Role of Bakul

 Bakul is the husband of Tara the younger Das sister. He met Tara for the first time while he was still a trainee in the Indian Foreign Service, at the Roshanara club. When the story of the novel begins we learn that Tara and Bakul are vesting Delhi. Together with Tara he has two daughters, who are to join the couple later.

There is no doubt that Bakul is a minor character in the novel, but in spite of this his contribution in the novel is significant. In him Desai creates a character who serves the purpose of giving the readers an outside perspective of the Das family. For the first time when we see him in the novel, he seems to be withdraw while in the company of Tara, Bim and Baba. The narrator tells us:

“While the two women sat upright and tense and seethed with unspoken speech, the two men seemed dehydrated, emptied out, with not a word to say about anything.”

He has no interest in sitting with his wife and her sister and brother. He gets bored and irritated sitting there and doing nothing. Desai also uses Bakul to highlight certain characteristics of Das sisters. Bakul notices the change in Tara’s behaviour, the moment she is with her own family, and it surprises her. Bakul tells Tara: “So, I only have to bring you home for a day, Tara, and you go back to being the hopeless person you were before I married you”. Bakul is not like Tara who gives in to apathy, rather he likes to fight: 

“Bakul said one could rise above the climate, that one could ignore it if one filled one’s mind with so many thoughts and activities that there was no room for it. “Look at me,” he had said the winter that they froze in Moscow. ‘Idon’t let the cold immobilize me, do I?’

After marriage Bakul transformed Tara’s personality. He made her into an: “active, organized woman who looked up her engagement book every morning, made plans and programmes for the day ahead and then walked herway through them to retire to her room at night, tired with the triumph and tiredness of the virtuous and the dutiful.”

One can see the influence of Bakul and their daughter on Tara, when she observes Baba’s refusal to respond her question of whether he would go to office:

“He kept his head lowered, smiling slightly, sadly. ‘Never’.!’ The room rang with her voice, then with silence.. . She herself had been taught, by her husband and by her daughters, to answer questions, to make statements, to be frank and to be precise. They would have none of these silences and shadows. Here things were left unsaid and undone. It was what they called ‘Old Delhi decadence.”

The reason Bakul visits Delhi is that he wants not to forget his Indian roots. During one evening at Misras place, he tells Tara: “part of me lives here, the deepest part of me, always”. On being asked by the older Misra son to comment on the poverty and corruption in India, he replies: “why talk of local politics, party disputes, election malpractices?”

According to Hashmi: 

 “Bakul, though a representative of India abroad, distrusts Indian travel-agency arrangements and grumbles about the Old Delhi decadence. Bakul is a flat character, a member of the Indian Foreign Service, a type thatis practical, alert, and competent, but unimaginative and insipid; one that believes in projecting India abroad as ‘The Taj Mahal, the Bhagavad Gita,Indian philosphy, music, art, the great, immortal values of ancient India.” Heasks, “But why talk of local politics, party disputes, election malpractices, Nehru, his daughter, his grandson–such matters as will soon pass into oblivion?”

Official hypocrisy and shallow idealism which obstruct a realistic appraisal of things as they are, say, for Bim, thus become part of the Old Delhi decadence, although Bakul likes to think of himself as one belonging to the more aware and dynamic world of New Delhi.”

Through his character Desai highlights the difference between the real India and the image of India as projected by the Non-resident Indians in the foreign nations. When looked from the post-colonial perspective the matter becomes complex. Desai also highlights the new reality of post-independent India, which is neo-colonialism:

“The Misra brothers and sisters were not interested in the subtleties underlying such exchanges. One brother wanted ‘know ‘what is the price of good whisky in Washington? Not that terrible thing called bourbon but scotch– can you get scotch?’ and the sisters asked Tara where she had bought her chiffon sari and her leather bag, and for how much.”

One of the most significant role that Bakul plays in the novel, as far as the storyline of the novel is concerned, is that he is the one who asks Tara to make it possible for Bim and Raja to meet so that the misunderstanding between them, after the Raja’s letter, can be done away with:

“What is the matter with her?’ asked Bakul, realizing Tara had to talk. He had his own suspicions about Bim but thought better of telling them to Tara. ‘Is it that business with Sharma you told me about” Surely it can’t be – she’sbeen dealing with him for years.’ 

‘It can’t be that then,’ Tara agreed. ‘It seems to be Raja again, as far as I cansee.’ “What, haven’t they made up that quarrel yet? Bakul asked in a bored voice. Really, the house had an atmosphere – a chilling one, like a cemetery. I can’t even remember what it was about – it was so long ago’. It wasn’t really a quarrel – it was a letter-; it’s just that Bim can’t forget old grudges. They make her so miserable – I wish I could end them for her ‘Bakul paid her some attention now. He could always find a solution to any problem he liked to think. He rather relished problems. He relished solving them for anyone as easily impressed as Tara. He thought how nice it would be to have Tara stop looking so preoccupied and concerned and be impressed by him instead. Really, it was a night of Persian glamour and beauty. They should be sitting together in the moonlight, looking together the moon that hung over the garden like some great priceless pearl, flawed and blemished with gray shadowy ridges as only a very great beauty can risk being. Why were they worrying instead about Bim, and Raja? He came and stood close to Tara his large solid thighs in their white pyjamas just before her eyes like two solid pillars and his cigar glowing between two fingers. ‘You must arrange for them to meet and speak,’ he said in a thick, rich voice.”

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