The Journey Of Life In Anita Desai's Clear Light Of Day

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Clear Light of Day (1980) is a family drama, which describes the predicament of a post-partition Indian family. The setting of the novel is in the family house in Old Delhi. The novel is divided into four parts that covers the Das family; focused on the second generation: Bim, Raja, Tara and Baba. The plot in the novel traces the journey of life from their childhood to adulthood, and also the historical period of British India and post-independent India. With her ability to craft the world with words, Anita Desai symbolically and allegorically represents bigger world (the national concerns) through the portrayal of the smallest unit (the Das family).
Desai is a woman interested in feelings, in what people experience within the family sphere. Her novels usually do not present many actions and adventures, but she portrays Indian lives and social structures. She criticizes the flaws of Indian society by painting small scenes of everyday life; she shows the reader how society works and how it can put pressure on people, sometimes to the point of destroying individuals. She is more interested in the inner self of an individual rather than the vast world of politics. Relating a story of deteriorating middle-class Indian family in postcolonial Old Delhi, Clear Light of Day is described by a haunting, frigid and gloomy atmosphere, particularly in the Das family (Batts, 2011).
Here, Desai tries to allegorize the condition of India during the political unrest. Using the family as miniature for larger national concerns, the novel traces the tensions of the Hindu family. The chief protagonist Bim, who is burdened with caring for autistic brother Baba and Aunt Mira, represents Indian culture, while Tara, wife of an ambassador, represents the W...

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...th the realization of time being the mighty “destroyer and preserver.” Bim after attending the musical concert, eventually realize that no matter how vast the difference each individual possess they belonged together, as one and as family. Through their family and their surrounding environment it is revealed how India dealt with the partition of 1947. Desai gives her readers a sense that, just like Bim and her family, had Hindu and Muslim taken a little more effort to understand each other and work out their misunderstandings, the scenario at present would have been different. Through the final realization and reconciliation of the Das family members and through the allegorical significance of the title Clear Light of Day, the matters at the level of Das Family and the political unrest of India in 1947 goes parallel, because the ‘time’ has healed the wounds that it

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