Clear Light of Day

Chapter 3 travels even further back in time to the Das siblings’ childhood and the birth of the baby brother Baba. The ayah, or nursemaid, was unable to cope with Baba’s needs, and the bourgeois parents were too busy playing cards at the club to attend to him, so they sent for a distant and impoverished relation to care for the child. Aunt Mira was a child bride widowed at 15 and functioning as a servant to her in-laws. Married at 12, she still had never had sex when her husband died, for he had gone to England to study shortly after their marriage. She is a kind and attentive surrogate mother, caring not only for Baba but also for the other Das children, who are largely ignored by their parents. She also adopts the cat Bim cares for in the first section of the novel. The family obtains a cow to provide fresh milk for the children, but the cow drowns in the well and her calf dies of grief.

The narrator relates details from the three older siblings’ childhoods. Bim and Raja contract typhoid, and Mira nurses them back to health.