Clear Light of Day Compendium

Passages:

“’Now New Delhi they say is different. That is where things happen. The way they describe it, it sounds like a nest of fleas. So much happens there, it must be a jumping place. I never go. Baba never goes. And here, nothing happens at all. Whatever happened, happened long ago… Anyone who isn’t dull and grey goes away – to New Delhi, to England, to Canada, the Middle East. They don’t come back.’

‘I must be peculiar then,’ Tara’s voice rose bravely. ‘I keep coming back.’” 5.

“That he hasn’t forgotten, or lost touch with the way things are here. If you lose touch, then you can’t represent your country, can you?” 5.

“Even the cat was transfixed by the spectacle and sat back on her haunches, staring at him with eyes that were circles of sharp green glass.” 8.

"It was a family dictum that Raja was a poet and wrote great poetry." 25.

(What are my characters' family dictums? What are mine?)

"'Fate -- they talk about Fate What is it?' He struck his head dramatically. 'This fate?'

'What is it uncle? Does it pain?' Bim asked because his face, normally as smooth and as bland as butter, was furrowed and gleaming with sweat.

He sank back, sighing 'Nothing, nothing Bimla, my daughter, it is only old age. Just fate and old age and none of us escapes from either. You won't. You don't know, you don't think -- and then suddenly it is there, it has come When it comes, you too will know.'" 32. 

"Raja also had the faculty of coming alive to ideas, to images picked up in the books he read... the sisters, however, read themselves not into a blaze but a stupor, sinking lower and lower under the dreadful weight of Gone with the Wine and Laura Doone, their eyes growing glazed so that they seemed to read through an opaque film and the stories and characters never quite emerged into the bright light of day and only made vague, blurred impressions on their drowsy, drugged minds, rather than vivid and clear-cut ones. They hadn't the vitality that Raja had, to participate in what they read -- they were passive receivers, bulging with all they read, sinking with its weight like water-logged rafts." 120.

Themes:

The idea of home/an origin, those who stay/return vs. those who leave. Otherworldliness. Old vs. New. 

One of the more subtle themes I loved was language, brought to light when Raja chooses to study Urdu instead of Hindi (47) and finds it better suited for poetry. A person might find themself drawn to a particular language, and in the case of my current project, there is a lot of significance in that. 

Separation: Raja leaves, India is divided.