Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel (50 page)

“I didn’t?” Chetana shrugged. “Ramanandam came to me and said that I should not tell anyone about it as it had nothing to do with Vidura running away. He made me promise and he was crying, so I forgot about it. I thought I told you; I guess I didn’t.”

“Is that why he ran away, you think?” Kokila asked.

“Who knows why he ran away. I have seen enough of the world to know that people do strange things for strange reasons.” Chetana sighed. “But don’t compare Vidura with Karthik. Karthik is coming back home when that money runs out. Vidura had other demons chasing him.”

“Like what?” Kokila asked.

“Like he hated Charvi and he hated his father. Vidura was thirteen but he had already had sex . . . did you know that? He would kiss me and touch me and . . . Oh, I had almost forgotten about Vidura,” Chetana said with a laugh. “I thought I was the queen around here and obviously better than you because Vidura did more kissing with me than with you.”

“He kissed me once, did I tell you?” Kokila said. “We went for a walk on the beach.”

Chetana laughed out loud. “I know, I saw you go with him. That’s where he always took me and kissed me, right behind the big rock there. Looks like he wanted to take advantage of both of us and we’d have let him too. Stupid, we were.”

“What happened to him, you think?” Kokila asked.

“Anything could have happened,” Chetana said. “The world out there is dangerous . . . but don’t think about that. Karthik is fine. He will come home and you will scold him for running away. In a few years you will laugh about this.”

She would never laugh about this, Kokila thought, she would never be able to laugh about feeling like this.

Kokila looked at the empty road in front of Tella Meda and felt panic clench her. The house below was full of people and this was a festive time but she could not stop the terror within her from rising. Karthik had run away and what if she never saw him again? Just imagining that was crippling and she strained her eyes to see farther so that she could catch a glimpse of Karthik coming back home with Rajan.

“Do you think Karthik will disappear and never return like Vidura?” Kokila asked, tears filling her eyes.

“Vidura had no one to love him here. Karthik has you. He’ll come back. He just wanted to have some fun and that’s all. He isn’t like Vidura,” Chetana said.

“Why did Ramanandam beat Vidura?” Kokila asked.

“I don’t know. Something about something Vidura had seen or said. Vidura wasn’t very clear when he talked to me. Then two days later, he ran away. I talked to Ramanandam and he then asked me not to tell anyone about the beating. Those days I thought Ramanandam was second to none and what did I know? I was a little girl,” Chetana said.

“Ramanandam never told me,” Kokila said, suddenly feeling betrayed by a man who had been dead for over two decades. “He never said anything to me about Vidura. I was crazy about Vidura. I stayed in Tella Meda and didn’t go with that boy I was married to because of him. I was scared you’d steal him away if I left.”

Chetana smiled. “And I would have too if he hadn’t run away.”

“I can’t bear it, Chetana, if Karthik doesn’t come back. I will die,” Kokila said bleakly.

Chetana put an arm around Kokila. “He’ll come back. He’s just out there blowing off five hundred
rupees.
He’ll be home by . . . I say, tomorrow night. That’s how long that money will last them and then they’ll come running home, too scared to face the world alone.”

“He’s angry that we won’t get satellite TV at Tella Meda,” Kokila said as she sniffled, pushing the tears off her face with her hands.

“If it wasn’t satellite TV it would be something else. With children there’s always something missing that they want or something that we can’t or won’t give. That’s life,” Chetana said, and wiped Kokila’s face with the
pallu
of her
sari.

Downstairs in Tella Meda there was festivity brimming. Telugu movie music (much to Charvi’s chagrin) was playing loudly and people were milling around the courtyard and verandah. Relatives and friends who hadn’t seen each other since the last wedding were chatting and catching up, while Sushila and Karuna served tea and snacks.

Padma was sitting in one corner talking to Manoj while Manoj’s parents and some others stared openly at them, talking about how good the couple looked together.

Padma sat shyly, slightly turned toward Manoj, who looked much less spectacular in person without the image of his car behind him. He wore a gold chain and a shiny gold bracelet on his wrist. His face had a matching shiny texture and he wore a black T-shirt with faded blue jeans. He smelled of cologne and he talked with a slight American accent.

He is terrible to look at, no matter his smell and his accent,
thought Meena with a slight smile. She had arrived with Asif the day before, just before Karthik’s disappearance.

“What do you think of Tella Meda?” she asked Asif, who was sitting by her, watching the proceedings with unabashed curiosity. It wasn’t every day he, a Muslim, was invited or allowed to participate so intimately in a Telugu Brahmin wedding.

When Meena introduced him to everyone at Tella Meda, there was such silence that Meena started to laugh a little out of nervousness. It wasn’t as though Asif had “Muslim” stamped on his forehead. He was a nice-looking boy with fair skin. He was quite tall, almost six feet, and definitely didn’t look like a Telugu boy.
And thank God for that,
Meena thought. As soon as people heard his name, they became uncomfortable. Chetana had been the least concerned—at least that was the way it appeared to Meena.

“He’s just a friend, right?” Chetana asked Meena to her face, and Meena lied without compunction.

“Good,” Chetana said, “Because I won’t tolerate you marrying some Muslim. Do you know that you have to become a Muslim to marry one?”

“That isn’t how it always works,” Meena had argued. “I don’t really think Asif’s parents are that type of people. They’re not very conservative.”

“But that isn’t really important to us, now, is it?” Chetana asked slyly. “Since you’re only friends with this Muslim boy, right?”

“Right,” Meena said, knowing she had been caught.

Now as she sat beside Asif, watching Padma talk and laugh shyly with her husband-to-be, Meena smiled. Her life, she knew, was much better than Padma’s would ever be. Padma was marrying some stranger off the road. Tomorrow, after the wedding ceremony, she would have to have sex with this man. She would have to take her clothes off and be naked in front of this stranger. She had talked to him on the phone for a few months now but it still seemed extremely rushed, unnatural.

Meena and Asif had fallen in love before they had taken their clothes off in front of each other. They had been intimate with each other
after
they had known each other, not before. She had kissed Asif, felt her heart race, months before they had made love. Padma would have to forgo all that excitement and foreplay and just jump in and have sex. And since this Manoj chap was probably a twenty-eight-year-old virgin, Meena could only imagine the disaster that awaited poor Padma the next night. Meena knew that Padma had always woven dreams around the first night and her husband, who would, of course, be handsome.

Meena felt some satisfaction that she sat next to the good-looking Asif, while Padma was being saddled with Mr. Black-as-Coal. Padma had treated Meena shabbily, unforgivably, because Meena had done well in EAMCET. Padma showed off about going to America, getting married, and Meena could only frown at that. What was the big deal about America? Already people were talking about how the information technology business in the United States was not doing very well and Indians were being laid off and sent back to India.

And why would an engineer want to go to America when there were so many good jobs available in India now? All the big IT companies were in India now, opening offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad. What was the big show-off element about going to America?

“Did you tell your mother?” Asif asked Meena as she watched Padma. “And stop staring at the poor girl. You’ll poke a hole into her.”

Meena made a face. “No, I didn’t tell my mother. I think I’ll wait till I’m not around her to tell her. And I’m staring because that fellow is ugly.”

“And she’s quite a beauty,” Asif said. He grinned when Meena looked at him angrily. “Just wanted to get your attention. She isn’t better-looking than you.”

“Do you find her attractive?” Meena asked.

Asif shrugged. “I think she’s beautiful. She is, Meena, even a blind man can see that. But do I find her attractive? Now, how could I find anyone attractive when I have you with me?”

Meena smiled at that and playfully jabbed him in the shoulder. “You’re smooth, aren’t you?”

“I took classes,” Asif said with a laugh.

Just as Asif laughed, Chetana saw them from the terrace and frowned.

“She’s lying,” she told Kokila.

“About the Muslim boy?”

“Hmm. He’s not
just
a friend. She’s sleeping with him. I can tell,” Chetana said, and sighed.

“How do you know?”

“A mother knows,” Chetana said.

Kokila raised her eyebrows in disbelief.

“I went through her suitcase,” Chetana admitted. “She had birth control pills. And just look at them! Of course they’re doing it. At least she’s being careful. But I must say I can’t stand the idea of her marrying this Muslim.”

“He’s very nice to look at,” Kokila said. “And Manikyam also hated the idea of Ravi marrying you. Do you think it’s wise to make the same mistakes Manikyam and her husband made?”

Kokila couldn’t imagine being upset about whomever Karthik wanted to marry. She would welcome any daughter-in-law into her home, she thought, benevolent now because she would even say yes to satellite TV if it would get Karthik home. And once he was home, she would lock him up. School and home, that was it, nowhere else— no friends, no nothing.

“At least I wasn’t a Muslim,” Chetana said, watching the intimacy between Meena and Asif. “Renuka was telling me that Meena would have to become a Muslim and they would change her name to some Turku name. Meena thinks she’s in love with him. And that boy, look at how he looks at my daughter. Like he knows what she looks like without her clothes on. And he probably does. These Muslim boys seducing nice Hindu girls . . .”

“You can’t fight this, you know,” Kokila said softly. “They’re both going to be doctors in one year. They will be independent. They don’t need you or anyone’s money.”

Chetana nodded. “That’s why I won’t say anything until she does. You think she’ll tell me the truth before she leaves?”

Kokila shook her head. “She’ll wait till she’s back in Hyderabad and then she’ll phone you.”

“That’s what I thought,” Chetana said. “Well, at least he’s not a lecher like Babu.”

“Bhanu is very happy with Babu,” Kokila reminded her. “He takes very good care of her, loves her very much.”

“I still wish she’d married someone who looked better, felt better, and was better,” Chetana said before correcting herself slightly. “But she’s happy and has money. I couldn’t have done better for her if I’d gone looking for a boy for her.”

“And look at Padma’s bridegroom,” Kokila said and they both winced.

“He is not very nice to look at to start with, and seeing him next to Padma . . . oh, Sushila’s heart must be breaking to marry her beautiful daughter off to that boy,” Chetana said with a sly smile. “Not that it was ever a contest, but Meena will be a doctor and will marry a doctor.”

“A Muslim doctor,” Kokila said, and Chetana sighed.

“Don’t keep saying Muslim. He’s a fair, good-looking boy. I’ll try not to think too much about his religion. Oh, Kokila, will they really change Meena’s name?”

As Chetana had predicted, Karthik came home the very next night. He and Rajan had spent all the money they had stolen and came back, their heads hung and their hands and faces grimy. They had ridden home from Visakhapatnam in a truck transporting chickens and they smelled like chicken shit.

“We didn’t have bus money,” Karthik said to Kokila as she poured water over him and scrubbed him with soap, complaining about how dirty he was and how bad he smelled.

“Amma, are you angry with me?” he asked when Kokila started to dry him.

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re very angry with me.”

“Then you’re thinking right,” Kokila said. “Now go get dressed. Rajan and his parents are going to be here soon.”

The boys confessed that they had gone to watch the India-versus-Australia one-day match in Visakhapatnam. To both Rajan and Karthik, Saurav Ganguly, the Indian cricket team captain, was a hero and they had wanted very badly to see him play. Unfortunately they tried to buy tickets on the black market and were swindled out of a major portion of their money. The man selling the tickets had given them fake tickets and they were not allowed to enter the stadium. By the time they figured that going home was the only option left, they had run out of money and were too embarrassed to phone their parents and ask for help.

Kokila was relieved that Karthik had come home unharmed, and unlike Vidura, had not disappeared for life. Now when she thought of Vidura, Kokila couldn’t even remember his face. How could she have forgotten the face of the boy who had made her throw her life away? On the other hand, she couldn’t remember the face of the boy she had been married to for a few short years either.

After so many years it didn’t hurt at all that Vidura had run away and that she had no idea what happened to him. It didn’t hurt that Ramanandam had beaten him a few days before he ran away and Kokila would probably never know why. Something had been wrong between father and son and also between father and daughter, but then all of Ramanandam’s relationships were tainted with some malignance. After almost twenty years, Kokila couldn’t even remember Ramanandam’s face very clearly unless she looked at one of the pictures of his in the house. But Kokila had forgotten the love she had felt for him. She now only felt a measure of regret when she remembered her relationship with that old man.