She lives in her childhood home in Old Delhi and takes care of the members of her household

primarily concerned with the Das family, but the Das siblings often compare their situation to that of other families such as the Alis and the Misras.

You’re thinking how old spinsters go ga-ga over their pets because they haven’t children. Children are the real thing, you think.

Das house has an old ____ in its backyard where the children are not allowed to go, for fear of them falling into it.

"To tell the truth, he was exhausted and could feel his temperature rising. It was as heavy as lead but it rose, as inexorably as the mercury in a thermometer"

Bim's younger brother

A major part of the book is dedicated to the early years of the Das siblings and to how that period shaped their current lives.

But it was all just dust thrown into his eyes, dust.

When Bim and Tara try on Raja's _______, they are shocked at how powerful and liberated they feel.

"sinking languidly down into the passive pleasure of having returned to the familiar—like a pebble, she had been picked up and hurled back into the pond, and sunk down through the layer of green scum...why was the pond so muddy and stagnant? Why had nothing changed?"

She marries Bakul as a young woman and leaves India

The Das siblings are constantly trying to escape their immediate surroundings.

Most of the time we simply sat there on the veranda steps, staring at the gate.

The characters often remark on the heat, and they associate multiple elements of the season with different events.

"almost, that she could lower herself into that dark tunnel, and slip along behind the passage made for her by the older, the dying woman"

He is mentally underdeveloped, and thus entirely dependent on Bim

Bim and Tara are often compared to each other, and characters often express their opinion on one or the other based on their docility.

To Tara he could speak in a different tone. From Tara he got a different response. He looked at her fondly, like an indulgent father.

they learned to ignore their absence and later began to enjoy it so much that the presence of the car in the driveway after their death made them uncomfortable.

"Isn't it strange how life won't flow, like a river, but moves in jumps, as if it were held back by locks that are opened now and then to let it jump forwards in a kind of flood?"

He is the landlord of multiple houses in Delhi, including the Das'

One of Bim's major struggles in the novel is her inability to forgive Raja.

Together they would form a whole that would be perfect and pure.

Baba plays old music records all day in the house, repeating the same songs over and over again.

There is no life, no change, and no vitality.