Pages 50-100

The deveolpment of the plot is quite masterful. All the realtionships within the family are touched upon, but thus far, the central character for this section appears to be Bim. It focuses on all the developments which seem to all happen so suddenly and how it is Bimla who then steps up as the binding character, almost a foundation attempting to keep everything balanced. Both their fateher and mother have died causing some amount of turmoil.
Within these pages one see's a development and change in Raja's character. He becomes so adjusted and settled in his ways of love for the culture and traditions of the Hyder Ali, that he assumes a new found confidence with it. Thus, when he falls ill, he is most taken aback by the prospect of losing his only tie to the culture he had grown to love, and the rebellion he was ready to show to the members of his own culture. The Hyder Ali was like the ideal father to him.
Tara has a shy aura and her difference from the others is revealed from the flashbacks to their childhood where her career of choice was to be a mother, in comparison to Bimla and Raja's choice to be a Heroine and hero. She begins to often go out, and it was from one such occasion that she brought, Bakul, her husbancd to be. In Bim's opinion he is very 'smooth' and boring, in his own opinion, he was taking Tara away from an environment of troubles.
Baba is shown to be very shy and in the journey to Hyder Ali's house, has found a new love in a gramophone and some old records. Things which, over time, will be the elements and only signs of his personality and presence or his whole existance.
Aunt MiraMasi has become degraded to the verge of insanity over time because of her worry from the loss the children's parents. She was on her own to control and maintain some form of stability but she felt the world crumble more, and a sense of failure and resentment about Baba's delicate situation, being disabled; Raja's insistance on something so very dangerous and life threatening and well as falling seriously ill, Tara being taken away and married off, Bimla's attending college, and her own aging. She was overwhelmed and felt small and so she felt some sort of satisfaction from turning to alcohol. She becomes so much of an addict, that it kills her.
Bimla has a very hard time with trying to take care of everybody as well as satisfy everybody. She find herself assuming the position of head of the home before she was ready. She had to put her college studies on hold and constantly tend to and look about everyone in the house. Miramasi becomes caught up in her own mind, Tara in Bakul, Raja about the Hyder Ali, that Bimla is forced to take the responsibility of family. When romance walks into her life in the form of dr Biswas, she is not welcoming and on the day of meeting his mother, and the discovery of Gahndi's death, she proves all his efforts in vain, running back to her home where she reassumes the only role she has grown to know, the guardian and servant of her household.