Clear Light of Day

“Her mother had not liked exercise, perhaps not the new baby either.”

Even as a young child, Tara recognizes that her then-pregnant mother is not happy about the arrival of another child. This recognition speaks to the sense of abandonment the Das children felt from their largely absent parents. It also highlights the degree to which the expectation of motherhood could be a burden to women in a patriarchal society.

 “As she stared, a petal rose and tumbled onto its back, and she saw uncovered the gleam of a—a pearl? a silver ring? Something that gleamed, something that flashed, then flowed—and she saw it was her childhood snail slowly, resignedly making its way from under the flower up a clod of earth only to tumble off the top onto its side—an eternal, miniature Sisyphus.”

The adult Tara is in the garden, re-enacting a scene from her childhood. There is initially the wonder of a child believing she might find a treasure hidden in the earth. Then she realizes that it is the same snail from her childhood, and that nothing has changed, just like nothing in the household or family has changed. There is a direct allusion to the classical Sisyphus, punished by the gods for trying to cheat death. There is a more indirect echo of Virginia Woolf’s classic Modernist short story “Kew Gardens” (1919) which follows the travels of a snail through a garden.

“Baba came out for his tea. He did not look as if he could be held responsible for any degree of noise whatsoever. Coming out into the veranda, he blinked as if the sun surprised him. He was in his pyjamas—an old pair with frayed ends, over which he wore a grey bush-shirt worn and washed almost to translucency. His face, too, was blanched, like a plant grown underground or in deepest shade, and his hair was quite white, giving his young, fine face a ghostly look that made people start whenever he appeared.”

The incessant record playing that annoys Bakul and Tara anticipates Baba’s physical appearance in the garden. Ironically, his appearance does not match the noise he creates.