Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel (43 page)

“Poor Puttamma,” Kokila said when more than a month had passed since Balaji’s arrest. Puttamma slept with great difficulty, crying all day and eating nothing. Kokila tried to care for her but no one could console Puttamma. Even Karuna, Balaji’s young wife, seemed to be dealing with the loss better than her mother-in-law.

“If they took my child away I’d go mad too,” Chetana said. “You keep thinking you’re safe and then they come and arrest you and that’s it.”

“Maybe he’s guilty,” Meena suggested as she helped Chetana string jasmine flowers into a garland for the temple room.

“Yes, maybe Balaji was as involved as Murugan Murthy,” Padma said.

“Shut up, both of you,” Chetana said angrily. “Better not say this in front of Puttamma. And you both need to learn to not give your opinion about everything. Girls should know when to keep quiet. Talkative little girls like you are not very attractive. No one will marry you if you don’t learn to behave yourselves.”

“But we don’t want to get married,” Meena announced. “We’re going to both become doctors and open a big clinic and make a lot of money.”

Chetana smacked her hand against her forehead. “This is my
karma.
One daughter marries too early and my second daughter doesn’t want to marry. Nice. Don’t marry, just be smart-mouthed, but be so someplace else, not in front of me.”

“My mother says that we should speak our mind. That’s the only way our country can progress: if women stand shoulder to shoulder to men and say what’s in their hearts,” Padma said stoically.

“Then get on inside the kitchen and irritate Sushila,” Chetana suggested, and Meena and Padma left in a huff.

“Is Chetana Auntie angry?” Karthik asked, looking up from the toy cars he was chasing around the courtyard.

“Yes,” Chetana said, and grabbed him in a big hug. She kissed him all over his face while he tried to wiggle away. “I’m very, very angry and you watch out. I’ll tickle you if I get any angrier.”

Karthik squealed with laughter and escaped to hide behind Kokila. “Where is Karthik?” he said, and Chetana rose quietly to grab him as he burst into fresh peals of laughter at being caught and tickled.

From the other end of the courtyard, near Balaji’s room, Kokila saw Puttamma watching them with tear-filled eyes.

Balaji came home the next day, all by himself. He had lost weight and was about half the size he used to be. His clothes were filthy, as if he had lived in them for a whole month. There were bruises around his eyes and on his hands. He was dehydrated and starved.

Charvi gasped when she saw him as he stumbled into the temple room during her morning
puja.

“Oh my God, what have they done to you?” she cried, and then called for help.

Balaji didn’t talk much about his arrest or about where he had been taken. He just said that they had interrogated him and then had let him go because Murugan Murthy had cleared him of any association with LTTE. Murugan Murthy himself had managed to get released with the help of some politician friends of his.

Balaji had always been a quiet boy but he had seemed content with his life. But a month in jail had killed the contentment within him. It was as if all the joy had been sucked out from him and there was nothing left inside that could feel happiness. He remained like that for months. His wife tried Ayurvedic herbal medicines, homeopathy, and even witchcraft, hoping to bring her husband back from his silence and lack of animation, but nothing worked.

Dr. Vishnu Mohan found out that Balaji had been tortured for information regarding the LTTE while in custody. The Bheemunipatnam police inspector wasn’t even apologetic that Balaji had been unjustly tortured and put in prison for a month. Sometimes innocent bystanders got hurt, he told Dr. Vishnu Mohan when the doctor complained about the situation. He wasn’t sorry because if he had to do it again with the proof he had, he wouldn’t change anything.

Three months after Balaji returned from prison, Bhanu had a baby boy. Just two days after she delivered, Balaji committed suicide by jumping off one of the many cliffs in Bheemunipatnam. Karuna, widowed at the age of nineteen, continued to stay in Tella Meda. Puttamma, heartbroken, left Bheemunipatnam and went back to her village near Kavali. No one at Tella Meda ever heard from her again.

1992
12 March 1992
. A devastating wave of car-bomb explosions killed an estimated three hundred people and injured hundreds more in the large western Indian port city of Bombay. The first blast ripped through the city’s stock exchange building, and minutes later a dozen slightly less powerful explosions rocked the bustling city center.

8 December 1992.
Today, amid worldwide protest against the demolition of the Babri Masjid, a mosque in Ayodhya, Lal Kishenchand Advani, Musli Monohar Joshi, Ashok Singhal, and other Bharatiya Janata Party figures were arrested for leading the mob that destroyed the mosque on December 3, 1992. In response to the Ayodhya demolition, several temples were burned in Pakistan and Britain by Muslims.

Catastrophe
Is
Coming

C
harvi woke up on the morning of her fiftieth birthday with bitterness coating her mouth. She had been waiting for this morning, it seemed for years, and dreading it.

Fifty years, she thought, shocked as she looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was now completely white, and had been for a while; her skin was loose around her mouth, wrinkled around her eyes, and blotched with light brown marks. Her eyes, the eyes she had always been proud of, light brown eyes, different from others, had lost their luster as well. Her skin wasn’t milky white anymore, it had darkened. The process had been gradual, so gradual that she hadn’t noticed it until now.

It wasn’t like she woke up this morning and saw youth far behind her, but it was a difficult morning because Tella Meda was going to celebrate its
guru
’s fiftieth birthday and Charvi knew there was nothing to celebrate.

What had she achieved in fifty years?

Until a day ago she had been able to fool herself that she had Tella Meda; if nothing else, she had made a home for the discarded women of the world and children who had nowhere to go. She had devotees and friends, people who looked after her and respected her. Now she had to tell them that they might have to leave Tella Meda, that they all would have to find a new home.

The letter had looked innocuous and Charvi didn’t pay much attention as she read through the initial pleasantries. It had been so long since Srikant Somayajula or anyone from his family had contacted anyone at Tella Meda that Charvi had all but forgotten that the house with the white roof that glittered as though studded with diamonds in moonlight didn’t belong to her. The letter was plain enough, written by Srikant Somayajula’s eldest son, Kedarnath. He informed Charvi that his father had passed away, peacefully in his sleep, two weeks ago. Kedarnath and his two younger brothers had decided to sell Tella Meda as many development companies had approached them about the land and the house. The idea was to tear down Tella Meda and construct luxury flats with a view over the Bay of Bengal.

He was candid in the letter, saying that he respected his father’s desire to leave the house as it was so that it could be used as an
ashram,
but he and his brothers wanted to sell. The house and land, in today’s market, would sell for three
lakhs
of
rupees.
Charvi had six months to vacate the property. They were sorry that they were asking this of Charvi but they hoped Charvi would understand their situation and appreciate that she and her flock had been allowed to live free of rent in Tella Meda for almost thirty-five years now, since 1957. As an afterthought, Kedarnath added that he would try and help them find a new house but also mentioned that since he knew no one in the Bheemunipatnam area, he wasn’t sure how much help he could be.

Charvi had not talked about the letter to anyone. She was shell-shocked.

Tella Meda was home and now they would have to leave it. Where would they go? She knew she had to talk to Kokila so that they could find other accommodations. She flirted with the idea of asking some wealthy devotee for the three
lakhs
of
rupees
that would help them buy the house but she didn’t know how to ask for money. That was always something Kokila did.

And it wasn’t as though devotees were flocking to her door as they used to some years ago. Her luster had faded and the numbers of those who came to Tella Meda every Sunday had thinned. Some Sundays in the past few years no one would come, except for the beggars and the homeless looking for a free meal.

It was an insult, cause for alarm, and Charvi had felt both. But she had curbed the emotions and hidden them under apathy. She was a
guru,
she thought. If no one needed her, that wasn’t her fault.

And she would have continued as before, pretending to be a
guru
even though she doubted her godliness and spirituality every day, if that letter had never arrived. Now she had to confront her future and the futures of all those who lived in Tella Meda. Where would Kokila go? What about Chetana and Meena? What about Karuna, Sushila, and Padma? What about Shanthi? What about all those who came once a year for solace? Could any other house match the opulence and character of Tella Meda?

It was imperative to talk with Kokila. They had to either find a new home, find three
lakhs
of
rupees,
or convince Kedarnath to continue to let them stay in Tella Meda as his father had. Charvi wished she didn’t have to deal with such materialistic things; she wished she didn’t have to worry about finances and the like. She wished she hadn’t received the letter. She wished Kokila had and then she wouldn’t have to think about what to do.

Charvi looked at her reflection in the mirror and closed her eyes, appalled at the old woman staring back at her. How had the years flown by? And why had they gone by without even a whisper?

When she opened her eyes again her reflection was replaced by an image of a large tidal wave, a tsunami, rising high and crashing onto Tella Meda. The vision lasted for short seconds but Charvi almost fell off the chair in front of her dressing table. Catastrophe was coming, she thought in fear. A tsunami would crash down on Tella Meda and destroy all that was within. Panic rose within her and she gasped for breath, afraid of her own reflection, the world and her vision that swirled around her. She clutched at her face, wanting to scratch her eyes out, and then she started to cry. Catastrophe was coming. Big catastrophe, she realized, and she knew she had to tell everyone so that they could be saved.

Charvi meditated for a few minutes, hoping to gain control. By the time she finished her bath and was ready for the morning
puja
where everyone was waiting to wish her a happy and prosperous birthday, she was her usual calm and stoic self.

Not for the first time since she’d left, Charvi missed Subhadra. She got letters regularly from her erstwhile cook and caretaker and it was obvious that Subhadra and Chandra were enjoying Chandra’s children’s hospitality. They spent their time in devotions to Lord Venkateshwara Swami and cooking elaborate meals for Chandra’s children and grandchildren.

Usually on Charvi’s birthday, Subhadra would give her a bath in the morning, wash her hair with
rita,
and put a decorative
bindi
on her forehead. Since Subhadra had left no one else volunteered and Charvi decided she wouldn’t be comfortable with someone else’s attentions either. Tella Meda seemed to be slipping away through her fingers. Kokila was running it now. No one asked Charvi how things should be done; everyone went to Kokila. It was Kokila who decided that new toilet bowls were required, not Charvi. It was Kokila who had the west wall repaired because rainwater was seeping in and no one asked Charvi if it should be done or not. After Balaji committed suicide, Kokila decided that it would be best to lay down stones in the garden to reduce garden work. Charvi had been consulted but even then Charvi knew that Kokila was telling her what would be done, not asking for her permission. The new gardener, some man from the
basti,
had not been introduced to her.

Since Puttamma had left, Karuna had taken over cleaning the rooms and the bathrooms and sweeping the courtyard. She washed the dishes after every meal and even spent some time in the evenings pressing Charvi’s legs, which hurt more and more since the onset of arthritis some years ago.

A table and a chair had been introduced in the verandah, next to the knee-high dining table, so that Charvi wouldn’t have to sit on the floor during meals.

Besides Karuna, Charvi felt none of the residents of Tella Meda saw her the way her devotees who had flocked around her every Sunday did, the way Subhadra used to. They were not like the guests who arrived and left all the time, full of devotion, convinced that Charvi was a
guru,
an incarnation of a goddess. Maybe it wouldn’t matter that Tella Meda would have to be closed down. They would find a new place to stay and this time Charvi knew she would be careful about who was allowed to stay, only those who truly believed in her. Of course, people like Chetana and Kokila couldn’t be kicked out, but maybe they wouldn’t want to stay. Maybe she could find women and devotees like Karuna, prepared to do anything for her.