with the well behind the family house. On one level, this suggests that drinking herself to death was much like jumping in the well: a form of suicide. On another level, this foreshadows the symbolism about death, the unholy, and the limits of memory that will come to be associated with the well in the rest of the novel. Readers will learn more about this well—and Aunt Mira’s striped sari—in Part III.
Themes
Raja packs his things and leaves for Hyderabad, declaring that he refuses to just hang around in Delhi, wasting his life with his siblings. He angrily tells Bim to leave him alone, but when he promises that he will return, she coldly asks why. He leaves, taking Hyder Ali’s servant Bhakta with him. Bim sits on the steps with Baba, who plays with his pebbles. She remarks that although they are the only two left, now they can again be carefree, like when they were children.
Raja’s departure is the last of the many tragedies that separate, decimate, and permanently scar the Das family in the summer of 1947. Just a few months before, both parents and Aunt Mira were all alive, and all four children were living at home. Now, only Bim and Baba are left, and Bim’s responsibility for Baba helps explain why they are still living at home decades later, in Part I and Part IV of the novel. Raja’s sudden departure—and failure to repay Bim in any way for nursing him back to health—also helps explain their ongoing feud in 1980.
Themes
