more time than she can bear, he accepts her rage—and she realizes she has targeted him because he can't fight back. This burst of rage enables Bim to experience self-awareness and awareness of the value as well as the burden of family that she has bitterly born all these years. Baba's presence helps her, if inadvertently, to finally start coming to grips with the past that haunts her.

Let us remember that Baba, who is a minor character in this excellent story, is characterised by his obsession with his 1947 record collection and seems to be trapped in the past. Baba is a character who is almost psychologically incapacitated through his inability to engage with the present. He spends his time listening to his records and playing games by himself, and the wedding that is occurring seems to be something that he is unable to engage with or even understand.

However, the importance of Baba's presence becomes clear when we compare him to Bim. Both characters are trapped in 1947 and have not been able to advance. In addition, through his repeated playing of his 1947 record collection, Baba causes Bim to constantly replay the events that happened during that year just as he replays his records. However, the difference between Baba and Bim is that Bim does not find this repetition of past events comforting. It only serves to exacerbate her grief and to strengthen her self-righteousness. Baba therefore is a minor character whose presence allows us to understand Bim, a central character, better. He therefore could be said to act as a foil of Bim, highlighting her dis-ease with the past by his ease with it.

Clear Light of Day centers around the conflicted relationship of Tara and Bim, two Indian sisters who have made very different choices in life. Tara, the wife of a succesful though demanding diplomat, returns to her childhood town in Old Delhi, where it appears that nothing has changed. There, she reconnects with her sister Bim, who stayed in India to tend the family business and look after their mentally retarded brother Baba. As Tara and Bim deal with the tensions in their relationship and the political and social changes of their community, Baba seems oblivious to it all. Baba plays the same handful of 1940's English language records over and over again throughout the day. Baba represents the mental, emotional and social stagnation that occurs when you refurse to move forward in life. He is stuck in the past and unable to address the needs of his own present. Baba is not equipped with the emotional or mental tools to make his life better. Instead, he must depend on the sense of duty or charity of those around him (Bim in particular). Not dealing with the pain of one's own past, or the uncertainty of one's own future, leads to regression to a child-like state of helplessness. Baba serves as a constant reminder of that unpleasant possibility.