Baba’s Gramophone Symbol Analysis

The old gramophone that Baba constantly plays at an ear-splitting volume represents stagnation, historical continuity, and the power of silence. It originally belongs to Hyder Ali’s daughter Benazir, but Baba finds it while checking on Hyder Ali’s house with Bim shortly after the Partition. Even though Baba usually just follows Bim and does not take much interest in his surroundings, he actually leaves her side to go get the abandoned gramophone and take it home. He gives it a new lease on life and starts playing Benazir’s old records—mostly American and British songs from the 1940s, which reflect the global cultural influences that arrived in India on the eve of its independence. In fact, he becomes entirely fixated on the gramophone, which starts occupying his time, to the point of serving as a symbolic replacement for his late caretaker Aunt Mira and even driving him apart from his siblings.

By 1980, more than three decades later, Baba is still doing exactly the same thing all day, every day. Bim learns to ignore the noise, but everyone else finds it maddening. Baba refuses to listen to new records or use the new gramophone that Raja brings him, and he feels severe anxiety whenever his own stops working (like during Part I, when his needle wears out and he has a panic attack and runs into the street). In this way, the gramophone becomes a symbol of Baba’s arrested development and need to control his environment—which he has, in a way, passed on to Bim. As Baba cannot speak, the gramophone also becomes something of a substitute voice for him: the family knows that all is well when it plays, but the family worries when it falls silent.