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Clear Light of the Day is a novel about the Das family consisting of the parents, Raja, Baba, a mentally retarded boy, the eldest sister Bim, the younger Tara and a distant poor relative, Mira Masi. The novel covers long span of time covering both British India, a post-independence India. Mr. Das, a well-off cultural officer of an insurance company, dies prematurely of heart-attack. But his death doesn’t matter because he hardly gave any time to children. During his life time he passed his days in the office evening at the club. For the mother, her Roshanara club is far more precious than her home. She is preoccupied with her dressing-up, her bridge and her diabetes.  Father earns a living pays the bills and signs the admission forms of the children to next higher class. Neither feels responsible towards the young ones: they are left to fend for them. There is hardly any exchange between the children and the parents. With the arrival of Aunt Mira, the children experience a certain measure of love and warmth that their lives had lacked.  Bim and Raja though quite content to have aunt Meera around, were not entirely contained in the self-diffident love of the Aunt. They bore great resentment against their parents: “day after day and year after year till their death,” their parents sent the time, “Playing bridge with friends like themselves, mostly silent… now and the speaking those names and numbers that remained a mystery to he children who were not allowed within the room while a game was in progress… 

Raja used to swear that one day he would leap up onto the table in a lion- mask, brandishing a torch, and set fire to their paper-world of theirs, whiled Bim flashed her sewing scissors in the sunlight and declared she would creep in secretly at night and strip all the cards in to bits. ButTara simply sucked her finger and retreated down The veranda to Aunt Mira’s rooms where she could always touch herself… It would hafrightened her a bit if they had come away, followed her and tried to communicate with her”[3]

After their parents’ death, being the eldest member of the family, Bim assumes the role of a father, taking care of brothers and sisters and later marrying them. She is so pre-occupied with family responsibilities that she has no time for her own love and life. Even though she has an affair with a doctor who becomes her family doctor and it appears that they would be engaged yet somehow things do not happen that way. The irony of the novel is that in spite of her sacrifice at the familial altar everyone is busy in his or her family and she gets nothing but acrimony and bitterness. Being deprived of warmth of human relationship or familial relationship ,books are her only solace and refuge. Anita Desai’s protagonists brought up to be diffident, meek and quiet in the face of exploitation, are yet highly sensitive and intelligent and are desperate to find an outlet to their pangs. Their extreme sensitivity, however, channelies their mode of liberation in various directions. Clear Light of the Day is chosen to evince and examine the wide space that divides that two type of women hailing from the same family… the woman who do not act but surrender and so keep the tradition alive and next Bim the chief protagonist of Anita Desai chooses not to surrender and be meek but breaks the convention to face the situation and take up a new road where no one can dictate to her. Her ambition is two-fold; to be emotionally and economically independent. Through role-reversal and not through self warping, she takes on the task of race upliftment. Her desire for self-sufficiency enables her to refute masculine power. She defeats the patriarchal forces in various ways.  She not only obliterates the memory of the biological father but also dwarfs the masculine power.

Bim, the protagonist of the novel of ''Clear Light of the Day'', is the  eldest of all, shoulders upon herself all the burden of the family. After her father’s death she accepts the role of a father taking care of her sisters and brothers and later marrying them. Due to the responsibilities she has no time for her own love and life even though she has an affair with a doctor who later on becomes her family doctor. She explores her solace andrefuge into books. At a superficial level, such women may be seen as “westernised”. Madhusudan Prasad, commenting on this image points out,

“This image combined with the image of Sisyphus, is replete with deeper symbolic significance. A momentous image, it is connected with the theme of the novel illuminating the real character of Bim.”[4]

Anita Desai does no describe the childhood of her character at length, but occasional references to childhood conditions and their reminiscences confirm her belief that childhood impressions are lasting and they affect the development of personality.  

Many factors damage the sense of self-reliance, such as dominating parents, partial, irritable, over-indulgent or hypocritical elders. Consequently a child fails to relate himself to others and develops some strategy diverts his constructive emerges towards alleviating his basic anxiety. There are other victims of an unhappy and detrimental home environment in Anita Desai: the Das brother and sisters in Clear Light of the Day;  whereas the tragedy of the Dases is alleviated and averted with the benign presence of Mira Masi, home and a family, if presence of parents and a roof overhead is the notion. Parent-child partnership is essential because man is not a readymade being. He is moulded by his circumstances and his choices. Unfortunate home atmosphere makes the question of “choices” impossible for the Das children. Bim, the protagonist, doesn’t like to think her past as it has been wholly unsavoury. She asks Tara tauntingly,

“You wouldn’t want to return to life as it used to be, would you?… All that dullness, boredom, waiting. Would you care to live that over again?  Of course not. Do you know anyone who would-- secretly, sincerely, in his innermost self--really prefer to return to childhood?”

This bitterness indicated her tortured vision of the world against the backdrop of a malevolent home. She wishes to flee it by denying its reality. Bim the worst sufferer withdraws into herself and wishes to shut all doors to the past and the future. Clear Light of the Day doesn’t seem to have a tangible story. Bim tells her younger sister, Tara, about “All that dullness, boredom, and waiting”[5]. She links up the boredom of her home with that of old Delhi: “Old Delhi does not change. It only decays.”[6] The petrified condition in which the whole family lives makes them feel as if they are wallowing in a “pond so muddy a stagnant.”[7]  Bim says: “Here we are lift rocking on the back waters, getting duller and greyer everyday.”[8]  Bimla, the central consciousness in Clear Light of the Day, where self is wounded by the callow behaviour of her parents and her brother very often compare her relations and their memory to mosquitoes. The following excerpts from her reminiscence clarify her feeling:

The memory came whining out of the dark like a mosquito, dangling its ling legs and bovering just out of reach.[9]

The mosquitoes that night were like the thoughts of the day embodied in monster form, invisible in the dark but present everywhere, most of all in and around the ears, piercingly audible.[10]

They had come like mosquitoes--- Tara, and Bakul, and behind them the Misras, and some where in the distance Raja and Benazir--- only to torment her and, mosquito--- like, sip her blood. All of them fed on her blood, at sometime or the other had fed--- it must have been good blood, sweet and nourishing. Now, when they were fully, they rose in swarms, humming away, turning their backs on her”.[11]

The above citations suggest the pattern of Bimla’s feelings. Ironically enough, she doesn’t articulate her feelings. But Dr. Biswas, who comes to treat Raja, diagnoses Bimal’s predicament. Although the narrator seems to think that Dr. Biswas misunderstand Bim, we are not wrong in inferring that somewhere in her consciousness Bim’s frustration crystallizes itself into tine spot, which gradually develops in to a perpetual and unhealed wound.The domestic disharmony that often stifles and chokes Bim’s adventurous spirit has as its objective correlative the fortunes of two girls, Jaya and Sarla: in the Misras boys. Bimla says:

“The wives wanted the new life; they wanted to be modern women. I think they wanted to move into their own separate homes, in New Delhi, and cut their hair short and give card parties, or open boutiques or learn modelling. They can’t stand our sort of Old Delhi life--- the way the Misras vegetable here in the bosom of the family.  So they spend as much time as they can away”.[12]

Though Bim comment refers to the Misras boys it applies with equal force to her parents, her brother and sister. Moreover, Bim’s resolve not to marry is firmly rooted in her emanate desire to be self-sufficient and self-dependent by refusing to accept the chain of matrimony she tries to interpret the female conduct formula and refuse. The following conversation between Bim and Tara about the Misras girls illustrates the point:

The mother wanted them to be married soon. She said, “she married when she was twelve and Jaya and Sarla are already sixteen and seventeen years old”.“But they are not educated yet,” Bim said sharply. “They haven’t any degrees. They should go to college,” she insisted. “Why?” said Tara… “Why?” repeated Bim indignantly, “Why, because they might find marriage isn’t enough to last them the whole of their lives”, she said darkly, mysteriously. “What else could there be?” countered Tara. “I mean”, she fumbled, “for them”.“What else?” asked Bim. “Can’t you think?  I can think of hundreds of things to do instead. I won’t marry”, she added, very firmly.  Tara glanced at her sideways with a slightly sceptical smile.

 “I won’t”, repeated Bim, adding “I shall never leave Baba and Raja and Mira Masi”.[13] Tara, who has not been able to outgrow her childhood completely, feels to be “an eternal, miniature Sisyhus.”[14]  Most of their problems they inherited from their parents who spent time playing bridge with friends like themselves.Their paper-world had a sapping effect on the children.They were:

“sucked down into the silent centre of a deep, shadowy vortex while they floated on the surface, staring down into the underworld, their eyes popping with incomprehension.”[15]

Bim, never attempts to attain sainthood; her inner life sometime petty, sometime bobble, is imaginatively portrayed by Anita Desai. Through role reversal, she takes on the talk of race upliftment.  Her “social quest”, and not “spiritual quest”[16], enables her to refute masculine power.If she is “brisk, practical, agile, firm, dominating and patronizing on the one hand”, she is also “abstract, sullen, stubborn, introspective, irritable and shadowy”[17].  Bim refuses to define herself through her husband (as women happily do), and does not consider marriage to be either the beginning or the end of her story.  Her desire for self-sufficiency becomes evident in her childhood when she decides to become a Florence Nightingale or Joan of Arc; her resolution, “I shall earn my own living a look after Mira Masi and Baba and --- and be independent”,[18] reveals her ambitions. It is symbolically uncovered through her preference for trousers.[19]  Independence normally denied to women can’t be denied to Bim. Her biological father, a shadowy figure, is only a remote bread-winner,[20] Raja the weak brother selfishly escapes the family burden; Baba the youngest brother is an imbecile; and Dr. Biswas, Bim’s one time suitor with spinsterish nerves”[21], disappears sensing Bim’s disapproval.  The inter-relation between Bim and other male characters is not even combative as they are non-entities. Reduction of male power is a typical method employed by women novelists to illustrate female power.

The novel throws some significant light on discards at various levels. Raja’s letter about house rent badly humiliates and hurts his sister. In the novel, quite few unbelievable incidents and developments take place.  Bim nurses Raja thinking that he would provide succour to the fatherless family.  But he tells his decision to Bim that he would go to Pakistan:

“I will go… go to… to Hyderabad. Hyder Ali Sahib has asked me to come... I …I will… go today… today I will catch the train… I won’t stop here, with you, another day.  It’s enough… enough”[22]

Again he asks her:

“You don’t want me to spend all my life down in this hole, do you?  You don’t think I can go on living just to keep my brother and sister company, do you?”[23]

Bim and Baba, the valid brother, are left behind to face the music. Bim’s pathetic conversation with Baba unfolds the disorganized state of the family.

“So now there are just you and I left, Baba,… Does the house seem empty to you?  Everyone is gone except you and I. they won’t come back. We’ll be alone now.”[24]

The novel, nevertheless, ends on a positive note. “Be strong.  Face challenges. Be decisive” seems to be one message of it. Forgiveness and dedication of one’s life to others can transfigure one’s life. Without them life “would remain flawed, damaged” for ever and “The wholeness of the pattern, its perfection, would be gone”[25].  This is aptly illustrated by the example of Bim.  Ironically enough, Bim… the most adventurous, strong sensitive and humane of the children… is left behind to take care of her childlike, speechless, artistic brother, Baba and their, aged aunt, dying in delirium tremens.  But the conclusion of Dr. Biswas:

“Now I understand why you do not wish to marry. You have dedicated you life to others --- to your sick brother and your aged aunt and your little brother who will be dependent on you all his life.  You have sacrificed your own life for them,”[26]

is horrifying to Bim.  She had not chosen the situation in which she had been caught:

“She even hissed slightly in her rage and frustration… at being so misunderstood, so totally misread, then gulped a little with laughter at such grotesque misunderstanding, and her tangled emotions twisted her face and shook her.”[27]

Outraged with the lack of any adequate response from anyone around her, Bim threatens to give up her responsibilities, because the problems around her need attention and she is not quite equipped to deal with it all. The arrival of a letter from their father’s office disturbs the routine of their lives, because it requires one of them to go to the office to attend a meeting.  She is reluctant to hold forth her compassion any longer, and with all her anger unappeased, she chooses Baba as her target:

“With my salary, I’ll be able to pay the rent, keep on the house I’ll  manage… but I might have sent you to live with Raja. I came to ask  you…- what would you think of that? ... Are you willing to go and live with Raja in Hyderabad?”[28]

She was taken aback at this fury of her own self.

“She had only walked in to talk to Baba --- cut down his defence and  demand some kind of a response from him, some kind of a justification from him for herself, her own life, her ways and attitudes, like a blessing from Baba. She had not known she would be led into making such a threat, or blackmailing Baba.  She was still hardly aware of what she had said only something seemed to slam inside her head, painfully, when she looked at Baba.”[29]

Baba did not say anything.  Perhaps, that is why she decided to address her anger to Baba and not to Raja, Tara or Bakul:

“She could have so easily drawn on answer out of them --- she already knew the answers they would have yielded up.”[30]

It was Baba’s silence and reserve and other worldliness that she had wanted to break open. Bim’s rage once appeased, she comes to the startling realization:

There could be no love more deep and full and wide than this one, she knew.No other love had started so far back in time and had  so much time in which to grow and spread. They were really all parts of her,inseparable, so many aspects of her as she was of them, so that the anger or the disappointment she felt in them was only the anger and disappointment she felt at herself.  Whatever hurt they felt, she felt.Whatever diminished them, diminished her. What attacked them attacked her.”[31]

After these words no doubts  what Bim has decided to play in her family; she acts as a provide, protector, and redeemer of her family members. Bim appears as new woman. She is independent and liberated only, yet there is no mark of arrogance of superiority in her.Bim is very clear about her aspirations ,urges and expectations, yet she is not the one to roll in pity about her alienation. If she felt cheated and stranded and thought Raja and Tara to be selfish.  She was ready to forgive them. She was ready to see every flaw of others in the light of understanding. She would have to forgive her parents too, towards whom she was resentful because she could not grasp disturbed atmosphere of their lives. Bim is able to obtain everything in life without the help of the masculine forces due to her confidence in herself. It is in Bim that we recognize the emerging new and independent woman that Simon de Beauvoir delineates: