Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel (26 page)

“He is very sick,” Subhadra said to her while they hung washed colorful cotton saris on the clothesline. “Spat out blood yesterday. I saw it on his clothes. No one talks to him . . . and he only wants you anyway. Why don’t you just—”

“Are these it? Are there any more clothes?” Kokila asked in a high-pitched voice, pretending Subhadra had not spoken. She could hardly stay calm in the face of blood, could she? Spat out blood? How much blood? What did that mean? How sick was he? Was he dying? When?

“Come on, Kokila, don’t be like this,” Subhadra admonished softly. “He loves you . . .”

“Subhadra,”
Kokila warned.

“What? I’m not afraid of you. You can bully everyone in Tella Meda, but not me,” Subhadra said. “He’s sick. Very sick. He’s dying, Kokila. There’s nothing left to fight over.”

Kokila walked away from the courtyard into the temple room, her head throbbing because of the heat, the wetness of the clothes she had hung on the clothesline, and Subhadra’s words.

What was she supposed to do?

Kokila stared at the shining black and gold idol of Lord Venkateshwara Swami in the mahogany temple and folded her hands in prayer.
Sometimes it is just easy to believe that there is a god watching
over and guiding you,
she thought.
Sometimes it is easier to just let go.

It was common for people to make requests of Lord Venkateshwara Swami and promise to visit his home in Tirupati, or offer money for the temple
hundi,
or offer the hair on their head, if their request came true. Kokila had never asked for anything but as she stood in the temple room that day, for the first time she asked for something. Guidance, a divine sign, a symbol, anything that would tell her what to do. And if the wish came true? She was thinking what she could promise if her wish came true when the letter arrived.

The postman, Ramana Rao, had been delivering post to Tella Meda for over a decade now. He would come and sit down in the verandah and whoever was around would give him a glass of cold water from the earthen pot in the kitchen, along with tea or coffee and some snack. If there was no tea or snack available, there was always someone to talk with Ramana Rao and brighten his weary post-delivering day.

“Many letters today, Post Garu?” Kokila asked as she brought cold water in a steel tumbler.

Ramana Rao gulped down the water without touching the rim of the glass with his lips. He drank neatly, with not even a drop of water escaping down his throat.

“How are you doing, Kokila Amma?” he asked as he set the steel tumbler down. “No typing school today?”

Kokila shook her head. “They are closed on Saturdays.”

“Very nice,” Ramana Rao said, nodding. “They say that in America people only work five days a week. Saturday is a holiday for everyone. That’s a good life, don’t you think? Two Sundays, one after the other.”

“Post Garu, how are you?” Subhadra came out to the verandah with a cup of tea and some
chakli
she had made the day before. “If you can wait five minutes, Renuka is making fresh coconut
ladoo.
You can take some with you.”

“So nice of you, Subhadra Amma. Since my Parvati died, this is the only place I get any homemade food,” Ramana Rao said as he bit into a
chakli.
This was the finest part of his day. Since so many people lived in Tella Meda, there was always post for someone or other and he always managed to get his
chai-pani
break with the nice women of the
ashram.
Once in a while he could see Charvi, making it even sweeter to come to Tella Meda.

“What, Madhavan is not making good food anymore in that canteen of his?” Kokila asked.

Ramana Rao sighed. “Too much water in the curds, the
sambhar
has no vegetables in it; the vegetables have too little vegetables in them and the
pappu . . .
always only tomato
pappu.
I told him, ‘
Array,
Madhavan, nice unripe mangoes out there, make some mango
pappu.
’ He says, ‘You buy the mangoes, old man, and I’ll make the
pappu.
’ What time has come?
Kalyug,
it is, Kokila Amma, it is a modern, evil time.”

“You should come and eat with us on Sunday,” Subhadra offered yet again, as she always did.

Ramana Rao shook his head as he got up to leave. “You are generous enough. I just come here for company and some
chai.
”

Subhadra went inside to get some coconut
ladoos
for Ramana Rao, while he picked out the mail for Tella Meda.

“Only one letter, it’s for Sastri Garu. How is he doing?” he asked.

Kokila stared at the blue envelope and nodded. “Good . . . he’s good,” she said vaguely.

“I heard he has cancer,” Ramana Rao said as he clucked his tongue. “The nurse at the hospital is a friend of the postmaster’s wife. She told him that Sastri Garu is very sick. No cure for such terrible diseases.”

Kokila nodded, still looking at the envelope.

“The letter will cheer him up,” Ramana Rao said. “Letters always cheer people up.”

“You wait here for Subhadra, I’ll take this to him,” Kokila said without even looking at the postman.

It was a sign, she decided as she walked through the temple room and then the courtyard to reach Ramanandam’s room. She flipped the letter around to see who the sender was and shook her head. She had never heard of the man before, but then she didn’t know most of the people who wrote to Ramanandam.

Kokila knocked on the door, as she had been in the habit of doing when she and Ramanandam were seeing each other. Usually she didn’t wait for an answer but this time, conscious of the change in her relationship with Ramanandam, she waited for his invitation.

When there was no response after the first knock, Kokila gingerly opened the door and peered in. He was lying on his bed and a smile curled her lips. She had seen him lying like this so many times, and she had loved him with all her heart. How could love that had been all-consuming wither away? True love, they said in songs and books, always, always stayed. Like the love Devdas felt for his Paro. Yet now when Kokila looked at Ramanandam, she felt the pinch of a forgotten relationship but not the engulfing feeling of love and ownership.

“Ramanandam,” she called out softly, and walked toward him. He was lying serenely on his back, one hand thrown over his forehead, his eyes closed.

“There’s a letter for you,” Kokila said, and contemplated whether to touch him and wake him or to just leave.

She almost left, leaving the letter on the floor by his bed, but a slight dribble of saliva coursing down his chin made her look at him again.

“Ramanandam,” she called out, this time louder than last time. “Ramanandam,” she called out again, more loudly.

She pushed gently at the arm that lay on his forehead and it fell onto the bed.

He wasn’t breathing, Kokila noticed for the first time.

He wasn’t breathing.

His chest wasn’t going up and down as it was supposed to. She held her hand against his nose and felt no rush of warm air. She put her hand on his chest and searched in panic for his heartbeat. There was nothing but silence. His body was quiet, no movement inside or out. She shook him but he didn’t wake.

She backed a few steps away from Ramanandam, and when her heels touched the raised threshold, painted yellow and red to symbolize turmeric and
kumkum,
Kokila ran out of Ramanandam’s room into the courtyard.

Chetana was watching her, her hand on her full belly. “What? Patched things up again?” she asked sarcastically. She was about to say more but caught herself when she saw Kokila’s stricken face. “Is everything okay? Did he do something? What did he do?” Instantly protective of her old friend, Chetana put her arms around Kokila, who slumped down onto the courtyard tiles, which were heated through by the relentless sun.

Chetana went on her knees and held Kokila, confused, unsure of what had happened. As the first sob rose from Kokila, the words poured out as well. “He’s dead,” she managed to say, and Chetana held her more tightly.

They stayed there for a while, until Subhadra found them.

Ramanandam had died of a heart attack in his sleep. Only those who had not sinned, had lived a pure life, died such easy deaths, Subhadra said.

Tella Meda fell into mourning. Manikyam and her husband arrived and even though Charvi didn’t speak with either of them, she asked Kokila and Subhadra to be cordial on her behalf. Lavanya came, as always angry and suspicious of Charvi. But even she didn’t say what was in her heart because it was obvious to anyone who looked that Charvi was the most devastated.

She sat in the temple room all day long lighting lamps as they died down and making cotton wicks from small cotton balls. She refused to eat or drink or see visitors. She sat quietly, all day, praying at times, weeping silently during others.

“Vidura isn’t here,” she said to Kokila once. “He should be the one lighting his pyre.”

It was the son’s duty to light his father’s funeral pyre. The father’s soul went to heaven, regardless of his sins on earth, if his son performed all the
pujas,
cut six locks of his hair, and set fire to his pyre. In the case where a son was lacking, a son-in-law would suffice, and if there was no son-in-law, the pyre would be lit by a nephew. But there was no guarantee then that the soul would go to heaven.

“Poor Nanna, he died with a hole in his heart,” Charvi continued even though Kokila didn’t say anything. “Vidura never came back and my poor father . . .” She fell silent and then went back to staring at the black and gold idol of Lord Venkateshwara Swami in front of her.

Kokila went about her life in Tella Meda as if nothing happened and she convinced herself that nothing had really happened. Renuka, Subhadra, and Chetana watched her carefully, concerned that she would have a nervous breakdown soon since she was holding herself so stoically, too stoically.

“She was upset when she found him dead,” Chetana told Subhadra and Renuka. “But now? She is behaving as if nothing happened.”

“She hurts,” Subhadra said softly. “She hurts so much that she’s afraid to let it show, she’s afraid to feel it.”

More than hurt, guilt besieged Kokila. She had let him die alone and she hoped that he had indeed died as peacefully as he had looked. She had shunned him when he needed her the most. Her heart ached when she remembered the Ramanandam of the past, the smiling, kind, loving Ramanandam. He had been a shriveled old man, lying dead on his bed, peaceful, still, gone. She wished she had let go of her anger before he died. She wished she could have talked to him, they could’ve at least been friends, and she could have said good-bye to him before he passed away.

But she couldn’t go back and change her life. And because she couldn’t, she refused to succumb to the tears that threatened to flow and the sorrow that wanted to overwhelm.

If Chetana had been the subservient and extra-caring daughter-in-law the last time Manikyam was at Tella Meda, this time she was the opposite. She didn’t even talk to Manikyam until Manikyam asked her with bright eyes about the new pregnancy. Chetana was resigned to living in Tella Meda and in the past few years had even come to enjoy it. Ravi had been the wrong choice for a husband, she knew that now, and she accepted that this was her fate and she had to live her life with the load of her decisions.

“I don’t know how all of you tolerated that. It’s so disgusting to even think about. He was such an old man and she . . . she must’ve seduced my poor father,” Manikyam said. Now that Ramanandam’s body had been cremated, it was obviously not right to talk ill of him. The blame had to fall on someone else.

“Seduced?” Chetana asked angrily. “How could Kokila seduce a grown man? Your father went around with prostitutes, and then there was that woman . . . what’s her name, Subhadra? That doctor from the big power factory?”

“Hush,” Subhadra said, and then sighed when Chetana glared at her. “Her name is Dr. Vineetha Raghavan.”

“Oh yes, and what about her? She and your father were
very
close friends. Poor Kokila, she took care of Sastri Garu. She fed him, washed his clothes, and cleaned up his vomit when he was sick. What seduction? He was years older than her, more experienced. I say she got the short end of the stick, caring for an old man and getting nothing in return but ill talk from the likes of you,” Chetana said in a loud voice.

Manikyam snorted. “This is what I expect a prostitute’s daughter to say. You have no moral values and you don’t understand—”

“Moral values?” Chetana felt more anger surge through her. This woman whose son went around drinking toddy all day and cavorting with whores was talking about
her
moral values? This woman whose husband was known to have a “small house” at the other end of town was talking about
her
moral values?

“You were born in sin and you—”

“Why don’t you just shut up?” Chetana said, her eyes now red with rage. Subhadra sighed deeply while Renuka waited gleefully for the action to begin, holding Bhanu close to her as they both watched the scene in fascinated terror.

“How dare you speak with me like this? Do you know who I am?” Manikyam was not about to let some whore’s daughter get away with such a tone of voice. But the whore’s daughter had nothing left to lose.

“I know who you are. You are a woman who cannot accept her own grandchildren because their mother is of a lower caste, and that to me is a lack of moral values. You are a woman whose son sleeps around with every whore in town. You are a woman whose husband has a whore on the side . . . Please, close your mouth, mosquitoes will get inside,” Chetana said, enjoying herself now while Manikyam looked at her openmouthed in shock. “Next time you want to talk about moral values, go someplace where people don’t know you and your family. I married your son and keep house with him, I know all about his moral values. What, you taught him to drink toddy all day long and sleep with prostitutes? Or did he learn that from his father?”