The Jacaranda House

Some houses hold their secrets longer than the people inside them.
When Meenakshi Venkataraman summons her three adult children to the family home on 18th Cross, Basavanagudi, it is the first time in seven years they have all stood under the same roof. Outside, the beloved jacaranda tree their father planted is dying strangled by the roots of the apartment complex rising next door.

Inside, a truth that has been waiting thirty years is finally ready to speak.

Meenakshi reveals that her late husband Rangan was adopted and that his birth mother, a woman named Sharada, was not dead as the family believed. She lived for forty-four years while Rangan grew up without knowing she existed. And she left behind forty-three letters in a sandalwood box.

As the Venkataraman family travels to Chennai to meet Sharada’s surviving sister and read those letters, each sibling must also reckon with the fractures in their own lives. Vikram, the successful tech executive, is losing his marriage through silence. Kavitha, the poet, has been carrying grief for twelve years and calling it solitude. Suresh, the schoolteacher, must decide whether a marriage at a crossroads is worth fighting for.

Set against the vivid backdrop of Bangalore’s old neighbourhoods the jasmine-scented lanes of Basavanagudi, the chaos of Whitefield, the literary cafés of Indiranagar The Jacaranda House is a deeply moving novel about family secrets, the love that outlasts absence, and the courage it takes to bloom again after damage.