Simile: Raja's fever
Raja thinks he is getting better and overexerts himself, leading to his fever returning. Desai writes, "To tell the truth, he was exhausted and could feel his temperature rising. It was as heavy as lead but it rose, as inexorably as the mercury in a thermometer" (96). The use of the word "lead" makes Raja's fever seem heavy, oppressive, and insurmountable. The thermometer is also an effective image because the reader can image the mercury rising and see its effects in Raja, who has to return to bed and labor under his illness.
Simile: Tara and her childhood home
When Tara returns to her home, she feels like part of her is "sinking languidly down into the passive pleasure of having returned to the familiar—like a pebble, she had been picked up and hurled back into the pond, and sunk down through the layer of green scum...why was the pond so muddy and stagnant? Why had nothing changed?" (12.) The pond, or the well, is an important part of the novel because it represents death and stagnation, and here Tara takes that and expands it to her entire childhood home and existence. Here she feels slow and stultified, pulled back into the ennui of her old life. She cannot get out, and she seems doomed while she is here to sink down further.
Metaphor: Dying as a tunnel
Bim wishes, "almost, that she could lower herself into that dark tunnel, and slip along behind the passage made for her by the older, the dying woman" (98). She sees death as a passage through a dark tunnel, a tunnel that Mira has already traversed and that she, Bim, may traverse soon. The other words she chooses contribute more to the metaphor. "Lower herself" suggests a grave in its descent into the earth, and "slip along" makes death sound cool, calm, and welcoming. Here Bim is wondering if life is really worth it and if death may be a respite from emotion, tension, and suffering.
Metaphor: Old Delhi
Bim remarks of her city, "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" (5). This metaphor depicts Old Delhi in the language of death and decay. There is no life, no change, and no vitality. Everything is quiet, dull, and the same as it always was. While this is comforting to some, to others like Bakul, it is stultifying and incomprehensible.
Simile: Life as a river
Bim remarks to Tara, in regards to the summer of 1947, "Isn't it strange how life won't flow, like a river, but moves in jumps, as if it were held back by locks that are opened now and then to let it jump forwards in a kind of flood?" (42.) She is comparing life to a river that is dammed up and moves slowly, but then a lot of water comes out at once before being dammed up again. Most of the Das siblings' childhood was slow and dull, but occasionally there was a time when so many things happened at once—the Partition, Raja's illness, Baba's gramophone, etc.
