Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel (53 page)

Manikyam sat by her side, her expression vacant, her skin old and decaying, her hair as white as Charvi’s. She was dying too, Charvi thought. But then she was almost ten years older than Charvi.

If Ramanandam had not annunciated Charvi as a goddess, would she have had a life like Manikyam’s? Would she have married, loved, had children and grandchildren?

She wanted to talk to Manikyam, wanted to tell her that all was forgiven. But something within her stopped her. If she forgave Manikyam, it would be because she thought and believed she was dying and all of a sudden, Charvi didn’t want to die. She wanted to live. There was a spark within her that wanted to claim all of her and even though she understood the futility of her life, she couldn’t accept the darkness of death, not quite yet. And because she couldn’t, she didn’t call out to the staring Manikyam who was waiting to be forgiven.

Shanthi telephoned Kokila every night and told her that everything at Tella Meda was fine, especially Karthik, who was busier than ever. He and his friends were having a millennium new year’s party. The party was to be held at the computer center and there was going to be loud music and whatever it was young boys these days were interested in.

Kokila didn’t even remember how they had passed into the new year when they were young, but both Chetana and she agreed there had not been much noise. No party, no nothing. They always celebrated Ugadi, the Telugu New Year, but no one paid much attention to the calendar new year. That had obviously changed. The young people seemed to be learning all sorts of Western things from TV and the Internet. Kokila wasn’t sure if that was a bad thing or a good thing. Chetana believed it was for the better. People were starting to have more fun in their lives, and that could never be a bad thing.

Charvi’s condition deteriorated and the doctors declared that she would not get back the use of her right side. She was probably not going to live through the year either. Charvi refused to accept that and clung to the hope that her health would improve and she would be able to go back to Tella Meda.

Lavanya was informed of Charvi’s declining health and she came to visit. In the past years, her beauty had faded and she had come to realize she had more in common with her “goddess” sister than she would admit. She didn’t have a family or a husband and she was living with a friend in a small town in coastal Tamil Nadu. The bitterness had left her and she didn’t blame Charvi for all the ills in the world anymore. Lavanya didn’t stay long at the hospital, but the sisters made up before Lavanya left.

Charvi lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, talking to Kokila and Chetana about things that didn’t matter and spending many hours in drug-induced sleep. With half her face paralyzed her words came out slurred and sometimes she was barely coherent. She was slipping away, the doctors said, as parts of her body started to shut down one after the other.

“I was in love once,” Charvi said to no one in particular. Kokila was in the hospital room with her, reading a magazine, and her head shot up immediately.

“He was an American,” Charvi continued, a half-smile on her face, and it looked as if she was in a different time and place. “Mark Talbot. Remember, Kokila, he sent me that picture in black and white? I looked so beautiful. He never wrote, never came to visit, and I waited, every day. In the beginning I waited with a huge fountain of hope inside my heart and after some years I knew he wouldn’t come. I thought he was in love with me. Maybe he wasn’t.”

Kokila didn’t know what to say. These were the ramblings of a dying woman.

“I remember him. He was a photographer for some foreign magazine,” Kokila said. “Chetana and I had a big crush on him. He was very good-looking. I think he was attracted to you.”

“You do?” Charvi said, and her voice held the excitement of a young girl finding out that the boy she likes wants her too. “I think so too. He had the bluest eyes and he talked to me. He just had to talk to me and I’d melt. Sometimes hearing his voice would make my knees weaken like they were filled with water. And he kissed me once. Just once, on the cheek.”

Her hand drifted to her left cheek and she brushed herself gently. “Like the flutter of a butterfly, Kokila. He kissed me and I can still feel the heat of his breath. Oh, I could’ve married him, had children. Do you think that could have happened?”

“Yes,” Kokila said, and put a hand on Charvi’s forehead, stroking gently, hoping to console her. “It could have happened.”

“It didn’t happen for you either,” Charvi said. “You should’ve gone with that boy you were married to. I tried to get rid of you, tried to send you away, but you were so stubborn.”

Kokila smiled, remembering. “I was young. Who knows? I might’ve had a worse life with him than I did at Tella Meda.”

“I hate you,” Charvi whispered hoarsely, her eyes closed, her body rocking gently. “You took my father away and I hate you.”

Kokila stopped stroking Charvi’s forehead for a moment and then continued. She had always known that Charvi held a grudge about Kokila’s relationship with Ramanandam; it was only a small surprise, to hear it so bluntly.

“He lusted after you. We all knew, we all could see,” Charvi said. “Vidura could also see. He had a fight with him, a big fight, and Nanna beat him. He slapped him and hit him. Vidura said that Nanna kept you in Tella Meda for himself. And he did, didn’t he? The first chance he got, he was spreading your legs.”

Kokila’s throat burned as emotions rode through her. Charvi’s words were ugly. What she was insinuating was deviant and Kokila was sure that Ramanandam had not been the man Charvi was describing. He hadn’t made her stay at Tella Meda and Vidura had run away for reasons that had nothing to do with her. Charvi was old and sick and confused. She was rambling, she was delirious.

“
I
wanted to stay. No one made me stay,” Kokila said tightly. “I didn’t want to leave Tella Meda.”

“And he let you,” Charvi said, then sighed. “Did you love him the way I love Mark Talbot?”

Kokila didn’t answer.

“No, you couldn’t. I saw you one day, sneaking out of his room, holding your
sari
to your body. You had slept with him, had sex with him. I hated him then too,” Charvi said. “And Vidura . . . Vidura was so sad that his father had an eye on a girl he liked. On you.”

“No, he didn’t. Ramanandam didn’t notice me that way until many years later,” Kokila said, now certain that this was Charvi’s delirium speaking. Truth or not, Kokila had the rest of her life to live and she wouldn’t live it believing Charvi’s words. How could she trust this woman who had called herself a goddess all her life yet had hated Kokila for so many years because Kokila had been young and gullible enough to sleep with an older man? Charvi felt no sympathy for Kokila, just hatred.

No,
Kokila thought, and stared at Charvi’s face as it convulsed with grief. She would not let Charvi taint her past with innuendo and suppositions.

“And Vidura ran away,” Charvi cried out softly. “I never saw him again. Never. I promised my dying mother I’d care for him and I didn’t. I don’t even know if he’s dead or alive.” She started crying then, tears streaming down her face. Kokila wiped the tears off her wrinkled cheeks.

“It wasn’t my fault, was it, Kokila?” Charvi asked. “Did he run away because of me? He hated me, didn’t he? He told you he hated me.”

“No, he loved you,” Kokila said, and it wasn’t a lie. It was so long ago now that she couldn’t remember what Vidura had told her and what he had meant.

“He had a fight with Nanna. I think it was about me,” Charvi said, and started to sob loudly. “And then he ran away. He is the only regret I have. No, that’s not true, there are a hundred others as well. So many regrets that I’m not sure where one starts and one ends. Don’t have regrets, Kokila, they weigh heavily and make you want to live even when life isn’t worth living.”

She mumbled on some more but Kokila couldn’t understand her. She stood by Charvi, one hand on her forehead and the other holding her hand.

“Go to sleep now, Charvi, rest a little,” Kokila whispered, and despite herself she felt a strong affection for this woman who was an indelible part of her life, a woman who had given her a home, a purpose. Charvi was friend, sister, guardian, and nemesis, all wrapped into one.

Charvi fell asleep then. Kokila, Chetana, and Manikyam took turns keeping vigil by her bedside over the next few days. Charvi slept for longer and longer periods.

And the day before the new millennium arrived, Charvi quietly passed away in her sleep.

Charvi’s body was taken back to Tella Meda and it was debated where her
samadhi
would be built. When saints passed away, they were known to reach a higher plane of existence and they went into
samadhi.
Their bodies were not cremated but buried and a building, a
samadhi,
was built there in their honor.

News of Charvi’s death traveled among her devotees and many of them arrived to pay their last respects. Among the devotees were Kedarnath Somayajula and his wife, the legitimate part-owners of Tella Meda. With Charvi dead, they were now ready to sell Tella Meda to the construction company that had wanted to demolish the big, old house with a white roof and build an apartment complex.

It was not a surprise—Kokila had been expecting this—but now she didn’t know where the
samadhi
should be built. It couldn’t be built in Tella Meda, as Tella Meda would cease to exist in a few months.

The old
pujari
at the temple suggested that the
samadhi
be built there, but there wasn’t enough room on the temple grounds. Finally, Subhadra suggested that maybe the
samadhi
should be built by the bay on the beach. After all, Charvi had gone for a walk there every day and it would be public enough that people would be able to pay their respects to her.

Money was raised from devotees for the building of the
samadhi
by the roadside on the beach, right in front of Tella Meda. The Municipal Committee of Bheemunipatnam wholeheartedly supported the idea, as they believed that Charvi had been an integral part of life in Bheemunipatnam and therefore a proper monument to her death had to be built.

The
samadhi
was made quickly and the contractor who made it did it for free.

Being dead is like being within a rainbow,
Charvi thought as she lay under splendid colors that shimmered brightly over her. She had transcended her body. She could feel weightlessness race through her. She didn’t have a corporeal form, no face, no eyes, no flesh.

She swam past the people thronged around the verandah and in the temple room, who were waiting to catch a glimpse of her body in the courtyard, covered in white, lying on a straw gurney.

Subhadra was sitting next to Charvi’s body, crying, as she swatted mosquitoes off Charvi’s face with one hand and fanned with the other. Meena and Asif were sitting in a corner, looking bored. Meena had never believed in her, Charvi thought, and smiled because it didn’t matter anymore. All sins had been forgiven, hers and others’. And God knew she had sinned just as others had.

Kokila, as always, was coordinating everything. She was in a heated discussion with a contractor, arranging for the
samadhi
to be built. Charvi liked the idea of her
samadhi
being close to the water.

Charvi went up to all those present and felt regret that she had never made up with Manikyam. Lavanya was not there, but Charvi had already said good-bye to her in the hospital.

The walls of Tella Meda seemed alive as she slipped through them and floated around the old house for one last time. She had lived here for over four decades. This was her home and soon it would be gone. It seemed befitting that as she died, Tella Meda would also die.

She stood outside Tella Meda for a while, watching her
samadhi
being built on the beach with big electric lights shining around the construction area. The full moon was rising and Charvi smiled as she saw the old house with the white roof shimmer in the brilliant moonlight.

Charvi saw herself standing on the terrace on another moonlit night years ago, looking down to see a man taking her photograph. The image was strong for an instant and then it dissolved, lightening her heart.

The house moved with its own energy, in synchronized rhythm with the waves of the bay and Charvi’s spirit, and then the house enfolded Charvi into its bosom.

In the years to come, the words on the marble remained clear:

Here lies Goddess Charvi. May her light shine over all of us.

But people forgot who she was and once Tella Meda was gone, it was even harder to remember the house, the goddess, the magic. A new era claimed Bheemunipatnam as computers and big airplanes made the world smaller, as the slums shrank in size, and people started to live better.

2000
19 March 2000
. Bill Clinton, the president of the United States, arrived to a warm welcome in India. His was the first United States presidential visit in two decades.

7 April 2000.
The Delhi police unearthed a multimillion-
rupee
cricket-betting and match-fixing racket involving five South African cricketers, including the South African cricket team captain, Hansie Cronje.