Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel (16 page)

Radhika stayed at Tella Meda for almost two months before another telegram arrived, this one with an apology for sending out a wrong message previously. Her husband was indeed alive, though he had been injured when a bomb went off. He was now recuperating in a military hospital in Jammu. He would be sent home within a month’s time.

Though everyone was happy to hear that Radhika’s husband was alive, they were also saddened that little Vishnu Mohan would be out of their lives. The baby had brought great happiness to Tella Meda. But after Radhika left everyone became busy and excited as they prepared for Chetana’s baby, who would be born in a few months. The birth of little Vishnu Mohan became just one of the stories about Tella Meda told to devotees and guests who came to visit and pay their respects to Charvi.

1972 28 July 1972. India and Pakistan signed the Simla Pact, settling border disputes in Kashmir.

17 December 1972.
A new line of control in Kashmir between India and Pakistan was agreed to.

The
Whore’s
Daughter

C
hetana first noticed Ravi when she was fifteen. After that she made sure he noticed her as well and it wasn’t a difficult task. Ravi was a good-looking boy, tall, well built like a wrestler, and not that intelligent. But it didn’t matter to Chetana. She knew he was Manikyam’s son and everyone knew that Manikyam’s husband was a wealthy doctor in Visakhapatnam. He had his own clinic and famous people went to him with their ailments.

Whenever Manikyam came to Tella Meda she wore diamond earrings, fat gold chains with diamond pendants, thick gold bangles, and expensive
saris.
Chetana couldn’t imagine how Manikyam, who had a fat pockmarked face due to a battle with smallpox as a child, could have found a man as wealthy as Dr. Nageshwar Rao to marry her. She knew that it had been something Ramanandam Sastri set up because Dr. Nageshwar Rao was a great admirer of Ramanandam’s brand of literature. Still, they seemed an incongruous couple and she believed the rumors about Nageshwar Rao having a mistress safely ensconced in a lavish house in the other end of the city.

Manikyam, however, never showed any signs of being the sad wife pining away for her husband. She was like a fat cow all decked out in the finest jewels and clothes. And Chetana thought that if Manikyam, as ugly as she was, could find a wealthy husband, then her own good looks should find her one as well. She understood that her family background limited the number of well-bred bridegrooms she could choose from. It wasn’t a secret that she was Ambika’s daughter. It wasn’t a secret that no one, including Ambika, knew who her father was. No boy from a wealthy family would ever come to ask her hand in marriage, so she did what she knew she had to do—she ensnared.

It wasn’t difficult. Ravi and his brother, Prasad, came to Tella Meda every summer to spend the three hot months with their aunt, Charvi, and grandfather, Ramanandam Sastri. It was also a time for Manikyam to present herself at Tella Meda with all her successes. Not only had she married rich, she had produced two sons, two boys who would bring her husband’s family name and blood into the next generation.

“She’s almost twenty,” Manikyam had said in distress to Charvi a few months before Chetana married Ravi. Chetana, who had been cleaning the verandah in front of Charvi’s room, had overheard their conversation with amusement.

“With every passing year we grow older,” Charvi had replied sternly. She didn’t like to gossip and Manikyam liked to do nothing else.

“We need to find a good boy for her and get her settled,” Manikyam said in exasperation. “Otherwise her mother’s colors will show. What if she starts behaving like Ambika? Can we take that risk?”

Charvi had made a harsh sound then. “Chetana is not like her mother. How can you talk like this? You’ve known her since she was a little girl and you still . . . I don’t want to discuss this anymore.”

It wasn’t just Manikyam who was wondering. Renuka often talked about it as well. “Two unmarried girls in the house . . . Shiva, Shiva, what are we going to do?”

Chetana enjoyed all the worry and speculation. No one knew of her relationship with Ravi. No one knew the secret things they did in the garden in the night, behind the big rock on the beach, behind the temple on Sunday mornings when he went there with Manikyam. No one knew, not even Kokila. Chetana had never kept any secrets from Kokila. But this was important. Ravi was talking about marriage. He was in love with her, Chetana knew, but he was also frustrated and desperate to have her on their first night or before, if she would allow it.

For Chetana it was a victory. She had Ravi exactly where she wanted. But whenever she asked Ravi to talk to Manikyam and his father about her, he would find an excuse not to do so. And Chetana knew, the minute she succumbed to Ravi, she would be no better than her mother and she was
never
going to be like her mother.

“Come on, we’ll get married soon. How does it matter if we do it now or later?” Ravi demanded, his breath rough as he once again tried to push Chetana’s
sari
up her thighs.

“No,” Chetana said softly but sternly. “You know we can’t. We have to be married.”

Ravi sighed and rolled onto his back. It was almost two in the morning. The stars were twinkling above them and the bay was rushing in and out against the beach. They used the terrace for their late-night rendezvouses. Sometimes there would be guests in Tella Meda who would insist on sleeping on the terrace and on those days Ravi and Chetana would find privacy in the bougainvillea cave in the garden.

Finally, Chetana convinced Ravi to marry her and she thought that all her problems would be solved. She would leave Tella Meda, live in a big house, and be a legitimate wife. But then all her plans were thwarted by Ravi’s father.

Now she was pregnant. And she prayed to God for a boy as she sat with Charvi every morning for
puja
and on Sundays in the temple room all day with other devotees. A boy, she knew, would ensure that she could leave Tella Meda, move into her in-laws’ home, and hopefully straighten out Ravi. A girl would mean that nothing would change. She patted her growing belly all the time, telling her baby to be a boy. It had to be a boy; anything else was inconceivable.

“Rub your belly with almond oil,” Renuka advised. “I did it regularly and had two sons.”

Charvi frowned at that. She had disliked Renuka for years, ever since Renuka had accused Charvi of being too friendly with Mark Talbot. In Renuka she saw the whole society that stood against her and what she thought she could have had with Mark.

“The baby’s sex is already decided,” Charvi informed Renuka curtly. “That happens during conception itself. So no matter what you rub your belly with, Chetana, the baby will be what it has to be.”

“Nonsense,” Renuka said bluntly. “I had two children, I know about these things. You keep to your meditation and prayers, Charvi Amma, and leave baby matters to us mothers and married women.”

The insult in Renuka’s words was unmistakable and Kokila felt sorry for Charvi.

They were all in the kitchen helping Subhadra make massive amounts of
chakli
for the upcoming Sunday
puja,
when they were also planning to have Chetana’s
seemantham.
Kokila and Subhadra had talked about it at length and decided that they would make it very festive and not let Chetana feel the lack of a mother or a mother-in-law. Traditionally in the seventh month of a woman’s pregnancy, her mother or mother-in-law would arrange the
seemantham,
inviting married mothers to bless the pregnant woman and her unborn baby. But Chetana’s mother was not traditional, nor had Chetana’s marriage been a traditional one.

Kokila had insisted that Charvi write a letter to Manikyam to invite her to the
seemantham,
and despite not wanting to interfere in the matter, Charvi had written the letter. That had been three weeks ago and Manikyam still hadn’t responded.

“I don’t care if it is a boy or a girl as long as the baby is healthy,” Subhadra said as she dropped the batter from the
chakli
press into a big wok filled with sizzling peanut oil. She made swirls from the yellow chickpea flour batter in the oil.

“I care,” Chetana muttered as she broke a still-warm
chakli
and bit into it. “I want a boy and we even have a name picked out. We plan to name him after Ravi’s father and call him Nageshwar.”

“And what if it’s a girl?” Charvi asked.

“It won’t be a girl,” Chetana said determinedly. “Maybe you can pray for me and make sure it’s a boy.”

Charvi smiled and then nodded. “If it’s so important to you, I definitely will. But what has to be will be and whatever happens, it will be for your own good.”

Kokila was placing the
chaklis
inside an aluminum tin carefully, so as to not break them. All this talk about babies and their sex put her on the edge. It made her angry and she could feel a heat rise within her. She wished Chetana would just have the baby and be done with it. Then no one would talk about it all the time. It was driving her mad. Everywhere she looked there were babies, pregnant women, and married women.

“Kokila, take some hot-hot ones for Sastri Garu,” Subhadra said as she placed a newly fried batch into a colander to drain any excess oil. “He likes them hot. Also, make some tea for him. He didn’t eat any breakfast or lunch. That man is starving himself.”

“He is writing,” Kokila said quietly as she went about making tea.

“Writing?” Charvi asked surprised. “Really?”

“Yes,” Kokila murmured, and cursed her slippery tongue. She shouldn’t have said anything. Now they would know, or at least they would wonder.

“I don’t know why a man his age should do any work,” Renuka piped up. “And I must say, I don’t like his writing all that much. All that freedom for women, what good can come of it?”

As if she had been waiting for Renuka to step into it, Charvi turned on her with the delight of a five-year-old with a tin full of
boondi ladoos.

“He writes about equality and how men and women should stand shoulder to shoulder,” Charvi began. “If women are just supposed to passively go about their lives, the society as a whole will suffer. I’m not saying that everything my father says is correct, but I believe that freedom for women is the only way India can step into the coming decades with her head held high.”

Kokila was glad that tea was ready and stepped out of the kitchen leaving the argument behind. Subhadra handed her spatula to Renuka and came out with Kokila.

“Kokila?” Subhadra called out as she stood up. “I . . . There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

Kokila nodded and then waited.

“Come here.” Subhadra clasped Kokila’s arm and all but dragged her away from the kitchen toward the other side of the courtyard to ensure that no one would overhear their conversation. They stood directly under the sun and Kokila had to squint to see Subhadra’s face.

“I don’t know how to say this,” Subhadra said, and then looked around. Kokila saw her eyes dart toward Ramanandam’s room and she froze. She clutched the hot glass of tea she was holding, not feeling the burn on the palm of her hand.

“I . . . ,” Subhadra started again, and then smiled uneasily.

“If you don’t know how to say it, then maybe it is best if you don’t say it,” Kokila said in a rushed voice.
No,
her mind screamed,
Subhadra
can’t know.
And then she thought more reasonably and knew that Subhadra could know, probably did know. She could have seen Kokila slip out of Ramanandam’s room or seen Ramanandam leave hers. They were careful but not overtly so; after all, it had been going on for three years now and they were comfortable with each other and felt secure in the knowledge that no one knew.

Subhadra licked her lips and Kokila started to walk away.

“I know,” Subhadra blurted out. “I just . . . I won’t tell anyone but I wanted you to know that . . . I know . . . about you and Sastri Garu.”

Kokila turned around looking at the tiled floor covering the courtyard. Slowly she lifted her gaze to look at Subhadra. They stood silent for a while and then Kokila shrugged. “Say what you have to say. Just say it.”

Subhadra smiled. “I’ve never seen him so happy. You’re good for him.”

Kokila wasn’t sure she had heard correctly. “What?” Kokila asked lamely, and then sighed. “I thought you’d call me all sorts of names if you ever found out.”

“No,” Subhadra cried out. “Never. I would never begrudge you or him this happiness. I just don’t want you to worry that people will find out. I know, but I won’t tell anyone.” Then she smiled. “Go give him his tiffin.”

Ramanandam said he was busy when Kokila knocked, so she left the plate of
chakli
and a glass of tea outside his room. She wanted to rush in, tell him what Subhadra just told her, and tell him about the relief she was feeling, but she knew she would anger him by interrupting his work, so she didn’t.