Triveni Journal

1927 | 11,233,916 words

Triveni is a journal dedicated to ancient Indian culture, history, philosophy, art, spirituality, music and all sorts of literature. Triveni was founded at Madras in 1927 and since that time various authors have donated their creativity in the form of articles, covering many aspects of public life....

Conquest of Self in “Clear Light of Day”

V. L. V. N. Narendra Kumar

The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance: - Shakespeare, The Tempest

Anita Desai has added a new and significant dimension to Indian fiction in English. What distinguishes her from other writers is her preoccupation with the explo­ration of the interior world. Probing deep into the bottomless pit of human psyche, she brings the hidden contours into to much sharper focus. Her protagonists are not static figures; they attempt to know themselves and in the process, undergo transformation leading to self-illumination. Sarah in Bye ­Bye, Blackbird accepts her husband’s decision as he realises that England does not have anything to offer her. Sita in Where shall we Go This Summer? accepts the role of a traditional wife ultimately as her myth of escape is exploded. Nanda Kaul’s catas­trophe in Fire On the Mountain is the outcome of her experiments with fantasy.

Clear Light of Day1 indicates the maturity that Anita Desai has attained. Bim, the Central character in the novel, envisages life as full of adventure. She as­pires to be a heroine and a rebel. But ironically, it is she who stays in the same place, doing the same dull routine and does not move beyond Old Delhi. She lives in the house she was born in and teaches in the college where she studied. However, she is not a highly strung and neurotic creature. The present does not torment her; what agonises her filters in from the past. She suffers the traumas neither of a shattered childhood nor an incompatible marriage. Tara, at first, feels that her sister is very contented, having everything she wanted in life. Yet before long, she becomes aware that Bim is no more and no less contented than herself. She is as angry, unhappy and frus­trated as the other in the family. But Bim, being a stoic, conceals her anguish. The lines from D. H. Lawrence’s “Ship of Death” reflect her death-wish.

From too much love ofliving
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanks giving
Whatever gods may be
That, no man lives forever,
That dead men rise up never;
That even the Weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

But Bim eventually masters this death-wish and comes to terms with herself.

For twenty years, she torments herself with the rejection, the desertion of Raja, her elder brother, whom she idealises with a near incestuous passion. Raja runs away to Hyder Ali in Hyderabad, leaving her in the crumbling house with an alcoholic aunt and a mentally retarded brother. She feels alienated as he marries Benazir, daughter of Hyder Ali and begets five chil­dren. He abdicates his responsibility completely and consequently, she experi­ences a sense of betrayal. She chooses an independent life, brushes aside suitors like Dr. Biswas: One Day, he says:

Now I understand why you do not wish to marry. You have dedicated your 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 (p. 97)


This is typical male point of view. But in fact she chooses to be independent, entirely out of her volition. She is too spir­ited and intelligent to conform to tradition. She refuses to accept a life which would be at the mercy of male order that surrounds her.

The irony is that it is her unconven­tionality, her mental alertness, which draws men to her. But she is unaware of this fascinating trait in her and this makes her all the more attractive. She has the typical masculine, traits of ease, nonchalance and an honest approach to life. All these traits combine to make her a unique figure. She receives admiration and approbation from one and all for her ideas. But still, she remains an intangible entity, not properly understood. People like Tara fail to compre­hend her fully. Tara is also aware of the admiration that her sister generates in men

He (Bakul) had always admired Bim, even if she infuriated him often, and Tara sensed this admiration in the murky air. She sensed it with a small prick of jealousy - a minute prick that simply reminded her how very close she was to Bakul, how entirely dependent on him for her own calm and happiness (p. 150)

Bim’s heroic acceptance of the fam­ily and motherhood becomes central to the novel. In a way, she embodies Anita Desai’s vision of the new Indian woman. Unlike most Indian girls, she opts out of marriage for a life of chosen spinsterhood to pursue a career and a way of life which she accepts gracefully despite its limitations. She re­fuses to play the conventional role of a sex-object and of a submissive wife and be­comes, in a sense, a truly liberated woman. Her life stands in sharp contrast to the ordinary, mundane life of Tara. Her child­hood dream of becoming a heroine comes true. She faithfully follows her ideal and by deciding to sacrifice the happiness of a mar­ried life, she gladly pays the heavy price required for accomplishing it. She plays the roles of Florence Nightingale and Joan of Arc within the boundaries of domestic sphere. When she is young, she nurses her brother Raja who is down with tuberculosis and treats her ailing aunt with utmost care and devotion. But she is disappointed when her aunt dies, and Raja deserts her apparently with an ambition which he later on forgets. Ultimately, she is left with her invalid brother Baba and spends her declining youth devot­edly looking after him. Thus Bim, unlike Raja, achieves success in realising her dream. She practises in her adult life what she dreams of in her childhood.

After his daughter’s marriage is fixed, Raja sends an invitation to Tara in which he does not even mention Bim’s name. Bim, who is like a foster-mother to Raja, is hurt and it deepens her old rancour against Raja, reminding her of his letter in which he hints at raising the rent of the house. She also realises how time has ravaged the old affections of the childhood and created a changed pattern of relationship in the fam­ily. One night, the realisation which has been eluding her, dawns upon her all of a sudden, considerably lightening her bur­den. She discovers that Raja is no hero at all. She realises this truth when she re-reads his poems and letters stored in her study for twenty years. He is a mere imitator, an effete romantic and she clothes him in a hero’s mantle by mistake. He repeats what Byron, Swinburne and Iqbal said without quite understanding what romanticism es­sentially meant. She feels relieved as the debris accumulated from the past is cleared away. She attains a new awareness and her self-knowledge makes her trample down the false romantic image of her brother. Says Shanta Krishnaswamy: “Her changed per­ceptions, her new awareness does not mean that she is out of the woods yet.”2Her ordi­nary working life, her routine of teaching at college, comes to be of great help in main­taining her sanity. Her spirit and her profession help her to be a whole same being, against all odds. She reflects:

While she worked, she felt a sharp, fiery pining for college to re-open and her ordinary working life to be resumed. Then she would be able to end all this storm of emotion in which she had been dragged and forth all summer as in a vast, warm ocean, and return to what she did best, most efficiently, with least expense of spirit - the keeping to a schedule, the following of a time ­table, the application of the mind to facts, figures, rules and analyses (p.169)

One night, before going to bed, Bim reads The Life of Aurangzeb. She makes a contrast between her own life and that of the Mughal Emperor. Aurangzeb’s last words also become the mirror in which she sees the course of her own life. Aurangzeb says in a letter to his son:

Many were around me when I was born, but now I am going alone. I know not why I am or wherefore I came into the world ... Life is transient and the lost moment never comes ... When I have lost hope in myself, how can I hope in others? Come what will, I have launched my bark upon the waters ... (p. 167)

She dismisses Aurangzeb as an ex­ample of ego-centricity and in dismissing him, she also throws out from herself a past of hate and bitterness. It is not only a mo­ment of realisation but also one of reconciliation. For her, it is a rare moment of illumination. The lines stick in her mind, filling her eyes with tears of repentance. That fateful night, she tears off all the old papers and letters, including the offensive and unpardonable letter of Raja that tor­mented her for many years, in a forgiving state of mind. All her tormenting emotions ­anger, guilt, fear and remorse get spent, making her realise that she has plumbed the depths of time - “time present and the past.” She forgives Raja. When Tarn, Bakul and their children finally start for Hyderabad, Bim says to her sister, with genuine eager­ness: “Tell him I’m – I’m waiting for him - I want him to come - I want to see him” (p. 176), A critic very aptly observes: “This also marks her transition from hatred to love, from alienation to accommodation, from re­jection to acceptance, from egotism to altruism.”

In that moment of awakening and recognition, she makes an evaluation of her own self and rejects all that has hindered her growth into a truly liberated soul. Towards the end of the novel, Bim attends the music programme arranged at Misra’s where Mulk’s guru sings. She marks the difference between Mulk’s “sweet and clear voice” and his guru’s sharp voice mingled with ‘sharpness’, ‘bitterness,’ ‘passion’ and ‘frus­tration.’ She draws the inference that both Mulk and his guru “belonged to the same school and had the same style of singing and there was this similarity despite the gulf between them” (p. 182), This inference, charged with profound significance, offers her a vital clue that finally resolves her emotional crisis. She realises that she, after all, belongs to Raja, Tara and Baba, “despite the gulf” between her and them. It is difficult to disagree with Shanta Acharya when she says: “The renewal of the self in another pattern is the theme of Clear Light of Day” 4

In the novel, Bim outshines the other characters. She is a genuine heroic figure, who, despite her limitations, succeeds in looking after the needs of Baba and running the house. She swims against the tide and in the end, forgives her brother. Thus the novel ends on a note of reconciliation. Her resolu­tion to affirm the significance of sustaining motherhood beyond the traditional limitations is suggested in her relationship with Baba. She seeks her wholeness and fulfilment in looking after her mentally retarded brother. Thus she becomes a surrogate mother to Baba.

There is a striking similarity be­tween Fire on the Mountain and Clear Light of Day. Both Nanda Kaul and Bim are abandoned women. They are obsessed with the past and it is this obsession that plunges them into intense suffering. Nanda Kaul is betrayed by her children whereas Bim is let down by her brother Raja. If Nanda Kaul lives like a ‘recluse’ at Carignano, a secluded place, trying to swal­low the bitter experience of the past, Bim lives in the decaying Old Delhi, “a great cemetery.” However, Bim, unlike Nanda Kaul, succeeds in bridging the gap between the aspiration and reality. She eventually realises that love alone redeems and keeps a human being sane and whole. It is this realisation that saves her from disaster.

Referring to the excellence of the novel, Prof. Walsh remarks: “The rhythm of the movement between the restless search for release from the confinement of the single image of self and the solicitude to keep inviolate the integrity of another self is what we feel pulsing through Clear Light of Day 5 Bim is a finely etched figure, standing way ahead of the other women in the fic­tional world of Anita Desai. She is a being with positive responses to life. She is the novelist’s study of the intelligent woman’s psyche, the woman who is aware of her potentialities and sense of direction. She is a hapless quester who fails in her quest to conquer the world. But in the process, she conquers herself and achieves inner equilib­rium. Thus Bim’s conquest of self becomes the leitmotif of the novel.

REFERENCES

1 Desai, Anita, Clear Light of Day. (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1980)
All subsequent references are to this edition and are indicated parentheti­cally in the text.
2 Krishnaswamy, Shanta, Glimpses of Women in India, (New Delhi: Ashish Publishing House 1983) p. 278.
3 Sarma, R.S. Anita Desai, (New Delhi: Arnold - Heinnmann, 1981) p. 147.
4 Acharya, Shanta, “Problems of the self in the novels of Anita Desai”, Exploration in Modern Indo-English Fiction Ed. R.K. Dhawan, (New Delhi: Bahri Publications, 1982) p. 249.
5 Walsh, William, Indian Literature in English, (London: Longman, 1990) p. 115.

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