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Part 2
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
The narrative returns to the Das siblings’ childhood. Every morning, little Tara follows her mother to the grass between the rose beds, which are far shabbier than Hyder Ali Sahib’s in his garden across the road. One day, while her mother paces back and forth for the exercise her doctor ordered, Tara runs around and finds a gleaming white snail amid the roses.
Instead of presenting a linear narrative, Desai continues telescoping further back into the Das siblings’ lives. By inverting the usual chain of cause and effect in literature, she forces readers to make sense of her characters and their decisions without knowing for sure what motivates them. This also contributes to Desai’s analysis of memory and the novel’s pacing: as the significance of key moments in Parts I and II are not clear until Part III, Desai creates a sense of suspense. For instance, in this passage, readers see Tara’s childhood interaction with the snail (which she reproduces as an adult in the novel’s opening passage). Readers can now better understand the snail’s emotional significance to her and note the discrepancies between her past and her memories of it: for instance, she is wrong to think that the family’s garden was once pristine.
Themes
After Baba’s birth, everyone sees how beautiful and quiet he is, but they also notice that he develops slowly. Instead of learning to grasp, speak, and walk, he just stares blankly into space. The mother grows tired of caring for him and returns her focus to playing bridge. Frustrated that the ayah proves incapable of working around the clock, the mother invites her poor, sickly, widowed cousin Mira to come take care of him.
Readers finally learn the secrets behind two of the novel’s key mysteries: Baba’s disability and Aunt Mira’s role in the family. The mother responds to Baba’s issues with resignation and indifference. She expects superhuman effort from the ayah, while offering no effort of her own, and she never so much as considers trying to understand the ayah’s situation or limitations. She invites Mira into the house for entirely selfish reasons—in order to get free childcare—and not because she actually cares about her cousin.
Themes
When Aunt Mira first arrives, the children are surprised to see her tattered luggage, but they are delighted to find that it’s full of handmade gifts—something their parents would never find the time for. They understand their power over Aunt Mira, but they also cherish her warmth and attention. She greatly helps Baba, teaching him to eat his own bread, button his own shirt, and play marbles and bagatelle. He never learns to say more than an occasional word, but the family gets used to his silence. Animals love Aunt Mira, too: a cat moves into the house, and when she complains about the milkman watering down his product, the mother reluctantly agrees to get a cow. It produces delicious milk, but one night that spring, it wanders away, falls into the well, and drowns. The mother and father are furious, and Aunt Mira has nightmares about the cow.
Mira is the opposite of the Das parents: her luggage demonstrates that she is poor, but her gifts show that she is willing to give everything she does have—time, attention, and warmth—to the children. In contrast, the Das parents offer money but not care. Even if this situation creates a complicated power dynamic between the children and Aunt Mira, they greatly respect and appreciate her because she parents them (particularly Baba) in a way their mother and father never did. Mira’s facility with animals further reflects her warmth and capacity for care, but the cow’s drowning is an ominous sign, particularly because cows are sacred in Hinduism. Not only does this drowning explain why both Mira and Bim associated Mira’s death with the well in Part II, but it also reflects how well-intended actions can have unintended consequences and how dark memories from the past can shape people’s beliefs, actions, and identities in an enduring way. After all, its carcass gets stuck at the bottom of the murky black well forever, so it becomes a metaphor for the childhood memories presented in Parts II and III, which underlie the Das siblings’ conflicts in Parts I and IV.
Themes
When she was 12, Aunt Mira’s family married her to a young man who promptly died during his studies in England. She stayed with his family, who blamed her and worked her to the bone—which is why she looked so much older than her age. Even after moving in with the Das family, she continues to wear a widow’s white clothes; she gave away all her other outfits, except one silk sari with crimson stripes, which she refuses to wear and jokes that the children can put on her for her cremation. She attends Theosophy meetings for a time, but she grows tired and withdraws.
As Indian women typically move in permanently with their husbands’ families upon marriage, Aunt Mira’s situation is unfortunately all too common among Indian widows. Her traumatic past explains why she is so grateful to move in with the Das family—even if they also take her in primarily to make her work. Yet her insistence on wearing a widow’s white, even in the progressive Das household, shows that she still believes in the same traditions that have oppressed her. This is why she refuses to wear the striped sari—the same one in which the Das siblings cremate her in Part II. Desai may be suggesting that only death could release her from the burdens of her past. Lastly, readers unfamiliar with Theosophy need only know that it was a new age spiritual movement started by European and Indian intellectuals that played a significant role in the Indian independence movement.
Themes
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Tara feels safest wrapped in Aunt Mira’s shawl or sari, and she loves Aunt Mira’s bedtime stories, which she continues telling even after the kids are supposed to be asleep. She knits the children sweaters and makes pickles in jars on the veranda. Even though she lacks the grace and authority to be a mother or wife, the children’s lives revolve around her—and hers around them. She helps them grow until they tower over her.
Aunt Mira’s warmth gives the children a sense of safety (and connection with India’s cultural roots) that they never got from their parents. This is particularly crucial for young, sensitive Tara—who has generally found herself isolated, as her older siblings Bim and Raja exclude her.
Themes
When Bim and Raja get typhoid, Aunt Mira nurses them back to health. But she always finds time to play with Tara and show her affection. For instance, one day Raja and Bim say they will grow up to be a hero and a heroine, but Tara says she wants to be a mother. Raja and Bim laugh at her—but Aunt Mira comforts her and promises that her dream is the only realistic one. During the summer, the children spend afternoons playing games, like naming the hottest and coolest things they can imagine, playing in the garden’s water tap, and sneaking into the servants’ quarters.
Aunt Mira’s presence gives the children the sense of safety they need to play. Tara may be conventional or even unimaginative, but Aunt Mira assures her that this means she can actually fulfill her dreams—unlike her siblings, who will soon find literature and politics nurturing their dreams of heroism. Indeed, Part II shows that Raja leaves for Hyderabad without ever giving up on these dreams, while caretaking demands force Bim to set them aside. In this way, Bim’s role in Part II parallels Aunt Mira’s in Part III: they care for each other through illness, and they both care for Raja, who doesn’t adequately recognize their efforts.
Themes
When the children dare each other to name the scariest thing they can imagine, Tara remembers seeing her father give her mother an injection and thinking he was killing her. That night, she asks Aunt Mira why her parents haven’t come home for dinner and why they spend so much time playing cards. Aunt Mira unconvincingly claims that it helps with their mother’s diabetes pain, then explains how their mother needs daily insulin injections. Tara feels relieved.
Tara returned to this same memory in Part I. It so marked her because it distilled her fear of her distant yet controlling parents into a single, harrowing image. While the mother’s diabetes helps explain her self-preoccupation (and the injections), Tara sees even as a child that their card-playing is really a way of escaping from their family (and the rest of their lives). This more complete portrait of the Das mother and father can help readers see that their poor parenting was really an extension of their own unhappiness.
Themes
As he grows up, Raja starts questioning Aunt Mira’s stories and spending less time at home. He steals the soda-man’s cart and cycles, he wrestles, and he sneaks into the movies with his friend Hamid. At home, Bim and Tara fight for his attention. Once, they nearly catch him during a game of hide-and-seek tag, but he escapes through the hedges into the back garden. They follow him and end up next to the well. Gazing down at the black water, they look for signs of the cow, which decomposed inside because it was too heavy to pull out. There are none. They go back to the front garden and scream at Raja.
As the eldest sibling, Raja is the first to realize that he can also seek adventure, belonging, and happiness outside the home. But Desai shows that his withdrawal has ripple effects on Tara, Bim, and their relationship—which they never fully address or resolve. Tara and Bim’s encounter with the well in their backyard is an important metaphor for their lifelong attempts to confront the darkness in their past. For all their attempts to discern what has happened (like their attempts to see the cow’s bones in the water), they cannot reach any reliable conclusion about the past—either because they do not understand it or because their memories are unreliable.
Themes
Over time, Bim starts resenting Raja’s withdrawal from the family and taking her anger out on Tara. For example, Tara wishes she could have curls, so Bim promises to help—and cuts off all Tara’s hair instead. Raja and Hamid laugh at Tara, Bim mocks her, and Aunt Mira promises that her hair will grow back.
Bim bullying Tara offers another example of how the Das siblings channel their frustration and hurt into further conflict, instead of reconciliation. This pattern repeats itself throughout their lives, from the way Raja treats Bim at the end of Part II to the way Bim treats all of her siblings—including even Baba—in Parts I and IV.
Themes
The older the siblings get, the more stifling they find their home life. Raja escapes by wandering the city, reading books, and playing with Hamid, but Bim and Tara find their women’s novels dull and uninspiring. Bim starts reading history books instead. Still, they find some joy, like when Bim and Raja wade across the Jumna on summer evenings to pick melons straight from the tree. Tara and Baba go to bring them home, and the four siblings all watch Hyder Ali Sahib ride across the dunes on his horse. But for the most part, they find themselves waiting for some change in their lives.
Raja’s coping strategies differ from Bim and Tara’s in large part because of gender. While literature by and for men encourages heroism and adventure, literature by and for women focuses on the domestic sphere—and may even create a self-fulfilling prophecy by encouraging women’s confinement to it. Similarly, while it’s dangerous and socially unacceptable for young women to wander Delhi on their own, it’s perfectly fine for Raja to do so—even alongside a Muslim best friend. The image of Hyder Ali Sahib on his horse is another one of the memories that resonates with the Das siblings well into adulthood.
Themes
Bim loves school, where she leads activities, thrives on intellectual challenges, and even finishes as head girl. But Tara finds school scary and overwhelming. She struggles to pay attention in class, make friends, play sports, and even draw and paint. The missionaries and converts who run the school dislike her almost as much as her classmates, who find her “unbearably snobbish and conceited.” Bim outright avoids her. Above all, Tara hates visiting the mission’s charity hospital on Thursdays to give out their leftover fruit and the scratchy blankets they knit in class. Bim mocks Tara for thinking she’s too refined for the hospital. Tara resigns herself to the miseries of school and tries her best to enjoy herself at home in the afternoons.
Bim is a natural-born leader, so school gives her the resources and platform she needs to shine. This strongly suggests that she has a bright career ahead of her—and yet readers will already know from Part I and Part II that other duties will get in the way. In contrast, school only exposes Tara’s sensitivity and constant need for reassurance. This is why she has always found Aunt Mira’s presence so soothing, but now that she is in school, she has gone back to feeling isolated and out-of-place. It is thus abundantly clear why she is eager to escape her life in Delhi. Clearly, Bim and Tara are already drifting apart, in personality as well as in their relationship.
Themes
Two incidents mark Tara’s school days. First, a mad dog wanders into the school latrines, and the local animal control shoots and kills it. Second, the principal suspends one of the teachers—the young, neurotic Miss Singh—for her relationship with a blond monk who hangs out near the school. The girls bring her flowers, but she never returns to school, so they plan to prank the principal in revenge. They stop when Bim reveals that the principal has cancer, but Tara holds a grudge against them both for years.
To Tara, these two incidents represent the dangers of the outside world—and suggest that the best course of action for her is to be a respectable young woman and stay at home. In particular, Miss Singh demonstrates that women can choose to live and love beyond the parameters that Indian culture sets for them, but that they will face punishment for doing so.
Themes
The siblings grow restless and dream of leaving home. Bim’s academic and Raja’s poetry prizes indicate that they will eventually be successful enough to do so. One afternoon, Bim and Tara wander into Raja’s room while he is away, go through his books and closet, and try on his pants. They feel comfortable with their legs covered and wonder if this is why men are so confident. Bim takes Raja’s cigarettes. She and Tara go outside to take a walk but hide in a bush and smoke instead. Tara doesn’t want to, and she discards her cigarette after one drag. The cigarette lands in a pile of leaves and starts a fire, which Bim frantically puts out. At that moment, Raja comes home. The girls run into his room and take off their trousers, but he catches them.
Bim and Tara’s game of dress-up further highlights how rigid gender roles bolster men’s freedom at women’s expense. This is true as much in India’s traditional society as in the European cultures that have shaped it through and after colonialism. Desai emphasizes how Indian culture socializes people into these gender roles from a young age: even as schoolchildren, Bim and Tara clearly see that their brother enjoys greater freedom and opportunity than they will ever be able to. Their cigarette fire may represent the danger that women’s independence poses to the existing social order.
Themes
One day, Tara abandons Bim out of fear, not anger. They go to a picnic in the Lodi Gardens with the Misra sisters, brothers, and two quiet boys who are supposed to be the sisters’ suitors. After sitting around feeling uncomfortable for some time, Tara and Bim decide to go visit one of the tombs located in the gardens. They enter, a boy throws a pebble inside after them, and they hear a sinister buzzing sound. It’s a swarm of bees. They run back outside, but the swarm engulfs Bim. Tara makes it to the Misras, who return to save Bim. Raja later blames Tara for leaving Bim behind, but Tara and Bim never discuss the matter. Aunt Mira and the ayah treat Bim’s stings, but Tara never shows hers to anyone.
Even if she may not have been able to save Bim on her own, Tara comes to see her decision to run back toward the Misras instead of helping Bim as a form of cowardice. Her guilt over this perceived shortcoming further drives a wedge between her and Bim. Yet she doesn’t mention or treat her own bee stings. Put differently, she hides her own needs because she knows her sister’s are greater, which parallels the way she puts her own feelings and needs aside in her relationship and conflicts with Bim during the present-day sections of the novel (Part I and Part IV). Crucially, this episode in the Lodi Gardens will play an important role in Part IV of the novel, as Tara never fully lets go of her guilt—but Bim remembers events differently.
Themes
Tara starts avoiding her siblings and instead spending time alone or with the Misra sisters—even though Bim and Raja hate them, and their families have never been particularly close. Unlike Tara’s family, the large, intergenerational Misra family doesn’t try to “keep up appearances” with sophisticated decorations or manners. Despite her shyness, Tara shares the Misra girls’ preference for shopping and partying over studying, and the family kindly takes her in. When she wanders over to their house during a family photo, they even insist she join. The Misra girls also introduce Tara to young men at the club.
It becomes all the more clear that the Das siblings’ adult conflicts go all the way back to these early experiences. As a child, Tara sought warmth and belonging through Aunt Mira; as she grows up, she finds it with the easygoing Misra family instead. In this way, she proves much like Raja, who copes with his cold parents by bonding with Hamid, then later Hyder Ali and his family. Still, readers may find it ironic that Tara ends up marrying Bakul, who is positively obsessed with “keep[ing] up appearances.”
Themes
At the Misra sisters’ engagement party, Bim sulks in the corner, then goes out to the garden and the roof terrace, forcing Tara to follow her the whole way. Bim complains that the Misras won’t have time to study and says that they should go to college instead of getting married, which will limit them. While Bim insists that she will never marry, Tara realizes that she will do so as soon as she possibly can, to get away from her family. Bim declares that she will have her own career and take care of Baba and Aunt Mira.
Bim and Tara’s actions at the engagement party underline how they have grown into very different women with diametrically opposed values. While Tara sees the Misra sisters’ marriage as a model to aspire to—and achieves these dreams by marrying Bakul in Part II—Bim instead sees marriage as a trap that prevents women from achieving their potential. Crucially, she does not see this as mutually exclusive with caretaking. Rather, she thinks she can combine traditionally masculine and feminine roles by having a career, caring for her family members, and financially providing for them at the same time.
Themes
