Summary
The summer of 1947 was one of flames and smoke, but the Das house was far enough away, so it was quiet enough. It was also the summer that Raja was sick and querulous. Bim was his nurse and did her best to keep him happy.
Raja began to whine about Hyder Ali’s house, hoping it is ok. Bim said she saw that it was dark and locked up from their roof, and assured Raja the family was gone. Raja was irritated he was sick and could not help, and Bim admired his heroic spirit. She grabbed a book of Byron poems and read aloud to him.
Some of the poems Bim read were in Urdu, which she did not like but which Raja loved. He had studied Urdu in school before the Partition, which made sense since it was a court language and Hindu was considered too common. Raja boasted to his sisters how lovely Urdu was and how pedestrian Hindu was.
Hyder Ali, their neighbor and landlord, heard of the boy’s interest and invited him over to his massive library. Raja admired the man greatly and spent hours poring over manuscripts and poetry. Aunt Mira warned him to not go there too often, but Raja protested that Hyder Ali was happy to have him there.
As Raja grew older he took part in some of the Alis’ family life. He loved the glittering parties and eloquent conversation, and he began to compare his own home unfavorably. He listened and did not talk much.
One day he came home and told Bim about a real poet he’d heard there that evening. Raja himself was asked to recite poetry so he chose Iqbal, which the other poet praised. Bim asked him sleepily if he'd be an Urdu poet when he grew up and Raja was secretly miffed she didn't know he already was one.
When Raja approached his father about studying in college, his father said he could not go to a Muslim college. His father was also upset to hear that Raja wanted to specialize in Islamic studies. He tore up his son’s form.
That summer the tension between the two simmered. Finally one night Mr. Das asked Raja if he knew what was going on with the political situation in India. He explained that he was worried about his son and what might happen if everyone saw a Hindu boy at Jamia Millia. Raja was surprised at this and somewhat thrilled by the danger, but he did not fully understand his father.
Raja began to avoid Mr. Das, unprepared for debate and reason because he was a boy of ideas and imagination. He gave in and did not pursue his quest for Jamia Millia anymore.
One night, Mrs. Das felt too unwell to go to the club and play bridge, and she slipped into a coma. She died at the hospital without ever seeing the children again. They wondered if they should feel worse, and carried this guilt around like a secret.
Raja went to Hindu College and enrolled in English Literature. He sulked and read copiously, and began to cycle with the Misra boys. Bim read his books along with him.
At Hindu College Raja befriended some young men; they were fanatical Hindus and did not know of his admiration for Hyder Ali and Urdu poetry. Raja was cool and withdrawn around them.
Bim remembered how Raja always said he’d be a hero when he grew up; she saw how the Misra boys called him Lord Byron.
Raja began going back to Hyder Ali’s house for the evenings with politicians and poets. Aunt Mira was decidedly nervous about him spending time with Muslims but Raja did not care. He did feel, though, that more people seemed gone and his own presence there was not as welcome as it had been. The awkwardness usually passed with whiskey, and Raja began to see Pakistan as they all did. Raja’s friends found out about his sympathies, though, and called him a traitor and tried to convert him.
Raja became ill with tuberculosis. He could not fathom how he was sick, and the whole family was flummoxed as well. His father and aunt blamed the tensions in India. His friends visited him and hoped for weakness, but they only became angry at Raja’s stubbornness.
Raja confessed to Bim that he was afraid for the Alis, and asked Bim about Benazir. Bim told him she and other Muslim girls did not go to school anymore. Bim counseled him not to worry, but privately, she was terrified at his weak body. It was all very Romantic.
One day Bim had to tell Raja that the Alis’ house seemed completely empty; it was clear they’d gone. Raja became hysterical but Bim did not know what to tell him.
Bim seemed to be the only one in charge now. Tara spent most of her time with the Misra sisters. Mira was often acting strange, huddling under a blanket in a stuffy, smelly room. Baba was quiet and played with the pebbles Mira had given him years ago.
Bim looked over at the empty house across the street and felt uneasy; “its emptiness and darkness was a warning, a threat perhaps” (62).
Tara, who had been spending a lot of time with the Misra sisters (Bim considered them very dull), brought a young man named Bakul home one night after a dance. He was handsome and well-groomed and exactly the sort of person for Tara. Bakul asked Bim if Tara could come to a party at his house, and Bim said yes. Aunt Mira also said yes, and then told Bim she thought Bakul would marry Tara.
One night Mr. Das was driving home from the club, got in a car accident, and broke his neck. He died instantly. He did not leave much for the family. The only thing was the car in the garage, which made the children uneasy. Raja sold it to someone right away.
The death’s effect was pecuniary only. Not long after, Mr. Sharma from the office stopped by to see about Raja taking over. Raja was very opposed to this and told Bim Baba could do it. Bim was shocked. Raja said that perhaps they only needed a signature from him, and Mr. Sharma agreed that was possible.
After Mr. Sharma left Raja told Bim that the things they should really care about were the city being destroyed and the Alis being gone. Bim, frustrated, rolled her eyes and took his temperature.
The next day Bim asked the doctor, a young and shy man, when Raja would get better. Dr. Biswas saw her gray hair and thought it strange on someone so young, but tried to console her. She suddenly noticed that he was very nervous talking to her like this, and sighed to herself that he could give her nothing.
Bim stood and offered him tea, and he agreed. He haltingly told her that this was all a lot for a young lady, especially with Baba as well. Bim snorted a laugh but did ask if Raja should stay with them, seeing as the doctor was quite kindly. He replied that Raja could stay because it didn’t seem like he was getting worse; he would improve in the winter. Bim looked doubtful, and Dr. Biswas felt like he had disappointed her.
Tara and Bakul came home that night. Tara saw her sister’s dull face and lost her own glow. Bakul chatted nonchalantly, ignorant of the dynamics of the night. Tara told Bim Bakul’s posting came through, and how after a year he expected to be sent west after going to Ceylon.
Bim turned to Bakul and asked what was happening in New Delhi and if they would be safe here. Bakul said they will, but she pointed out that the Alis left. He claimed he would find out what was going on, but Bim replied that no one knew where they were. Bakul felt a bit hurt because, even though he was a junior servant, he wanted people to see him as capable.
After Bim left Bakul turned to Tara, knowing she would talk to him and look at him like he wanted. He told her he must take her away. Riots spread on both sides of the boundary. One day Raja excitedly waved a letter he’d received from Hyder Ali, saying they were safe in Hyderabad. Bim was elated as well, feeling her brother’s relief. Raja asked her if she could go look at the house, for Hyder Ali had asked him but he was still bedridden. Bim promptly agreed.
Bim and Baba walked onto the quiet property, discomfited by the silent and unlit house. To them, it seemed “like a body whose life and warmth whey were accustomed to and took for granted, now grown cold and stiff and faded. It looked accusing, too” (72). The rooms were empty, and Bim was tempted to see the library that Raja was so happy about long ago.
Baba was quiet throughout this ghostly tour, but he started when he saw the record players and records that Benazir and her friends used to listen to. Bim was disdainful of the foxtrots and quicksteps, knowing Raja would be too. Baba wanted to take the record player and records with them, and Bim thought that would be fine but perhaps they could see if there was anyone else on the property to ask.
Outside they found Begum, the dog, pitiful and whining. Bim gasped that they would take her home, and Baba kissed the dog multiple times.
Suddenly they encountered an old servant, hiding in the quarters. Half-starved and wringing his hands, he hushed them and told them he was afraid that the police would come back and accuse him again of helping the Alis escape. Bim was scornful of his rude comments about Muslims and told him wearily that he could come to their house until it was safe to go home.
Before they left, Baba dragged the heavy gramophone and records out. Bim sighed.
When they returned Bim chastised Raja for being out of bed and waiting for them on the veranda. Raja told her soberly that she should go see Aunt Mira-masi.
Bim was hesitant but entered the room and shut the door behind her. Mira was disheveled, lurching about the room. There was a nearly empty brandy bottle, and Mira accidentally knocked over her own bottle of piss and excrement. She then sat and began whimpering and choking. She felt that she was drowning and told herself not to panic, but then saw flames rising and pricking her. She screamed and begged for help but no one came, and she wished the torture would stop. Suddenly she got the tall and slim bottle and began to suck it greedily and the flames faded.
That summer Dr. Biswas was at the house almost every day, whether it was for Aunt Mira or Raja. One day Dr. Biswas asked Bim how she bore the incessant gramophone and then told her earnestly of how much music meant to him. He invited her to a concert but she declined, then, finding the whole situation so funny, began to laugh. He left, feeling uncomfortable.
When Bakul and Tara came home, Bakul talked with Bim for a moment. He tried to tell her she had too many worries, but this conversation—and Bakul himself—bored her. Bakul paused and then asked if he could marry Tara. Bim replied coolly that it is modern India and he does not need to ask. Bakul did not like her tone but was pleased. Bim urged him to marry quickly, and that this would suit both him and Tara. Bakul was happy and teased her that she ought to dye her hair now so he did not have an elderly sister-in-law.
After Tara married, Bim and Raja spent more and more time together as he healed. He was calmer now that he knew the Alis were okay. He spent a lot of time reading aloud or writing Urdu verses of his own. These verses embarrassed Bim, and she suggested he read them to Biswas.
Later Bim asked Dr. Biswas to play the violin, but he was very flummoxed and refused. He asked her to a concert again and she decided that she would go.
At the concert, Biswas spoke reverently of Mozart and how listening to his music transformed his life. Bim smoked and felt restless. He continued on about how much he loved living in Germany with all the music, and how quotidian music was here.
After a while, Bim said she must go home because she had left Mira and Raja home for too long. Dr. Biswas gently chided her for worrying too much and wondered if she might get ill herself. Bim scoffed at this and thought about how she hated weakness. Biswas asked if she considered nursing as a profession and she replied that she wants to go back to college and maybe teach.
The bus traveled home and both looked out the windows at all of the change. Before Bim alighted, Dr. Biswas asked if she would come to meet his mother. She hastily said yes and rushed away. When she went into Raja’s room, he teased her.
Raja began to improve steadily. The weather was cooler now, and he ate and composed verses. Bim still struggled with Aunt Mira, especially as it seemed that she was getting her bottles from somewhere outside the house.
Bim was surprisingly pleased to see how kind and gentle Dr. Biswas was with her aunt, and she noticed the weight of everything—Tara, Raja, their parents’ death, and the sorrow of Baba—on her aunt’s face. She humbly told the doctor she would go meet his mother soon.
In her mind Mira was soaked and frightened. The children were grown and denied her everything she wanted and she felt that the buzzing noises overwhelm her. She remembered the cow drowning in the well. She whimpered for her drink. The tea party was a mistake, Bim soon realized. She was disdainful of how dressed and powdered Dr. Biswas was, and was annoyed with his mother. The woman seemed to think her son an Apollo and spent the time sighing and complaining about his work. Bim stood and said she had to go home, but it was right when Mrs. Biswas had just agreed to sing along with the doctor’s violin-playing. This was rude but Bim did not care. Dr. Biswas begged her to let him walk her home, saying he could not bear it if something happened to her, but she was frustrated that he seemed to have inherited his mother’s “gift for loading the weight of his self-sacrifices on others” (92).
As the two walked through the streets, a man sobbed out that Gandhi was murdered. Bim and Dr. Biswas were horrified and Bim rushed out into the night to find Raja and tell him.
At home, Bim burst in and told Raja the news. He immediately became anguished and turned on the radio. He sobbed about the imminent killings and the threats to Muslims. Later, though, they were relieved to hear that it was a fellow Hindu who killed Gandhi, and they relaxed. They spent the evening listening to the radio, to Nehru crying, to the chaos. At one point Raja asked about her future mother-in-law, and Bim sputtered out that she hoped she never saw either again. Raja teased her and she finally laughed.
At the end of the spring, Raja grew restless. The warmer weather was coming, and he was fitful, asking why their house was so shabby. Bim knew he was thinking beyond his illness now. She was tired of him picking on her and ordered him back to bed. He grew furious and spit out that he was going to go to Hyderabad because Hyder Ali asked him to. Bim tried to remain calm.
Raja’s outburst raised his temperature and he became fatigued. The house warmed and he slipped into deep sleep. In her room, Mira stripped her clothes. She ran out like a ghost into the driveway, screaming about being eaten alive by rats. The family ran out to help and someone threw out a blanket and Bim covered her gray, moldy flesh in it. Dr. Biswas was called and gave her an injection. He stiffly told Bim to give her brandy every couple hours. Bim was shocked at this, but even more shocked when he told her that he knew why she did not want to marry –she has dedicated her life to others like her sick brother, aged aunt, and dependent little brother.
Alone now with her aunt, Bim felt the rage coursing through her. She felt misunderstood and her emotions twisted and raged.
This was the long beginning of Aunt Mira-masi’s death. Mira lay in bed, shriveled and shaking. She became like a baby and whimpered for the bottle. She fouled the bed and Bim had to get help from the gardener's wife. She tore at her clothes and was obsessed by the old well. All she wanted to do was drift and dream on the drink.
When she finally died, she was put in the only silk sari that she had never worn. Raja accompanied Bim to the cremation ground. They dropped the ashes in the river and watched them flow away.
Bim continued to see her aunt in her mind’s eye for a long time after.
Raja packed his things and told her he had to begin his own life now. He was going to Hyderabad and would not be stopped. Bim was stony-faced as she said goodbye. The tonga moved away and Bim sank down on the steps next to Baba. It was just the two of them now, she told him, and they didn’t need anyone else at all. She smiled sleepily that it would be like when they were children.
Analysis
There is a great deal that happens in India during the summers of the Partition era, and that is mirrored in the tempestuousness of the Das house. Both of the children’s parents die, and although they are not particularly sad about this, they carry a sense of guilt that they do not care more with them like a secret. Aunt Mira eventually disintegrates and dies as well. Tara marries Bakul and leaves the household for Ceylon. Bim nurses Raja, who rages and suffers at the fate of Hyder Ali, whom he idolizes. Bim considers a relationship with Dr. Biswas but decides that marriage is not for her.
In this section, Desai develops Raja as a character. He is intelligent and Romantic, inclined to poetry and grand deeds. Hyder Ali is like a hero to him, not only in terms of the image of him on his white horse but also in terms of the lovely, stimulating world in which he moves and invites Raja into. Raja cannot help but compare his stagnant house and life with his neighbor’s, desiring freedom and escape and excitement. He is an impressionable young man, one who sees himself in a certain way. This means that he occasionally ignorant: when his father tells him he should not go to Jamia Millia college because of the tensions between Muslims and Hindus, Desai writes, “Raja was thrilled by the idea and looked as bright-eyed as a child presented with a bright sword” (52). He has no interest in the family business, for example, but ends up taking on Hyder Ali’s business. He writes poetry, but as Bim tells Tara, it is derivative.
Raja is sometimes a good brother to Bim and other times he is insensitive and cruel. Despite her nursing him during his bout of tuberculosis, he is at times carping, boorish, hysterical, and selfish. Part of Bim’s own coming-of-age is seeing how her relationship with Raja can be unhealthy sometimes, and that she needs to assert herself more.
All three of the elder Das children are figuring out what they want their lives to be. Raja, as aforementioned, wants to be affiliated with the Alis and everything they represent –ease, money, poetry, power, etc. He conceives of himself as a hero and someone who will do great things; thus, when he is no longer ill he heads off to Hyderabad to put this fate in motion. As for Tara, she also has no interest in sticking around the Das household anymore. She has only wanted to be a mother and a wife and sees that future with Bakul, a handsome young diplomat who promises her that he can take her away from the dullness and drudgery –and from Bim and Raja’s domineering attitudes. And Bim is more certain than ever that she will not marry and give up her freedom. Dr. Biswas’s comment to her that she is “self-sacrificing” frustrates her because her choice not to marry is due to the fact that she is creating a life she wants, not nobly deciding to remain a spinster so she can give Raja and Baba their lives.
By now it is clear that one of Desai’s major strengths as a writer is delving into the psyches of her characters. She explores the nuances of their thoughts and feelings, how they react when someone says something or does something to them. She, as critic Madhusudan Prasad writes, “resorts generously to imagery to vivify psychic states as well as the distinctively individual consciousness of her highly sensitive, introverted characters and the complexities of human relationships, scenes and situations, resulting in a remarkable textural density.” Prasad identifies the most common types of imagery in her novels as those related to botany, zoology, meteorology, nature, and color. In Clear Light of Day Desai repeats the imagery of the green scummy well, the predatory bees that attack Bim, Hyder Ali’s glorious white horse, and Aunt Mira’s nightmarish, disintegrating bodily and mental state. The pond is associated with the Das household in its ability to make people languid, slow, and bored. Hyder Ali’s empty house is a potent image of the abandonment Bim will later face after Raja and Tara leave. The slow snail is also related to Bim: “for it is Bim who sacrifices the pleasures of life remains single and works hard, like a ‘snail’ or a ‘Sisyphus.’” Prasad concludes his article by noting how functional Desai’s imagery is, and how “her artistic image patterns, singularized by subtle interrelations and continuity, act on our imagination with tremendous cumulative force. Creating a mosaic of textural density in almost all her novels, Desai’s imagery is wedded to rich lyricism.”
