Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel (4 page)

Kokila didn’t know what to say. She didn’t mind it so much that Charvi believed in herself and now had elevated herself to a touch healer. How did it matter?

“And you should see Nanna. He is just so proud that his daughter has these powers. Even he believes her,” Vidura said resentfully. It became clear to Kokila that Vidura was jealous of the attention Charvi got from their father.

“And when I said that she’s a fake, he yelled at me. He slapped me. My father never hit me before, but now he did it because of
her.
” There were tears in Vidura’s eyes. “How can he believe that she is a Devi? And why do all these people who come to Tella Meda think so? She keeps saying that Tella Meda is not an
ashram
but it is, isn’t it?”

Kokila agreed with him. Regardless of how Charvi wanted to see Tella Meda, it was for all intents and purposes an
ashram,
a safe harbor for people (like Kokila) who had nowhere to go. And Tella Meda’s religious leader was Charvi. Charvi knew that and wielded her power even though to everyone’s face she claimed she wasn’t a
guru.
This was what had made Kokila suspicious of her right from the beginning.

Kokila wrapped her hand around Vidura’s and squeezed gently. “It’s okay. It isn’t like your father loves her more . . .”

“I don’t care who he loves more. He’s a sick old man,” Vidura said, and pulled his hand away from Kokila’s. “I don’t care about him or anyone else.”

“Not even me?” Kokila asked, tears burning her eyes. She couldn’t bear it that he pushed her away.

Instantly contrite, Vidura put his arm around Kokila. “I love you, Kokila. But you will be gone soon, won’t you? Away to your husband’s house and you’ll be someone else’s wife.”

Kokila leaned into Vidura. “Maybe I won’t have to go.”

Vidura laughed. “Yes, you will. He is your husband and why won’t you want to go?”

Because of you,
she wanted to say, but didn’t have the courage. Kokila told him the other truth. “Because this is the only home I have ever had.”

“No, Tella Meda is not your home. It is no one’s home,” Vidura said caustically. “This is an
ashram,
not a home, Kokila. You should get out of here as soon as you can.”

“Don’t you like living here?” Kokila asked, stricken that he didn’t like Tella Meda.

Vidura shrugged. “When we lived in Kavali we had a small house but it was ours. Now it feels like a hotel, not a real home. I rarely talk to my father, my sister is some unreliable
guru,
and I just don’t like it here.”

Kokila let the tears fall. Didn’t he love her enough to like being in Tella Meda?

“Oh, Kokila,” Vidura said with a smile. “I’m just angry. I do like living in Tella Meda. Ever since you came, it has been wonderful. But you’ll leave me and go away.”

“I will never leave,” Kokila vowed.

That was the first and only time Vidura kissed her. It was a kiss on her lips, light, brief, brushing, like a gentle wind caressing the sails of the fishermen’s boats in the early dawn.

It was her first kiss.

Blood streaked her white underskirt and was a damp maroon spot on her light blue cotton skirt. Kokila wasn’t the one who noticed it, it was Ramanandam Sastri. He didn’t say anything to her about it, just asked her to go talk to Subhadra.

“Oh, oh, oh,” Subhadra chanted when Kokila came to her. “How embarrassing for Sastri Garu. Now come on, girl, we have to take you to the menses room.”

She grasped Kokila’s hand but Kokila wrenched herself free and pulled away from Subhadra. She didn’t want to go to that wretched room; she didn’t want to go to her husband’s house.

Kokila ran as fast as she could and hid under the bougainvillea bush in the front garden. It was her and Chetana’s secret place, a small cave underneath green leaves and paperlike pink flowers. Usually the cats congregated there but it was empty that day and Kokila sat huddled inside, hugging her knees close to her, not wanting to know what the wet feeling between her thighs was.

It would go away. If she prayed hard enough, wished it enough, it would go away.

She stayed there for two hours before Chetana gave the hideout away. She didn’t tell easily; it took two slaps from Subhadra and a lot of coaxing from Ramanandam Sastri before Chetana revealed where Kokila might be.

“Come out now,” Subhadra said as she tried to yank Kokila out of the bougainvillea cave. Her large frame wouldn’t allow her to get inside the cave, so Subhadra caught hold of one of Kokila’s legs and started to drag her out.

Kokila grabbed a thorny branch and held on tight even as blood started to spurt from the palms of her hands. She wouldn’t go to the menses room, she swore. Tears started to fall like warm summer rain down her face, noiselessly.

“Amma Kokila,” Ramanandam Sastri said softly as he bent down to look at her. Then he gasped. “Stop it, Subhadra, the girl’s hands are bleeding.”

Subhadra immediately pulled away but Kokila wouldn’t let go of the branch. Her eyes were wide, wet, her lips trembled as she stood her ground.

“Why won’t you come out?” Ramanandam Sastri asked, settling down on the grass outside the bougainvillea cave.

“No,” she whispered softly. “You will send me away to my husband’s house. I don’t want to leave.”

Ramanandam Sastri smiled and then nodded. “In this house you can do as you please. If you don’t want to go to your husband’s house, you don’t have to.”

Could it be that easy?
“Ottu?”
she asked.

Ramanandam Sastri nodded. “Promise.”

The celebrations began the next day and Kokila was relegated to the menses room. Chetana wanted to visit but Subhadra put a stop to it. Only during the
puja
the next day could anyone speak with Kokila.

Subhadra explained to Kokila that from now on she would have bleeding every month. Girls had bleeding when they became women and were old enough to become pregnant and give birth. Married women went to their husband’s house at this time and made a family with him. Subhadra didn’t go into any details about the sexual aspects of marriage and said only that Kokila was a woman now and would have to start acting like one.

The night before the
puja
that would symbolize to one and all that Kokila had reached puberty, she couldn’t sleep. She lay on the coconut straw bed and tossed and turned. The cotton cloth pad between her legs was getting heavier and she knew she had to go to the bathroom and make a new one with the strips of white cotton cloth Subhadra left for her. But the idea of washing out the old one and looking at the blood nauseated her, so she lay quietly, in fear, alone.

Chetana sneaked into the menses room late at night, bringing with her
chakli
and
boondi ladoo.

“Tomorrow will be fun for you,” she said. “Lots of gifts from everyone and your husband’s parents will bring gifts too.”

“They’ll be here?” Kokila asked, fear surging despite Ramanandam Sastri’s promise.

“They will,” Chetana said. “Sastri Garu telephoned them from Dr. Vishnu Mohan’s house to let them know.”

The betrayal struck Kokila hard and the
boondi ladoo
turned from sweet to bitter inside her mouth.

“You’ll start your own family now. You’ll have to have intercourse now,” Chetana said with a glint in her eye. “Vidura and I will come and see you sometime, okay?”

Kokila’s resentment and fear grew. Already that bitch’s daughter was laying claim to Vidura. Kokila knew that as soon as she was gone, Vidura would forget her—Chetana would make sure of it.

“Sastri Garu promised that if I didn’t want to go, I didn’t have to,” Kokila said with false courage.

“You have to go, Kokila,” Chetana warned, suddenly serious. “Here you will have no life. There you can have a husband, children. You will have your own home.”

“But I don’t want to go.”

Chetana only shook her head. “If I had the chance you have, I would never stay here.”

Oh, if only,
Kokila would think many years later, when her hair had turned gray and her smooth skin had become wrinkled. If only she had listened to Chetana. If only she had left. But she was fourteen—what did she know? How could she have known that leaving would have meant a real life?

As Chetana promised, the celebration proclaiming her womanhood was a lot of fun. Subhadra put Kokila in Chetana’s silk skirt and
terricot
blouse. The skirt was dark brown with a gold border, while the blouse was yellow and had a thin gold border sewed around the edges of the puffed sleeves. Chetana had worn the same outfit for her
puja
and didn’t begrudge Kokila wearing it now. After all, when Chetana wore it, it had been brand-new.

Subhadra washed Kokila’s hair with squeezed
rita
pulp and made her feet yellow with turmeric paste. Chetana put henna on Kokila’s hands and feet; she made a design of grapes hanging on their vines on her hands and an intricate seashell design on her feet. It was like Kokila’s wedding day all over again.

Narayan Garu, an old friend of Ramanandam Sastri who also lived in the
ashram,
gave Kokila a pair of silver anklets that had small bells on them. They had belonged to his wife, who had died several years ago. He had saved her jewelry for his son’s wives but after they swindled him out of his own house, relegating him to Tella Meda, he had kept the anklets and a few other pieces of jewelry. Everyone in the
ashram
knew about the expensive trinkets that Narayan Garu kept safely locked in his room and it was a special honor, Kokila knew, to receive one of them as a gift.

“You be good to your husband, little bird,” Narayan Garu told her. In those early days he used to call her “little bird” instead of Kokila, which meant “cuckoo bird” in Telugu.

The silver anklets that were shining on her ankles were a going-away present. And it was the first of many such gifts. Charvi gave her a thin gold chain with an
om
-shaped locket on it. Chetana presented her with small black metal earrings that she had bought herself from money her mother had sent her. The money came rarely and in small amounts, so it was especially touching that she had used it for a gift.

Vidura gave her a white handkerchief surrounded with lace. “I found it at the cinema,” he told her. “So I asked Subhadra to wash it and iron it for you.”

It was a lovely handkerchief, delicate, and it smelled of roses. It was the most beautiful thing that Kokila had ever owned.

“Chetana and I will come and see you. Oh, but you might be too busy with your husband and household,” he teased.

Kokila winced when he said Chetana’s name like that, pairing it with his. Everyone was assuming she was leaving. Even Ramanandam Sastri gave her a going-away present, a leather-bound volume of Ramayana. It was an old book and the papers were thick and yellow and smelled. By giving her a present, Ramanandam Sastri squashed Kokila’s hope in the promise he had made to her that she wouldn’t have to go if she didn’t want to.

After a festive lunch, she was asked to go to Charvi’s room, where Kokila’s in-laws were waiting.

“Amma Kokila.” Her mother-in-law, a sweet-looking, slender woman, hugged her to her bosom. “We wanted you to come home after your father died, but it wasn’t proper then. We are so happy you’ll be with us now.”

Kokila looked down at her feet and nodded. She was disappointed that her husband had not come. She had been curious to see if she would even recognize him.

“Vamsi’s health is very delicate,” her mother-in-law said to explain her son’s absence. “We didn’t want him to sit in a bus for several hours. He is a very gentle boy, not used to the outside weather much. But once you’re with us, you can take care of him.”

Kokila felt panic rise within her. They wanted her to take care of someone? She didn’t know how to take care of people. She knew how to play in the afternoons and lie down at night and gaze at the stars.

“And you can cook, right?” her mother-in-law asked, and she didn’t seem all that sweet anymore. “Your father said you were a very good cook.”

My father lied,
Kokila wanted to scream. She didn’t know how to cook. Subhadra did all the cooking in the
ashram.

“You cook your good food for Vamsi and he’ll leave his delicate nature behind,” her mother-in-law said with an all-knowing smile.

Kokila nodded vaguely and turned her head to look at Charvi, who was sitting quietly, looking older than her twenty-two years. There were already streaks of gray in her hair and a small droop to her eyes. Subhadra said that since Charvi’s soul was that of an ancient, wise goddess, it sometimes showed on her face.

Kokila’s father-in-law cleared his throat to halt his wife from speaking further.

“We would like to leave today evening, after tiffin,” he said. “Pack your bags and be ready.”

“Subhadra is making your favorite,
masala vada,
for tiffin,” Charvi said, and rose to put a hand on Kokila’s hair. “We will all miss you.”

“Yes, we will,” Ramanandam Sastri said as he came into the room.

Kokila started trembling when she saw him.
He promised,
she told herself, and then turned to look at her in-laws, her eyes bright with tears.

“You will come back and see them again,” her mother-in-law assured her. “Don’t worry. I know it’s hard to leave but you will have a nice house and a husband.”

Kokila saw Vidura and Chetana hovering by the door into Charvi’s living quarters. They were holding hands.

Kokila turned and looked at Ramanandam Sastri. “I don’t want to go,” she said tearfully.

“Of course you don’t,” her mother-in-law snapped, her patience appearing to depart. “But you must. You are a married woman. You can’t stay at some pitiful
ashram
for the rest of your life.”

“I don’t want to go to your house,” Kokila said, spurred by anger that someone who knew nothing about Tella Meda was calling it pitiful. “I don’t know how to cook. My father lied.”

“You can learn how to cook,” Charvi said softly, her eyes warning Kokila not to say anything more.