Clear Light of Day

by

Anita Desai

The Das House Symbol Icon

The Das family’s house on Bela Road in Old Delhi represents the way that family, culture, and geography continue to root people and connect them to the past, no matter how hard they try to forget, ignore, or move beyond them. Except for a few scenes that follow the siblings elsewhere around Delhi, the whole novel takes place in the house and its garden. The house figures less as an inanimate container for the protagonists’ lives than a living, breathing character in its own right. It is full of history and activity, animal life and sound—from Badshah’s barking to the shriek of Baba’s gramophone. The house raises the Das children, and Bim grows up to repay it by caring for it.

When Tara arrives in 1980, the house is much the same as when she left it in the late 1940s—except it is slowly crumbling, the garden is fading, and new animals have moved in. This sense of slow decline reflects how Bim, Baba, and particularly Delhi itself have aged: by slowly withering in place while remaining essentially the same. Yet the house’s familiar sights, sounds, smells, and feelings strike Tara, then encourage her to remember and reconsider her past in a process that eventually brings her and Bim back together. At the end of the novel, Bim remembers T.S. Eliot’s line “Time the destroyer is time the preserver,” then thinks of her house and family. While the Das siblings’ relationships to home and one another might change or erode over time, she suggests, they can still strengthen those relationships again—and this process of endurance and change within the same rooted relationships is precisely what makes them family and what makes their house a home.

The Das House Quotes in Clear Light of Day

The Clear Light of Day quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Das House. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Family, Love, and Forgiveness Theme Icon
).
Part 1 Quotes

“But you wouldn’t want to return to life as it used to be, would you?” Bim continued to tease her in that dry voice. “All that dullness, boredom, waiting. Would you care to live that over again? Of course not. Do you know anyone who would—secretly, sincerely, in his innermost self—really prefer to return to childhood?”

Related Characters: Bim (speaker), Tara
Related Symbols: The Das House
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:

“Old Delhi does not change. It only decays. My students tell me it is a great cemetery, every house a tomb. Nothing but sleeping graves. Now New Delhi, they say is different. That is where things happen. The way they describe it, it sounds like a nest of fleas. So much happens there, it must be a jumping place. I never go. Baba never goes. And here, here nothing happens at all. Whatever happened, happened lone ago—in the time of the Tughlaqs the Khiljis the Sultanate, the Moghuls—that lot.” She snapped her fingers in time to her words smartly. “And then the British built New Delhi and moved everything out. Here we are left rocking on the backwaters, getting duller and greyer I suppose. Anyone who isn’t dull and grey goes away—to New Delhi, to England, to Canada, the Middle East. They don’t come back.”

Related Characters: Bim (speaker), Tara, Baba, Bakul
Related Symbols: The Das House
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:

You must remember that when I left you, I promised I would always look after you, Bim. When Hyder Ali Sahib was ill and making out his will, Benazir herself spoke to him about the house and asked him to allow you to keep it at the same rent we used to pay him when father and mother were alive. He agreed—you know he never cared for money, only for friendship—and I want to assure you that now that he is dead and has left all his property to us, you may continue to have it at the same rent, I shall never think of raising it or of selling the house as long as you and Baba need it. If you have any worries, Bim, you have only to tell—Raja.

Related Characters: Raja (speaker), Bim, Baba, The Das Mother, The Das Father, Hyder Ali , Benazir
Related Symbols: The Das House
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:

“I still keep it in my desk—to remind me. Whenever I begin to wish to see Raja again or wish he would come and see us, then I take out that letter and read it again. Oh, I can tell you, I could write him such an answer, he wouldn’t forget it for many years either!” She gave a short laugh and ended it with a kind of a choke, saying “You say I should come to Hyderabad with you for his daughter’s wedding. How can I? How can I enter his house—my landlord’s house? I, such a poor tenant? Because of me, he can’t raise the rent or sell the house and make a profit—imagine that. The sacrifice!”

Related Characters: Bim (speaker), Tara, Raja
Related Symbols: The Das House
Page Number: 28
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2 Quotes

“I have to go. Now I can go. I have to begin my life some time, don’t I? You don’t want me to spend all my life down in this hole, do you? You don’t think I can go on living just to keep my brother and sister company, do you?”

[…]

“Bim, I’ll come back,” he said. “I’m leaving all my books and papers with you. Look after them till I come back.”

“Why should you come back?” Bim asked stonily.

“Bim, don’t be so hard. You know I must come back—to look after you and Baba. I can’t leave you alone.”

Related Characters: Bim (speaker), Raja (speaker), Baba, Hyder Ali
Related Symbols: The Das House
Page Number: 100-101
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3 Quotes

The girls became infected with something of Raja’s restlessness. It made Bim more ambitious at school […] She was not quite sure where this would lead but she seemed to realize it was a way out. A way out of what? They still could not say, could not define the unsatisfactory atmosphere of their home. They did not realize now that this unsatisfactoriness was not based only on their parents’ continual absence, their seemingly total disinterest in their children, their absorption in each other. The secret, hopeless suffering of their mother was somehow at the root of this subdued greyness, this silent desperation that pervaded the house. Also the disappointment that Baba’s very life and existence were to them, his hopeless future, their anxiety over him. The children could only sense all this, they did not share it, except unwillingly.

Related Characters: Tara, Bim, Raja, The Das Mother, The Das Father
Related Symbols: The Das House
Page Number: 130
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4 Quotes

She had always thought Bim so competent, so capable. Everyone had thought that—Aunt Mira, the teachers at school, even Raja. But Bim seemed to stampede through the house like a dishevelled storm, creating more havoc than order. […] Tara saw how little she had really observed—either as a child or as a grown woman. She had seen Bim through the lenses of her own self, as she had wanted to see her. And now, when she tried to be objective, when she was old enough, grown enough and removed enough to study her objectively, she found she could not—her vision was strewn, obscured and screened by too much of the past.

Related Characters: Tara, Bim, Raja, Aunt Mira
Related Symbols: The Das House
Page Number: 148
Explanation and Analysis:

They had come like mosquitoes—Tara and Bakul, and behind them the Misras, and somewhere in the distance Raja and Benazir—only to torment her and, mosquito-like, sip her blood. All of them fed on her blood, at some time or the other had fed—it must have been good blood, sweet and nourishing. Now, when they were full, they rose in swarms, humming away, turning their backs on her.

All these years she had felt herself to be the centre—she had watched them all circling in the air, then returning, landing like birds, folding up their wings and letting down their legs till they touched solid ground. Solid ground. That was what the house had been—the lawn, the rose walk, the guava trees, the veranda: Bim’s domain.

Related Characters: Tara, Bim, Raja, Bakul, Misra Sisters (Jaya and Sarla), Misra Brothers (Brij, Manu, and Mulk), Benazir
Related Symbols: The Das House
Page Number: 153
Explanation and Analysis:

“Shall I tell Raja—?”

“Yes,” Bim urged, her voice flying, buoyant. “Tell him how we’re not used to it—Baba and I. Tell him we never travel any more. Tell him we couldn’t come—but he should come. Bring him back with you, Tara—or tell him to come in the winter. All of them. And he can see Sharma about the firm—and settle things. And see to Hyder Ali’s old house—and repair it. Tell him I’m—I’m waiting for him—I want him to come—I want to see him.”

As if frightened by this breakdown in Bim’s innermost self, this crumbling of a great block of stone and concrete, a dam, to release a flood of roaring water, Tara unexpectedly let go Bim’s hand and fell forwards into the car.

Related Characters: Tara (speaker), Bim (speaker), Baba, Raja, Hyder Ali , Mr. Sharma
Related Symbols: The Das House
Page Number: 175-176
Explanation and Analysis:

With her inner eye she saw how her own house and its particular history linked and contained her as well as her whole family with all their separate histories and experiences—not binding them within some dead and airless cell but giving them the soil in which to send down their roots, and food to make them grow and spread, reach out to new experiences and new lives, but always drawing from the same soil, the same secret darkness. That soil contained all time, past and future, in it. It was dark with time, rich with time. It was where her deepest self lived, and the deepest selves of her sister and brothers and all those who shared that time with her.

Related Characters: Bim, Misra Brothers (Brij, Manu, and Mulk)
Related Symbols: The Das House
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Das House Symbol Timeline in Clear Light of Day

The timeline below shows where the symbol The Das House appears in Clear Light of Day. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 1
Family, Love, and Forgiveness Theme Icon
Memory, Change, and Identity Theme Icon
...the snail, and Bim caresses him and explains that he’s now 12. Tara says that the house is still the same. Bim asks if she wanted it to change and comments that... (full context)
Family, Love, and Forgiveness Theme Icon
Memory, Change, and Identity Theme Icon
Gender and Indian Culture Theme Icon
...laments that her daughters don’t understand “such rustic pleasures.” She wonders why Bim, Baba, and the house haven’t changed, and she decides that Bakul is right to resent them. (full context)
Family, Love, and Forgiveness Theme Icon
Memory, Change, and Identity Theme Icon
Bakul returns in the afternoon. While he naps, Tara reads and contemplates the house ’s old, worn-out decorations. She nearly goes out to the veranda, but she gets a... (full context)
Family, Love, and Forgiveness Theme Icon
Memory, Change, and Identity Theme Icon
Gender and Indian Culture Theme Icon
Art and Social Divisions Theme Icon
...greatly respected in Old Delhi. He left in the Partition and sold all his property—except this house . (full context)
Family, Love, and Forgiveness Theme Icon
Memory, Change, and Identity Theme Icon
...she can’t attend Raja’s daughter Moyna’s wedding because she feels guilty to still be in the house , paying so little for rent. Flipping through a history book, Tara proposes they go... (full context)
Memory, Change, and Identity Theme Icon
Gender and Indian Culture Theme Icon
...while living abroad. Tara jokes that Bim doesn’t see those problems because she scarcely leaves the house . While Bakul lights Bim’s cigarette, Tara observes that she used to be prettier than... (full context)
Part 2
Family, Love, and Forgiveness Theme Icon
Gender and Indian Culture Theme Icon
Art and Social Divisions Theme Icon
...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... (full context)
Gender and Indian Culture Theme Icon
Art and Social Divisions Theme Icon
...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... (full context)
Gender and Indian Culture Theme Icon
Art and Social Divisions Theme Icon
...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... (full context)
Family, Love, and Forgiveness Theme Icon
Gender and Indian Culture Theme Icon
...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,... (full context)
Part 3
Family, Love, and Forgiveness Theme Icon
Memory, Change, and Identity Theme Icon
Gender and Indian Culture Theme Icon
...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... (full context)
Part 4
Family, Love, and Forgiveness Theme Icon
Memory, Change, and Identity Theme Icon
Gender and Indian Culture Theme Icon
...includes Raja. Tara says he’d love to come home, but Bim says he’ll hate “ this dead old house .” Tara replies that, while the house needs maintenance, now that Bim is in charge,... (full context)
Family, Love, and Forgiveness Theme Icon
Memory, Change, and Identity Theme Icon
Art and Social Divisions Theme Icon
...voice will eventually grow to sound like his guru’s. She thinks the same applies to her home and the family that has rooted their “deepest selves” in its soil. The guru sings... (full context)