Gently Falls the Bakula

Title: Gently Falls the Bakula

Author: Sudha Murthy

Genre: Fiction, Light Drama

Written originally in Kannada some thirty years back, this small fiction by Sudha Murthy is the tale of a lower middle class couple from North Karnataka and their struggle to find their own individuality. Srikanth and Srimati are neighbors in Hubli, their houses separated by a not-so-beautiful-but-still-so ‘bakula’ tree. Both of them are the treat of the school each standing first or second in the class. Childhood competition slowly culminates into romance inspite of rivalries between the two families. While Srikanth goes to ‘Bombay’ to study in IIT; Srimati, who was incidentally academically better than him stayed back to study her passion for history. They get married and while Srikanth rises meteorically in his career, Srimati has a hard time discovering her true purpose of existence. And hence begin a struggle of a brilliant house wife to find her own happiness.

The book is written in a very simple language and though the subject matter deals with emotions of every day life of a couple, it fails to keep the reader interested in the subject. We see these kind of stories everyday now. In daily soaps and in the neighborhood. The story is definitely short and precise but in the end you will feel that it’s incomplete. I won’t say more tragedy would have done any justice to the novel. But somehow, one is unable to feel the emotions that Srimati goes through. The choice of words and the simple writing style may well be the bane of this novel.

What one can understand from this novel though is that there is a perspective to everything. Men who have to earn a family’s bread have to be ambitious and hard-working and motivated but do they have the right to neglect their family in the process? Women have to manage a home and take care of the kids but do they really lose their own integrity in the process? The book raises societal questions. And though no one turns out to be wrong, the question of who is right and whose sacrifice is greater than the other looms. This book is hence a debate between men and women. Perspective, as it is, always ends in a question mark.