Benkiya Bale (lesion of fire) is a 1983 Carnatic language Sandalwood movie, based on the novel of the same name, written by Bangalore based Carnatic novelist T S Subha Rao. Although the movie was made in the early eighties, it is actually set in the late forties.
This is the ultimately tragic love story of Narasimha Murthy, a primary schoolteacher in rural South India, and of Rukmani, a woman around whom a lot of ugly rumors are swirling. Narasimha Murthy falls for and marries Rukmani in spite of her salacious reputation, and the couple look to be settling into Happily Ever After.
Until Nepotism raises its head to try to displace Narasimha Murthy from his schoolteacher position. After a few direct attempts fail, the ones who want to force Narasimha out of his job finally succeed by digging up those salacious rumors about Rukmani. The couple are forced to move to a different poverty stricken disease ridden village so Narasimha can teach school there. The couple are forced to endure destitution, isolation and suspicion, but they do endure.
And then one morning Narasimha starts coughing up blood.
Tropes found here are
- Asshole Victim: See the entry on Domestic Abuse.
- Alliterative Title: The title Benkiya Bale.
- The Bad Guy Wins: They not only get Narasimha and Rukmini banished in disgrace from the village, the couple ends up dying too.
- Blood from the Mouth: Although Narasimha has been running a fever for a day or two, and has been intermittently coughing, on one particular fateful day, he collapses in a coughing fit while teaching his class, dismisses his students for the day, coughs all the way home, collapses in a coughing fit again, then sees the blood on his handkerchief. Understandably, Rukmini panics.
- Death by Despair: Rukmini buys the drug needed to treat Narasimha's TB, but finds out that he succumbed to the illness while she was away. She breaks down crying over his corpse, cradles him in her lap while crying all the way while riding in a bullock cart to the cremation ground, then dies when they get there. The cart driver tries to rouse her, but she is unresponsive.
- Domestic Abuse: Shivanna thrashes his wife, when he finds out that she has been withholding letters from Narasimha and Rukmini pleading for help when Narasimha gets sick. His wife was also someone who had spread salacious rumors about Rukmini and had a hand in getting her and Narasimha ejected from the village.
- Driven to Suicide: With the rumors really picking up steam, Rukmini contemplates just ending it all. Narasimha pulls her out of it by singing her a song about never ever leaving her. This gets a Meaningful Echo later on.
- Healthcare Motivation: Rukmini takes up a job as day laborer at a construction site to pay for Narasimha's tuberculosis treatment.
- Hope Spot: It looks as though things might be turning around. Shivanna, a loyal friend is coming to visit, Rukmini has purchased the drug that will cure Narasimha's tuberculosis and she gets to the sanitarium to find Narasimha sitting up. But then the guy she saw wasn't her husband. And then ...
- The Hero Dies: Narasimha succumbs to tuberculosis in the end.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Narasimha starts coughing. Then he can't stop coughing. Then he is given something to stop the coughing, but is diagnosed with tuberculosis.
- Meaningful Echo: Rukmini sings the same song to Narasimha about never ever leaving him, while nursing his sickness, that he had sung to her to prevent her from committing suicide earlier.
- My Girl Is Not a Slut: None of the rumors swirling around Rukmani are true. Narasimha doesn't believe them, nor does his friend Shivanna. They were spread by a rebuffed suitor, and unfortunately the wrong people do believe them.
- Nepotism: The village elder forces Narasimha to transfer to a different village so his son can take up that role instead.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: See the entry on Domestic Abuse.
- The Power of Love: Defied. Expected this to be a love conquers all story about our couple overcoming even a deadly disease? NOT!! This is backwater rural India in the 1940s where consumption was a death sentence particularly for a starving man.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: Narasimha is sent to a poverty stricken disease ridden village where nobody wants to go, of his own volition.
- Schoolmarm: Narasimha Murthy is a male example.
- Together in Death: Narasimha and Rukmini.
- Victorian Novel Disease: Narasimha is diagnosed with tuberculosis. And his suffering is also portrayed in a fairly realistic way.
