Previous
Part 2
Themes
and Colors
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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Literary Devices
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.
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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.
