Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel (18 page)

Rage clouded Chetana’s vision and she walked on unsteady legs toward Kokila. “You cursed me,” she said, loudly enough for everyone to hear.

Taken aback, Kokila stared at her, shock written all over her face.

“You couldn’t stand my happiness and you wished me ill,” Chetana cried out. “Just because you are stuck here, you want me to be too. Well, your wish came true. Are you happy now?”

Kokila tried to form the words to explain to Chetana that she didn’t understand what she was saying but nothing came out. How could she defend herself against such fantastic accusations?

“It’s not Kokila’s fault,” Charvi said, as surprised as Kokila by what Chetana was saying. “These things happen. It’s fate.”

“Oh, really?” Chetana said, a twisted smile on her face. “And what are you planning for me? Praying to God that I have a dead baby?”

“Chetana,” Subhadra cried out, and even Ravi looked surprised.

Tears burst out of her eyes as suddenly as her temper had flared. “Oh, Charvi, I’m sorry,” she said, and kneeled down beside Charvi. She put her head on Charvi’s lap and started to cry.

Everyone consoled her. Only Ramanandam looked at Kokila’s startled and hurt expression.

That night, he came to her. He didn’t knock, just entered her room. She was folding her sun-dried clothes as she always did at night before she went to sleep. There was stiffness in her body that she couldn’t expel. She felt as if a deep wound was bleeding within her. He hadn’t come to her for a few days now, as he was busy writing. That added to what happened with Chetana and her talk with Subhadra had wound her into a tight coil of anger and resentment.

“How are you?” Ramanandam asked.

Kokila nodded but didn’t say anything, her attention focused on the red and yellow cotton
sari
she was folding carefully so that the creases would not be too obvious and she wouldn’t have to pay the man who pressed clothes on the street corner one
rupee
to iron it.

“Manikyam said she will try and talk to Nageshwar Rao. I’m planning to go to Visakhapatnam and talk to him myself,” Ramanandam said.

“When do you leave?” Kokila asked without emotion.

“I’ll leave with Manikyam tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll come back soon.”

“Okay,” Kokila said, and turned her back to him as she started stacking her clothes in Vidura’s old Godrej steel cupboard, which she had been using ever since he ran away.

“Don’t be like this,” Ramanandam said, and put his hand on Kokila’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong. Why do you ask?” Kokila demanded, and closed the
almirah.
“So, do you want me to take my
sari
off or are we just going to talk?”

Ramanandam sighed. “Maybe I should leave.”

“Okay,” Kokila said, still angry that when Chetana had accused her, he hadn’t comforted her, hadn’t come to her until now, hadn’t defended her.

“Did you want me to say something to Chetana for yelling at you? Comfort you while everyone was watching?” Ramanandam demanded angrily.

Kokila cleared her throat. “So you
do
know what is wrong? Then why did you ask?”

Ramanandam shook his head. “She’s a pregnant woman; they are usually volatile. She didn’t mean what she said.”

“Well, that makes me feel better.”

“Do you want to take the risk and let everyone know about us?” Ramanandam demanded. “If that is the case, let’s take this fight out into the courtyard so all can hear. I’m not the one who is afraid of letting others know, you are.”

“Of course I am. I am the woman in this relationship,” Kokila spat out. “And Subhadra knows.”

“She knows?”

“Oh yes, she knows,” Kokila muttered. Ramanandam sat down on Kokila’s bed and looked at the floor as he ruminated over what Kokila had just revealed.

“How do you feel about that?” he asked after a long while.

Kokila shrugged. “Subhadra didn’t seem to be upset. She thought that it was just wonderful because you were so happy.” Bitterness laced her tone. The more she thought about what Subhadra said, the angrier it made her. Here was a woman, a sort of a mother to Chetana and her, and yet she thought there was nothing wrong in a twenty-two-year-old girl having an illicit sexual relationship with a sixty-one-year-old man. Would a real mother be so blasé? Kokila didn’t think so. A real mother would be torn apart that her daughter’s life was going to amount to nothing. Subhadra thought it was all right for Kokila’s future to be sacrificed at the altar of Ramanandam’s happiness.

“We are happy together,” Ramanandam said carefully. He could sense her anger and silent rage. He didn’t know the reason but he was attuned enough to her to know that somehow Subhadra had bruised Kokila’s feelings. She was angry and this had more to do with what Subhadra had said rather than with Chetana’s outburst.

“Are we? Really?”

“I am very happy,” Ramanandam said, still in that careful voice.

At his soft tone, at his nonchalance, Kokila felt more anger. “Well, I’m not happy,” she declared for the first time to him. “I’m never going to have a husband, a family, children, nothing. I’m going to be here in Tella Meda and we’ll be
happy
until you’re ill or dead, and then what am I going to do? Light a lamp in your memory for the rest of my life?”

Ramanandam pursed his lips and hurt swam in his eyes. “If I could be younger for you, I would,” he said simply.

His words made Kokila’s anger disappear. She had never thought that their age difference plagued him. If she worried about her life, he probably worried about it as well. He loved her, she had no doubt, and loving her would have made him think about the same things she thought about. She sat beside him in the bed and took his hand in both of hers.

“I love you just the way you are,” she whispered, tears brimming in her eyes, a response to the pain she knew she had caused him. “I don’t want you to be younger.”

“But you wish you didn’t love me so that you could love someone else,” Ramanandam said with a sad smile.

For an instant, just for an instant, she thought to lie but then decided that being honest with Ramanandam was as important as being with him. “Yes,” she said. “But this is my
karma
and I have to endure it. And loving you is no endurance.”

“My skin is wrinkled, I’m old, I don’t give you pleasure in bed or out. I don’t shower you with flowers and jewelry. I don’t take you out to the cinema and I don’t marry you or give you children. And you tell me that it is no endurance to love me?” Ramanandam asked.

“Yes,” Kokila replied.

“You humble me,” Ramanandam said, and kissed both her hands. “I think you should come along with us when we go to Visakhapatnam. We’re going to be uninvited guests in my son-in-law’s house. I don’t know what he will do when he sees Chetana and Ravi. She will need you for support, despite what she said to you today. And I want you to come.”

“Why?” Kokila asked.

“Because I don’t want to be away from you,” Ramanandam said quietly.

“Then I’ll come,” she responded, and leaned over to touch her lips to his.

As Ramanandam predicted, Chetana profusely apologized to Kokila and insisted that she come along with them to Visakhapatnam.

“We’ll all go in Manikyam’s white Ambassador,” she said excitedly. “And”—she looked around the rooms of Tella Meda from where they stood in the courtyard—“this is the last time I will live in Tella Meda.”

The three-hour drive to Visakhapatnam was tense. Chetana was the only one with an air of smugness about her. Kokila, Manikyam, Ramanandam, and even Ravi were nervous.

“I hope he’ll accept,” Manikyam said tightly.

She was sitting next to Chetana in the backseat of the large car. Ravi was sitting next to the driver, while Ramanandam and Kokila were squeezed next to each other. The driver had been with the family for years and Manikyam didn’t worry about being discreet in front of him. Wearing a white pair of pants, a white shirt, and a white cap, he looked like he was a driver for rich people in movies. Kokila had been amused to see him, while Chetana felt that all her dreams were about to come true.

She’d always known Ravi’s parents were wealthy. She had seen the driver and the car before, but she had never thought that she would ride in the car, sitting next to Manikyam as an equal. And she was an equal. She was a married woman, a pregnant married woman. She was as legitimate as Manikyam and it didn’t matter who her mother was. She felt very satisfied now for marrying Ravi and for having a baby in her belly. Just a few days ago she hadn’t been sure about either; now she was beaming with uncontainable joy. It was spilling out of her and she had to restrain herself from crying out and thanking God aloud.

“When I told him that Chetana was pregnant he was not very happy,” Manikyam continued. “He told me that I shouldn’t go for the
seemantham.
But I couldn’t stay away.”

“Nanna will want us to live with him,” Ravi consoled. “He wouldn’t want his pregnant daughter-in-law or his grandson to live in Tella Meda.”

Manikyam smiled at the thought. She had been craving grandchildren and now one was being made right next to her. She was overjoyed and she was scared of what her husband would do; the two emotions were tearing her into pieces.

“Nanna, you be careful with him,” Manikyam warned Ramanandam. “He’s still very angry about the marriage.”

Ramanandam nodded but he wasn’t overtly concerned. Even though Nageshwar Rao had not abided by Ramanandam’s wishes and accepted his son’s marriage, he still wrote to Ramanandam once in a while and was always polite. Nageshwar Rao was an intelligent man who would never allow his emotions to overrule his etiquette.

The house, as Chetana had seen in photographs Manikyam brought to Tella Meda and imagined in her mind, was opulent. It was all white, with columns in the front verandah, which had a jasmine creeper sprawling over it. Tall coconut trees surrounded the large compound on which the house stood. A temple sat in the middle of the garden with a large marble idol of Shiva in the center. Chetana couldn’t wait to see the inside of the house. Were there fountains inside like there were in rich people’s houses in the movies? Did they have large paintings and vases? Silk cushions and velvet sofas?

Chetana didn’t get the opportunity to find out.

Nageshwar Rao met his uninvited guests at the verandah and seated them there. It was a large verandah with white wicker furniture and comfortable cushions, but it was still an insult. He wasn’t letting Chetana enter his house. When Chetana had to use the bathroom, she was directed to the one outside the house, which was used by servants.

Ramanandam could barely contain his rage.

“It isn’t you,” Nageshwar Rao said, facing Ramanandam. “I can’t accept Ravi’s marriage to this woman and I can’t permit her to soil my house. You know, Sastri Garu, her mother is a common prostitute. We don’t even know who her father is. You are welcome inside, but she’ll have to remain out.”

“None of us will step into your house if she isn’t allowed in,” Ramanandam said. “She’s going to have your grandchild, Nageshwar. How long are you planning to keep this feud going?”

“If I don’t accept the marriage, the legitimacy of this child is already in question,” Nageshwar Rao said, undeterred by Ramanandam’s tone. “Manikyam should’ve known better.”

“You read my books and you appreciate what I write about equality for all. You say you believe in what I say about individuals being allowed to do as they please, women being allowed to do as they please, and yet you can’t accept Chetana as your daughter-in-law?” Ramanandam demanded.

Nageshwar Rao nodded and then spoke gravely. “Your ideas and your ideology are commendable and I respect both you and your work. But that doesn’t mean I welcome them inside my home.”

“You are nothing but a hypocrite,” Ramanandam said. “Let’s go,” he said to Kokila and the others.

“Ravi,” Nageshwar Rao said, “you can stay, but without her.”

Chetana stared at her husband and Kokila stood away from both Chetana and Ramanandam. She felt like screaming at Ramanandam for bringing them all here and making them suffer through this humiliation. She glared at Manikyam, who stood with her head hung low. What did she care? Her husband would forgive her, but Chetana . . . Kokila felt a shaft of pain within her when she saw Chetana go pale as she looked at Ravi with unblinking eyes.

“I’ll stay,” Ravi said, and walked into his father’s house without looking back at his wife, seven months pregnant with his child.

1974
18 May 1974.
The first underground atomic device explosion by India was carried out successfully near Pokhran in Rajasthan (Thar Desert) at 8:05 AM. India was the sixth nation to explode an atomic bomb.

The
Good
Wife

A
nanta Devi had heard from a friend that Charvi could make a barren woman fertile, and Ananta Devi was craving a male child because her husband was craving one. Afraid that he’d leave her and find a new wife, Ananta Devi along with her six-year-old daughter, Manasa, decided to travel all the way from Hyderabad to Bheemunipatnam to experience Charvi’s magic.