ROLE OF MUSIC IN CLEAR LIGHT OF DAY

To the three dimensions of space, time and character, music adds a fourth. It gives Anita Desai s
Clear Light of Day a cohesive imprint and effects the amalgamation of the diverse elements of her
fiction. Desai s techniqueof stream of consciousness renders her novel a psychological flavour.
This is best appreciated when we focuson the musical background that foregrounds the theme. It
also colours the novel with a sensibility that vibratesthrough its hidden spaces. The verbal aspect of the
fiction is recreated and brought into life with the layers of music that surrounds it and also pierces it.CLD
opens with the singing of Koels. The ever expanding voices calling each other and echoing through
thevacant spaces of time set the tune of the novel. It also closes with the musical rendering of Iqbal s
poetry which serves to integrate the divergent elements within and without.The novel centres round
the Das family. Bim and Tara, the two sisters, meet after years. It is through their reminiscences
that we are introduced into the complex relationships that make the very texture of the novel.Left
alone with Baba, his autistic brother, Bim struggles through the course of her life which appears to
be adull and monotonous continuity. The emotional chasm with her brother, once so close to her, has
a canceroushold on her and parallels the national history with the cleavage of a single nation into
two distinct identities.Music becomes a panacea of all these deeper disturbances and aligns with
each character in its own terms.Baba is introduced through music of the forties evoking the period
in which the novel is set. The numbers he plays point to a trap that he is enmeshed in due to his
disability. His old records with scratches and hismysterious silence in the enclosed bubble of his
dreamy world evoke the spectacle of the decaying old Delhi.Desai weaves in the strain of neocolonialism which runs as a reality in the post-independent India. The East-West encounter is
depicted by her through music. Biswas loves Western classical music and his mother lovesRabindra
sangeet. Similarly, in the Das household, we hear Western songs and in their neighbours Ali
and Misra s we hear Indian Classical music. Whereas, Baba draws the sustenance of his life through music, for
theMisras it is both a source of entertainment and livelihood.The main theme of the novel is brought
out most effectively in the last scene when Mulk Misra, one of theMisra brothers, and his ageing
guru sing at a soiree . Bim and Baba are invited and they attend it. Bim realisesthat the harmonious
relationship between the old and the young, the guru and his young disciple establishes a possibility of a
meaningful interaction between past and present, old and youth. She perceives continuity inhistory
which gave them the soil in which to hand down their roots. Music thus, in the course of the
novel,integrates the individual with the family, society and culture and synthesizes the divergent
elements that liewithin and without. It becomes symbolic of the intuitive understanding of oneself,
and of the reality that liessubmerged under appearances