Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel (10 page)

Before lunch, the devotees stood in line and touched Charvi’s feet as they asked for her blessing. She hugged each one and touched their foreheads with her hand. Devotees would discuss among themselves how the hug purified them and how her hand on their forehead brought immense peace.

Subhadra rallied Chetana and Kokila, along with some of the regular attendees such as Dr. Vishnu Mohan’s wife, Saraswati, to prepare and serve lunch to all the devotees. During lean times, Subhadra just cut up the fruit the devotees brought along as offerings for Charvi. She served it with tea. But this week the white photojournalist had already paid for his stay and the money would go a long way in keeping mouths fed at Tella Meda for a few months.

The Sunday meal was simple:
bhindi
curry,
sambhar
with sweet potatoes, spinach
pappu,
mango and tomato pickle, and curds. Kokila and Chetana laid out banana leaves all around the knee-high dining table in the verandah. Once the thirty people were seated, they first put salt on each green banana leaf. Chetana came with a bucket of
bhindi
curry and put some on each banana leaf with a large steel spatula. Kokila followed with the rice and Subhadra with the
sambhar.
The spinach
pappu
came next, along with the mango and tomato pickle.

Another steel bucket of rice was emptied onto the banana leaves while people ate, talked, and shared their problems. The only member of the
ashram
not there was Ramanandam Sastri, who had stopped coming out of his room for meals after Vidura ran away. The regular visitors asked after his health and sent a prayer to God for Vidura’s safe return.

“I’m hungry,” Chetana declared when Subhadra handed her a bucket of curds, the last course of the meal.

“We eat after they have finished.”

“But I’m hungry
now,
” Chetana said peevishly.

Subhadra ignored her and gave Kokila a plate stacked with sliced mangoes. It was monsoon time; mangoes were not in season and the ones on the plate were a weak shade of yellow. “Here, you take this.”

“Chetana, go,” Subhadra ordered, and Chetana walked out of the kitchen onto the verandah.

“Why do we have to do this?” Chetana demanded as she forcefully dumped lumps of fresh yogurt on piles of rice settled on banana leaves next to remnants of pickle,
sambhar,
and
bhindi
curry.

“Just let’s finish serving so that we can eat,” Kokila said as she put one slice of mango on each banana leaf.

“Next she’ll say that we have to make coffee for everyone and
then
we can eat,” Chetana complained. “I’m telling you, I’m going to get married soon and get out of here. Then I can eat when I’m hungry, not wait for everyone to finish.”

“And who’s going to marry you?” Kokila asked as she placed a slice of mango on the last banana leaf.

“I’ll find someone,” Chetana said, and her silver anklets hummed as she went back into the kitchen.

Mark sat next to Charvi at the table and was pleasantly surprised by how many people showed up every Sunday. They all brought money, fruit, pieces of cloth, or vegetables from their garden, anything that they thought they could offer the goddess. Charvi took everything without drama and Mark wondered how she felt about accepting what he thought was charity in the name of God.

He had been in India long enough and had seen enough of it to understand the intricacies of life in India, where poverty—real poverty, where people went hungry—was only a step away. You just had to walk out of your nice or not-so-nice home and you would step into large puddles of penury and destitution. Beggars on the streets, young children who were filthy and skinny—it was a world apart from what poverty meant to him in America.

And yet, despite the struggle to make ends meet, he had seen that woman in the kitchen at Tella Meda put out a feast every Sunday so that every devotee would be fed. And it was probably because of their generosity that many homeless, hungry people came to their doorstep and were accepted as equals, seated next to the goddess at the table if there was enough room, or at rows of banana leaves placed in the courtyard in front of thin coconut straw mats.

He didn’t know what to make of Charvi. On one hand he felt that she was cheating these good people out of money and gifts, and on the other he saw her as a benevolent soul who gave food and shelter to the hungry and the homeless.

Charvi accepted everyone, whether they were able to pay their way or not. No matter how he analyzed the situation, he couldn’t figure the woman out. He couldn’t understand how she, who was quite intelligent, could allow people to believe she was a goddess.

After lunch Mark helped Subhadra and Kokila with the dishes. Feigning a headache, Chetana had gone into the room she shared with Kokila to rest and avoid doing any more work for the wretched devotees of Charvi.
Poor Chetana,
Kokila thought, amused. She would be so upset that she didn’t get a chance to wash dishes with the white man.

“No, no,” Kokila said when the man didn’t properly scrub the big pot used for making rice. “This like. This, you do,” she tried to explain in her broken English.

She showed him how to get to the corners of the pot with the piece of coconut straw used for cleaning the dishes.

“Thanks,” Mark said, and continued to clean.

“Everyone will be very scandalized that a man is cleaning the utensils,” Subhadra told him. “But I think that since men eat, they should also clean.”

“I agree,” Mark said. “My father always did the dishes at home, my mom always cooked.”

Kokila looked expectantly at Subhadra to translate what had just been said, and the older woman complied. Kokila was impressed. She didn’t know any men who knew what to do in a kitchen besides eat.

Later, Chetana was livid that she had missed talking to Mark.

“Did he say anything about me? What did he say?” she grilled Kokila.

“He just washed the pots and that’s it,” Kokila said wearily. “Anyway, he’s leaving in two more days.”

“If I could speak in English, I’d have snared him,” Chetana said saucily. “I’d make him marry me and take me away.”

“Why do you want to leave Tella Meda so badly?”

“Why do you want to stay?”

Kokila shrugged. She had wanted to stay because of Vidura, but also because this was the only real home she’d ever had. Now when Chetana talked about marriage and a husband and leaving, she was still reluctant to leave. Where would she go? Why would she go?

“I want a rich husband, someone who will buy me everything I want, and take me to fancy places on holiday. Like Lavanya. She goes all over the world in big airplanes,” Chetana said with dreams in her eyes. “And even this white man, he has been everywhere. Subhadra said she saw pictures he took in Africa. Do you know where Africa is?”

“Hmm,” Kokila said, though she wasn’t really sure.

“They have big wild animals there and only black people. You know why they are black?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s very hot there. It isn’t too hot here, that’s why we are brown. In Africa it’s very, very hot and they are all burned black,” Chetana informed Kokila. “And it’s very cold in America, that’s why they are all white.”

“So, is Subhadra looking for a boy for you?” Kokila asked, changing the topic.

Chetana shook her head. “No one is looking; I’m looking for my own husband. And I think . . . no, I’m not telling you anything yet. When the time is right, I’ll tell you.”

Kokila couldn’t bear not knowing what Chetana had been about to tell her and nagged her to reveal her secret. She didn’t succeed, though, and finally gave up.

He had promised that he wouldn’t take any photos of her, but as she stood under the moon on the terrace Mark felt helpless and grabbed his camera. He was on the beach looking up at the house and she was standing up on the terrace, looking ethereal, like a fairy princess, dressed in white, her hair loose and flowing around her shoulders and the full moon lighting her.

He usually didn’t take pictures of people who explicitly told him not to, but here he decided to make an exception.

The next evening, his last, when they went for a walk on the beach, Charvi was quiet and somber.

“I will miss you,” she admitted to him, and waited, hoped, wished for him to say something. She wanted him to take her away from Tella Meda, this life. She suddenly wanted to see Africa with him, the big elephants and the tall giraffes. She wanted to see New York City and she wanted to see his home in a place called Kansas. She wanted the impossible because even though he was attracted to her, she knew he would never stake a claim and she couldn’t let him. But what if he did? What if that magic happened?

“I will miss you as well,” Mark said. “I saw your house under the light of the full moon last night and it
was
studded with diamonds.”

“I’m glad that you had this opportunity,” Charvi said. “Will you come back?”

Mark shrugged. “I’ll try. I’ll try my best.”

The way he said it made it obvious to Charvi that he wouldn’t be back. This was an interesting vacation but not one he’d care to repeat. The world was full of places he hadn’t yet seen that he would visit instead.

“I hope you will come back,” Charvi said softly, her voice not the voice of a goddess but that of a young woman trying to tell her first love that her heart was available.

If Mark noticed her breathlessness, her heart on a platter, he didn’t say anything.

“I have to ask you something and I hope I won’t offend you,” he said, and Charvi nodded eagerly.

“You cannot offend me, ask away,” she said with a big smile, trying to contain the small quakes in her heart.

“How do you feel about accepting what your devotees leave behind when you don’t believe you are a goddess?” Mark asked, carefully placing his words in the sentence, not wanting to hurt her feelings because of the language barrier or his insensitivity.

Charvi looked stunned and Mark immediately started to apologize. She held up her hand and shook her head.

“You don’t owe me any explanations,” Mark said before she could speak, eager to make amends. She had been wonderful company and he didn’t want her to think that he was some jerk right before he left.

“I can’t control the desires of others, only mine,” Charvi said in a low voice. She had hoped he would ask a different question and her heart splintered into a hundred pieces. “I can’t make their decisions for them, I can only make mine. I take what they offer because not to do so would hurt their feelings. They bring me gifts with such purity that it would be small of me to turn them away. Do you understand me?”

Mark nodded even though he felt what she said was a load of bull served with a dollop of rationalization, but he didn’t want to press the matter.

The next day he left and as tradition required, he even touched Charvi’s feet. He did it because he had seen everyone else do it, and also because he did respect her. She was a smart woman making her way in a man’s world in the best way she could and in the process she was helping others. He admired her even though he believed she was not being entirely truthful.

“I’m so glad I came,” he said, and then, just as he swung his camera bag over his shoulder, he leaned over and brushed his lips against her cheek. “Be well, Charvi.”

A month after he left he sent her a framed photograph. It was her picture as she stood on the terrace under the light of the full moon.

Kokila was beside Charvi in the temple room when she opened the package and gasped at the image in front of her. This was not Charvi at all; this was a sensuous woman, out of a black-and-white movie, a woman waiting for her lover. There was slumbering passion in her eyes and face.

“You look . . . different,” was all Kokila could manage before Charvi hurriedly took the picture and the letter that came with it inside her room.

The accompanying letter from Mark Talbot was brief.

“Dearest Charvi, I’m sorry to have taken this picture, but I couldn’t resist it. I have kept one copy with me but I will not publish it anywhere or let anyone else see it. It will be for my eyes only and I am sending you one so that you can remember me and yourself when the moon was whole. Best wishes, Mark.”

Charvi never fell in love again and until the day she died she convinced herself that she could feel the brush of his lips against her cheek—the soft brush, the caress, the power of it. She never saw or heard from Mark Talbot again.

1969 21 January 1969. The first Indian-built electronic digital computer was commissioned.

12 March 1969.
The Reactor Research Center was established at Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu.

The
Lost
Father

D
r. Vishnu Mohan, who lived three houses down the street, came running to Tella Meda at five in the morning. There was an urgent phone call for Ramanandam Sastri from a relative. It was about Vidura.

It had been five years since Vidura ran away. He was nineteen years old now and the relative said he had seen Vidura. He had talked to him on a train, but then in one of the worst railway accidents in the history of Andhra Pradesh, the train had crashed. He didn’t know if Vidura had survived or not but he thought it would be prudent for Ramanandam Sastri to come to the outskirts of Ongole, where the toppled train lay, to see if maybe Vidura was one of the two hundred dead people who were being piled up and taken away. Another four hundred were being treated at the hospital for injuries.