Clear Light of Day

The story returns to the present, with Bim and Tara still in the family garden. It opens from the perspective of Tara, who has begun to realize how much the family’s house and finances have degenerated. She worries that Bim, who is only five years older, has begun to get old and may not be capable of taking care of herself and the household. Despite the painful way Bim often treated her when they were children, Tara cannot free herself from the guilt of the bee incident—when a hive of bees attacked Bim in the Lodi Gardens and Tara, as she remembers it, ran away and left her sister alone with the bees. Bim barely remembers the incident, but for Tara it marks an important moment in her relationship with her sister—an abandonment that stands in her imagination for larger abandonments to come. Bim deflects Tara’s guilt—in her memory, Tara ran for help, not to escape. They discuss the upcoming wedding, and Bim tells Tara she is “bored of Raja” and that “rich, fat and successful people are boring” (145). Bim becomes angry and defensive because of Tara’s talk of Raja’s opulent life. She thinks her sister is “cruel” and “cold” and her brother is “selfish” to have excluded her from this life and left her the responsibility of running the family business and household. She becomes further angered that Raja is not attending the business meetings, trying again to get Baba to attend. She knows the other trustees resent her female presence.

Tara begins preparing for the arrival of her daughters and for their upcoming trip. She tries to discuss Bim’s situation with her husband, but he is only interested in the logistics of his train travel. Bim decides to sell the family business, but neither Bakul nor her neighbor Jaya is interested in discussing the matter. Bim’s anger has been growing all day, and she releases it on the hapless Baba. Realizing she has crossed a line, Bim is scared that she has upset him, but when he awakens from his nap, he is the same smiling person. Her outburst leads to an epiphany: She realizes that her family is part of her, and that she needs to repair her relationship with her brothers in order to be whole herself. She also realizes that Raja had not wanted to be a hero, but rather to mimic the heroes of his childhood.

Tara’s girls arrive and Bim’s relationship with her nieces is relaxed and loving. While she does not attend the wedding, she tells Tara to bring Raja back with her for a family visit. Bim also realizes how similar she and her sister are. Bim and Baba attend a musical concert in their neighbor’s garden, and the event reminds Bim of the old days before Independence and the Partition. Mulk—the youngest of the Misra brothers—performs along with his guru, and Bim is reminded of a quote from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets: “Time is the destroyer time is the preserver” (183).