Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel (5 page)

“Why don’t you want to go, Amma Kokila?” Ramanandam Sastri asked. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes.

“I want to stay,” Kokila said, afraid now that if she left she would have to take care of her “delicate” husband.

“Are you sure?” Ramanandam Sastri asked.

“Yes,” Kokila said firmly.

Ramanandam Sastri let go of Kokila and turned to face her in-laws. “I can’t force the girl,” he said.

“Nanna,” Charvi began, and then fell silent, shaking her head.

“But she’s our daughter-in-law,” Kokila’s father-in-law said angrily.

“I can’t force her,” Ramanandam Sastri repeated.

“What is wrong with you, you stupid girl?” her mother-in-law demanded. “Are you an idiot? You are married. You can’t stay in this low-life
ashram
all your years. What do you think will happen here? Nothing! Do you know the kind of people who live here?”

Kokila nodded but looked at her turmeric-stained feet.

“Some prostitute’s daughter, this teacher whose sister is an abortion doctor . . .” Kokila’s mother-in-law waved her hands as she spoke. “All losers and discards. You want to live with them?”

“Yes,” Kokila said.

“Then you can’t come back later and say ‘Where is my husband,’ okay?” the mother-in-law yelled. “We have another girl in mind, and we will get our son married to her immediately. So don’t show up and demand your rights.”

“I won’t,” Kokila said, happiness blossoming inside her. She lifted her head a little and saw Chetana, who looked sad now and was shaking her head.
She’s just upset that now she can’t have Vidura to herself,
Kokila thought gleefully.

“This is your bad influence, Sastri Garu.” The mother-in-law now turned on Ramanandam Sastri. “We knew it was going to be trouble when you brought her here. We know all about your sister and family,
chee-chee.
And this
ashram
. . . we should have known something like this would happen.”

They left on that note. No one told Kokila she had made a mistake, though she caught several pitying looks from the others when they thought she wasn’t looking. She later found out that Ramanandam Sastri had given strict orders to leave Kokila alone and let her be happy with her decision.

At first she was happy. But then her chores continued, the looks grew more pitying, and even worse, Vidura began to turn away from her. And then, just like that, he stopped talking to everyone.

When Chetana and Kokila told Ramanandam Sastri they were concerned about Vidura’s silence and how much time he was now spending alone, he assured them it was just a passing phase.

But it wasn’t a passing phase.

Kokila tried to talk to Vidura several times and each time he shunned her. And each time it tore at Kokila. It was not just that he didn’t want to talk to her; it was as if he was angry with her for not having left with her husband. In addition, he seemed angry with Charvi and Ramanandam Sastri. He wouldn’t say anything but every time Charvi or his father was nearby he would leave, bitter anger in his eyes.

“He’s just a boy,” Subhadra said. “And he’s turning into a man; it’s the change that makes him behave like this.”

Kokila wasn’t sure what was going on with Vidura, and every time he walked away from her without a smile or any form of acknowledgment it was an arrow through Kokila’s young heart.

“Stop crying for him,” Chetana told her when she caught Kokila weeping by the
tulasi
plant in the courtyard. “If he doesn’t want to talk to you, why bother?”

Kokila didn’t know how to explain to Chetana that she had stayed in Tella Meda for Vidura. She had stayed because she loved him.

“You won’t understand,” Kokila said.

“Yes, I will,” Chetana said confidently. “So he and you went for a few walks on the beach at night and he kissed you? He and I also went on walks and he kissed me too. One day he even touched my breasts. That’s not—”

Anger and betrayal flashed within Kokila. “You are no better than your mother.”

Chetana sighed and instead of fighting with Kokila spoke patiently. “I saw you and him on the beach one night. I never went with him after that, even when he asked. I love him too, Kokila. But he was with you and me at the same time without us knowing about it. What kind of a person does that make him?”

Through the red haze of anger Kokila could somehow clearly see what Chetana was telling her.

“But you let him touch your breasts,” Kokila accused.

“And you let him kiss you,” Chetana countered.

“I love him,” Kokila said, the anger seeping out of her.

“I love him too,” Chetana said with a sad smile.

“He lied to me,” Kokila said, her heart breaking. What had she done? She had given up her husband to be with a boy who had no loyalty.

“What did he lie about?” Chetana asked.

Kokila tried to remember what it was Vidura had lied about, but there was nothing to remember. “I just assumed,” she said weakly. “I thought if I stayed for him . . . but he told me that I should have gone with my husband, that I was a bad Hindu wife. Am I a bad Hindu wife?”

Chetana snorted. “You are not a wife anymore.”

Even though he had broken Kokila’s heart, she was prepared to forgive Vidura, if only he would speak with her and not be so remote. But Vidura isolated himself more and more from the people around him. And three months after Kokila had her first menses, Vidura ran away from Tella Meda without saying anything to anyone.

Kokila never saw him again.

1964
27 May 1964
. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the architect and first prime minister of modern India, passed away at the age of seventy-four.

28 May 1964.
A slow-moving funeral cortege containing the body of Jawaharlal Nehru inched through the streets of New Delhi. A million and a half Indians lined the route to pay final respects to their beloved leader.

A
Modern
Woman

V
idura ran away on the twenty-seventh of May, 1964, the day Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, died.

Ramanandam Sastri was destroyed.

He was like a walking corpse, going up the stairs every day to stand on the terrace under the splintering sun, watching and waiting for his son to come home.

Telegrams had been sent out, letters had been written to relatives, friends, anyone Ramanandam could think of. Most of them replied apologetically that they didn’t know Vidura’s whereabouts. The inspector of Bheemunipatnam also investigated but no one had seen Vidura with his battered suitcase filled with his belongings. Vidura’s room, one of the small rooms across from the kitchen, was bare except for his bed and an empty Godrej steel cupboard. He had managed to take everything away but no one knew when, no one knew how, and most important, no one knew why.

There was speculation that he had been kidnapped and taken away to the docks where young boys were used as slave labor. Some thought he had seen something untoward and had run away because of fear. And some thought that he was just a crazy boy who had left his nice home for God only knew what. Everyone believed he would come back and they tried to console Ramanandam Sastri with that hope. But he was inconsolable, both because of Vidura and because of Nehru.

Kokila cried for days after Vidura ran away. It didn’t seem fair that she was allowed to stay in Tella Meda but had to lose Vidura. Chetana was morose as well but less affected, Kokila thought, than herself. A gloom settled on the
ashram.
The ringing voices of play and laughter vanished, as if Vidura had taken not only his belongings but also the happiness out of Tella Meda.

Kokila found it hard to wake up in the morning and start a new day. She found it hard to find sleep in the night. She would lie down on the terrace and stare at the stars above and wonder if maybe Vidura was looking at the exact same stars at the exact same time. Maybe through the stars and moon she could reach out to him and ask him to come back home.

She wondered if he’d left because of her. Had he been so repulsed by her refusal to go to her husband’s house that he had left Tella Meda? She could confide in no one about how she felt, how remorse and guilt at being the cause of Vidura’s departure ate at her. If Chetana was upset, she didn’t show it, and Kokila was coming to believe that Chetana wasn’t upset or even disturbed anymore. Chetana seemed to have gotten over Vidura’s leaving very quickly. When once Kokila mentioned that Chetana didn’t seem to miss Vidura, Chetana serenely said, “Those who are gone are gone. I have to live my life now. My mother left—you don’t see me cry about that, do you? And she was probably a whole lot more important to me than Vidura.”

Kokila had experienced similar losses when her parents died, but this was different. They had died, their bodies had been burned, there had been closure. Vidura had left a raw open wound that didn’t heal and Kokila feared it never would. Kokila stopped going to the beach in the evenings with Charvi. She couldn’t bear to be there without Vidura. As it started to become obvious that Vidura would never come back, something within Kokila shriveled; laughter, which used to come easily, wouldn’t come at all. She felt older and seemed to have little interest in the idle times and nonsense of her old life.

To pass the time, Kokila started doing more chores at Tella Meda. Everyone except Charvi did their own washing; Subhadra did Charvi’s and the other common linens. Kokila took over that responsibility. She would wash and dry and iron everything accordingly, nagging Chetana to help.

She even started helping Subhadra in the kitchen and coaxed Chetana to do the same. Cooking three meals a day for the people who lived in the
ashram
plus the inevitable guests and devotees who came unannounced was a full-time job and Subhadra welcomed their help in chopping vegetables and serving the food.

Chetana woke up late each morning but Kokila made it a point to be up early and do the morning
puja
with Charvi. Her faith in Lord Venkateshwara Swami had increased since Vidura ran away. She started to believe that everything had a divine reason and everything happened for one’s own good. It was the only way she could cope with Vidura’s desertion.

Breakfast was never an elaborate affair, as Subhadra just steamed
idlis
and served them with leftover
sambhar
and coconut chutney. Sometimes she would make lemon rice, curd rice, or tamarind rice with rice left over from the previous night’s dinner.

Kokila and Chetana would help clean the dishes after breakfast and then start cleaning the verandah. Clothes had to be washed every other day, and Chetana helped, but reluctantly.

“Once I get married, I’m going to get a maid to do all this work for me,” Chetana would say.

Then they would help Subhadra prepare lunch, do the dishes, and then repeat the process again for dinner. In the middle they would help clean the rooms and the terrace and also work in the garden with Narayan Garu, who loved the plants as if they were his own children. The small vegetable garden that Narayan Garu tended produced tomatoes, peas, carrots, coriander, mint, and various gourds. It was a lifesaver for Tella Meda, especially on the many days when there was no money to buy vegetables and Subhadra would have had to serve just rice and pickle if it hadn’t been for Narayan Garu’s vegetables.

Despite all their work, Chetana and Kokila still managed to find free time. Gradually they returned to their habits of spending many an afternoon gossiping, playing cards, reading Telugu film magazines, and going for matinees at the cinema when they could get money from Subhadra. Since neither Kokila nor Chetana had any income, it was always a matter of begging and nagging hard enough to melt Subhadra’s heart so that she would part with a few
paisas
from her meager monthly pension.

Vidura used to accompany them in all their activities but as time passed, both Kokila and Chetana couldn’t imagine how it had been with a third person intruding on their friendship.

Three months after Vidura ran away and Nehru died,
she
came to the
ashram.
She was an odd woman, everyone thought, a little too modern, too masculine. Her name was Vineetha Raghavan and she was an old friend of Ramanandam Sastri. Hearing of his loss and needing some peace herself, she arrived at the
ashram
unannounced. This was her first visit to Tella Meda.

She wasn’t just Vineetha Raghavan, she was Dr. Vineetha Raghavan. And she wasn’t a sick people’s doctor but an engineer, a scientist.

Amongst all her father’s friends, Charvi disliked Vineetha the most. It was Vineetha’s bizarre friendship with her father that irked Charvi no end. Theirs was a special relationship, one she had never been able to pierce through or look into. Charvi was not sure and didn’t care if they were having sex. That wasn’t important. It was their emotional bond that grated on her nerves and kept her awake at night. For Charvi there was only one man in her life and to have another woman claim a place in his heart was torture.