Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel (37 page)

“Ah, here comes the happy baby,” they would say when Kokila took him into the kitchen. He rarely cried and ate everything put in front of him. By the time he was a year old, Kokila was mixing rice and plain
pappu
together, and fed Karthik with her fingers. He loved to eat
sambhar
from a spoon and cried out when he ate something too spicy, after which he’d gulp down cold milk from a glass.

Bangaru Reddy, as promised, sent a thousand
rupees
by money order to Kokila every month. The money was always sent in Kokila’s name and the amount was always a thousand
rupees.
There were no letters or any other form of communication between Kokila and Bangaru Reddy. As far as he was concerned this was just a regular payment he made. He didn’t care if his illegitimate grandson was dead or alive.

Kokila was actually glad that Bangaru Reddy was not interested in his grandson. Karthik was hers, and she didn’t want Bangaru Reddy or his son to come and stake a claim. Not that they would, she told herself. They had given up Karthik when he was just ten days old.

Karthik started walking on his first birthday, which was celebrated as the day he came to Tella Meda. He walked unsteadily on bare feet saying “Amma” while he clapped at the antics of a cat or while Meena and Padma Lakshmi played with him. He had plenty of company at Tella Meda. Even Charvi spent time with him. He was a pleasure to be around; he kissed and hugged easily. His kisses were sloppy but his emotions genuine. Kokila was convinced it was she who had influenced Karthik’s good behavior. He was a testament to her excellent mothering skills. So what if he hadn’t come from her womb? She had done a better job than Chetana at least. When one looked at Bhanu, it was obvious someone had made a mistake in raising her.

Bhanu’s resentment for everyone at Tella Meda seemed to have been pooling inside her through the years and now only increased with every passing day. She was sixteen years old now and had just failed her metric exams. She wasn’t planning to take them again and neither was she planning to go to college, as was becoming quite common among girls her age. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do besides wait two years and then get married when she was eighteen. She wasn’t pretty like Chetana but by a quirk of fate her breasts were large and pushed out of her rib cage like two ripe and plump mangoes. Her skin was not as light as Chetana’s or Ravi’s but dark like Manikyam’s. A couple of years ago she started to have pimples on her right cheek, which she tried to hide with face powder.

“You look like a whore,” Renuka would say, and tried to rub the powder away with her
sari.

Renuka was getting old now. Her bones hurt, she always said, and her eyesight was also weak. Her skin had wrinkled completely and now hung over her thin bones like a worn
sari.
Renuka knew that her time was getting near and she wanted to see Bhanu married before she died but at the rate she was going, who would marry her? But then what had Renuka expected? She was a whore’s granddaughter and that kind of taint didn’t leave the blood.

And Chetana was no better, according to Renuka. Instead of being a good and pious widow, that woman was gallivanting around town with that cinema manager, Srinivas. She spent the nights away sometimes, making excuses and stories about going somewhere with someone, but everyone knew she was with that no-good bastard, Srinivas. He wasn’t offering marriage either, which made him just as bad as Chetana.

Bhanu constantly hurled insults at Chetana about her new boyfriend but Chetana was so shameless that she didn’t even pay heed to what her own daughter had to say. Meena would never say anything about her mother, whom she worshipped. But . . .
chee-chee,
this Chetana had no morals, Renuka thought, and wondered if somehow Chetana had passed that along to Bhanu from her womb.

“You be a good girl and you will marry a nice boy who will take you away from here. You be like your mother and you’ll end up with some bastard like Srinivas and be here for the rest of your life,” Renuka warned Bhanu.

But Bhanu wasn’t listening. She liked boys. She trusted them and her ability to get them to do what she wanted them to do. Her mother had been stupid enough to marry a man like Ravi and now hook up with a man like Srinivas, whom everyone knew was engaged to his cousin in his village and would never seriously consider marrying a widow.

Bhanu was smart. She wasn’t about to marry a good-for-nothing man like her father. She would marry a man who was already established. She wouldn’t marry some young chit of a boy who needed his parents’ permission to do anything.

And she already had someone in mind.

The Bheemunipatnam photo studio owner, Rajendra Babu, was ripe for plucking and he was interested in Bhanu. He would coax her into his studio and take pictures of her while her half-
sari
shifted just enough to allow him a glimpse of her ripe breasts covered by the thin cloth of a tight blouse. Bhanu asked Shanthi to stitch tight blouses for her so that she didn’t have to wear a brassiere all the time. She was going to use those blouses to get her man.

Rajendra Babu, who was called Babu, was just over thirty years old. He had been married for two years but his wife had died just a year ago of some disease and he had no children. He did have a thriving photo business on the main street of the burgeoning town of Bheemunipatnam. He had a brand-new Bajaj scooter in the coveted blue color and a nice house right above his photo shop. The house had four rooms: one main room, a kitchen that opened to a small and narrow balcony in the back, one bedroom, and a small room that Babu used for storage. The main room had been nicely decorated by his wife with little dolls and pictures of Lord Venkateshwara Swami. The sofa was not too old either. Babu’s wife had brought the sofa and the color TV with a remote control as part of her dowry.

Babu did small spreads and photographs for local businesses. And sometimes he also shot some women in the nude for an underground pornographic magazine run by a friend. There was a lot of money in the nude pictures business and besides it was not a hardship to take photos of naked women.

Bhanu obviously knew nothing about the nude pictures, though when she found out later on she was surprised but not really upset. She got angry at Babu and used her tantrum to get new gold earrings from him. Then she conveniently forgot what Babu was involved with.

Babu, on the other hand, couldn’t believe his luck. This young, fresh virgin seemed to be interested in him. She hung around the photo studio and batted her eyelashes at him and let the
sari
covering her bosom slip by what seemed like an accident.

Like Chetana, Bhanu knew how to ensnare; unlike Chetana, she wasn’t about to aim too high and end up with nothing. She finally drove Babu so mad with pent-up desire that he showed up at Tella Meda with his widowed mother and a proposal of marriage.

“She’s just sixteen,” Chetana said, staring at Babu with open disgust. The man was a disgrace. He was so much older than Bhanu and he looked like a lecherous fool. “It isn’t legal to marry a girl off that young.”

“Legalities can be dealt with,” Babu said quietly. “If we have your blessing, the rest can be easily managed.”

“Children these days, you have to let them do what they want,” Babu’s widowed mother said, and Chetana wanted to remind the woman that while her daughter was a child, Babu was no child.

“I don’t think this is a proper match,” Renuka said openly to Babu and his mother. “You’re much older and she’s just a—”

“Why don’t you talk to Bhanu first?” Babu suggested politely.

Bhanu had prepared Babu for when he and his mother would come. He knew what he had to do to get that blouse off Bhanu’s breasts. These old bats could say and do what they wanted but he was not about to give in and lose his chance with a fresh girl like Bhanu. So what if she was flirtatious and headstrong? Once he married her he would tame her. Babu wasn’t worried.

When Bhanu told Chetana and Renuka she was in love with Babu and wanted to marry him, Chetana slapped her across the face.

“In love, it seems. Nonsense. You won’t marry that old lecherous pig.”

“I’m pregnant,” Bhanu lied easily. “And he’s the father.”

The wedding took place at Tella Meda with no pomp or show, just the bare rituals. Chetana didn’t have the money for a fancy ceremony and there was also reason for haste. Bhanu insisted that the marriage take place immediately and implied that her pregnancy was reason enough for hurry. Chetana suspected Bhanu was lying but was afraid to call her on it. What if she wasn’t lying and the marriage fell through? An abortion was possible but . . . Chetana sighed. She hoped Meena would have the sense to not pull such a stunt.

After the marriage ceremony, as Bhanu packed her belongings, getting ready to leave for her husband’s house, Kokila gave her the bank passbook Ravi’s father had left in her care for his granddaughters. She had contemplated giving the passbook to Chetana and letting her do with it what she wanted but she knew that Chetana was angry enough and proud enough that there was a chance she would throw the passbook away.

“This is a lot of money,” Bhanu said, and then looked at Kokila. “Does Amma know about this?”

Kokila shook her head. “She would kill me if she knew.”

Bhanu grinned. “Amma likes money . . . but I think she hates Manikyam’s husband more. Why didn’t you give me this money before?”

“I thought it would be wise to give it to you when you were ready for it. Are you angry with me for not giving it before?” Kokila asked.

Bhanu shook her head. “I would’ve just wasted it. Now it will help Babu and me have a better life. He has a good business but this is . . . Do you think I should send a letter to them saying thank you?”

“I don’t think it’s necessary,” Kokila said. “In my opinion, the man doesn’t deserve thanks. He did this, I think, to assuage his guilt for turning Ravi and Chetana out of his house. If he was truly penitent, he would’ve accepted Chetana and you and Meena after Ravi died. But he has chosen to not accept you as his granddaughter. Just take the money, make good use of it, and be happy.”

“I’ll keep it just as is and not tell Babu about it,” Bhanu said. “I’ll save it for a rainy day. Do you think that would be wise?”

“I think so,” Kokila said, impressed with the maturity Bhanu was showing all of a sudden. “Do you think you’ll be happy with Babu?”

Bhanu nodded eagerly. “I like him. I know he’s not young and handsome, but I don’t want that. I want a man who loves me. No, I want a man who worships me and will take good care of me. Babu will do that. I’m not going to spend my life waiting for a prince to ride down on a white horse to sweep me away. I’m not going to end up like
her,
sitting in Tella Meda, going out with men like Srinivas and having no home of my own.”

“Chetana did the best she could,” Kokila said in defense of her friend.

“She made mistakes,” Bhanu said firmly. “I won’t make mistakes.”

When it was time for Bhanu to leave for her husband’s house, she had tears in her eyes. She hadn’t thought she would cry but suddenly she was swamped with sadness. She knew she would miss Tella Meda; she would miss Renuka, Chetana, even Meena. Now that she was leaving she could be benevolent. She even touched Charvi’s feet on her way out, something she’d never done in her entire life. She was just sixteen and she had achieved the one thing her mother had never been able to do: she was leaving Tella Meda, forever.

“She is getting away,” Chetana said as she wiped her tears after Bhanu left. “Oh, Kokila, did you ever think that I’d have children who would grow up so much that they would get married?”

“Someday Karthik will grow up and get married too,” Kokila said as she watched her son bounce around the courtyard.

“You let him marry whomever he wants and accept his wife, okay?” Chetana said, and Kokila smiled.

“He’s too small for me to worry about the kind of woman he marries,” Kokila said.

Chetana shook her head. “One minute they’re born and the next they’re grown up. I think Bhanu was lying about being pregnant.”

Kokila was shocked. “How do you know?”

“She had bleeding last week, I think. She’s cunning, that girl,” Chetana said. “And Babu, they say he takes pictures of naked women in that studio of his.”

“Maybe you should heed your own advice and accept whomever your daughter has married,” Kokila said.

Renuka was sobbing quietly in the courtyard, sitting by the
tulasi
plant.

“She’s sadder than I am,” Chetana whispered to Kokila.

“She raised Bhanu,” Kokila said, and Chetana nodded.

Whether she liked it or not, and she didn’t like it at all, Chetana knew she had abandoned Bhanu as a baby and Renuka had picked up the responsibility. Chetana had always looked at Renuka with disdain, as a woman who stole her child, but now that Bhanu was gone maybe it was time she forgave Renuka for something she herself had forced her to do.

“It’s okay,” Chetana said going over and putting her arm around Renuka. “She lives close by, almost next door, she’ll come and visit often.”

Renuka looked up at Chetana and fresh tears started to roll down her cheeks. “She is like a daughter to me,” she said.

“And you are like a mother to her,” Chetana said as emotions choked her as well. She hugged Renuka close and they mourned the loss of their daughter.

1990
5 March 1990
. The Indian Government announced interim relief of 3.6 billion rupees to half a million victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy.

20 October 1990.
The Andhra Pradesh government declared a fiveday work week for all offices and educational institutions starting November 1, 1990.