Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel (31 page)

Manjunath was sitting right where she’d left him, his head on his knees. He wasn’t sobbing anymore.

“Manjunath Garu,” she called out, and held up the shawl as his head lifted. “It’s getting cold.”

Manjunath took the shawl. “Thanks.”

She could barely see him, hidden in the dark corner, the moonlight not as bright as she’d imagined. He probably couldn’t see her. He probably just saw a shadow of her and how attractive would that be?

“Are you okay?”

Manjunath nodded again and wrapped the shawl around him and waited for her to leave.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked.

“Yes,” Manjunath managed.

Kokila shrugged and started to walk away from him. If he couldn’t ask for help, she couldn’t give it.

“No,” Manjunath called out after her. “I’m not okay.”

Kokila immediately went back to him. “Why don’t we go downstairs? I’ll make some tea for you.”

“She’s dead,” he said. “She tried to tell me but I wouldn’t listen. Big professor, it would be too shameful. So I said, ‘Nothing doing.’ And then she hanged herself from the ceiling fan.”

“I’m so sorry,” Kokila said. So there had been a girl who killed herself because of him. Oh, the guilt. So heavy it must be to carry. Compassion replaced lust and Kokila took his hand in hers. “Sometimes we can’t control everything, not even our own reactions.”

“And there are consequences, aren’t there? To reactions?”

“Yes,” Kokila said.

Manjunath sighed. “I thought I’d come here to forget but I only remember, all the time. My wife . . . she’s falling apart but I can’t go to her. How can I? She blames me too. And it is my fault. She had warned me and pleaded with me, but I wouldn’t listen. I was so sure of myself. What a waste, Kokila Amma, what a waste!”

“A life, no matter how long it has been lived, is not a waste. She gave something to you and to others and left something behind. You will all remember her and that’s no waste,” Kokila said, hoping her words would assuage, just a little. She wasn’t Charvi; she couldn’t find the right soothing words like the
guru
of the
ashram
could.

“You should talk to Charvi,” Kokila suggested. “She will help you clear your mind and focus on what’s important, today and tomorrow. Yesterday is past, but you can learn from it.”

“But today is too painful and tomorrow unfathomable,” Manjunath said, his hand clenching tightly around Kokila’s.

They sat in silence for a long while and then he started to cry again. Kokila wrapped the shawl around both of them and he put his head on her breast and wept softly.

It was almost sunrise when they went downstairs to Kokila’s room. He lay in bed with her, holding her close as he slept, and Kokila felt delight dance through her, even as she felt sorrow within for the weeping and inconsolable man she held in her arms.

Chetana was sitting with Kokila in the courtyard shelling peas when he stepped out of Kokila’s room in the afternoon.

“Hmm,” Chetana said, a smile playing on her face.

“Nothing, hmm,” Kokila said. “He was upset, that’s all.” She wiped her hands on her
sari
and went to Manjunath.

“I slept too late,” he said, smiling, just a little. It was his first smile in three weeks. “People will talk and—”

“That’s okay. I kept some
upma
from breakfast for you. Would you like to wash up? I’ll get some tea,” Kokila said, feeling just a little shy, the intimacies of last night now embarrassing in daylight.

Manjunath nodded. “Yes, I’m hungry.”

“Stop smiling like that,” Kokila hissed at Chetana as she went into the kitchen.

It was almost impossible to keep a secret in Tella Meda and soon everyone knew that Manjunath had spent the night in Kokila’s room. Most of the residents didn’t mention the matter, but both Renuka and Subhadra did. Renuka was scandalized, while Subhadra told Kokila to be careful. The man’s reputation had been smeared and from the rumors it was evident that he indulged in extramarital affairs all the time.

“I didn’t sleep with him,” Kokila said as she paced Shanthi’s room in anger. “Why does no one believe me?”

“I believe you,” Shanthi said as her feet worked the foot pedal of the Singer sewing machine to move the needle over the cloth. She was sewing a blouse for Subhadra to go with a new
sari
she had bought for Ugadi.

“And even if I did sleep with him, would that be wrong?” Kokila demanded.

Shanthi shrugged and moved the blouse cloth a little as she ran a small curving stitch over the bright yellow material.

“Would that be so wrong?” Kokila asked again.

“Yes,” Shanthi said as she pulled the yellow cloth away from the needle and bent down to cut the yellow thread with her teeth. “He’s a married man.”

“I’m not married,” Kokila said peevishly.

“Look, you have to do what you have to do with your life,” Shanthi said, and then smiled at Kokila. “And you know that it is wrong. It’s wrong to sleep with a man who isn’t your husband, and especially wrong when that man is some other woman’s husband.”

Kokila sighed, all the fire going out of her. In the past three years, she, Shanthi, and Chetana had become close friends. It had taken Shanthi several months to open up and become the woman she was, but with Chetana by her side in the tailoring business and Kokila’s friendship, slowly but steadily Shanthi had found herself.

“I want to sleep with him,” Kokila confessed. “I . . . suddenly, I feel this attraction to him. Maybe I get attracted to sad, old men.”

“Manjunath Garu is not old,” Shanthi said.

“But he’s sad and weepy, just like Ramanandam was. I have a weakness for weeping men. Maybe I believe that they are actually strong, like that actor Dharmendra in the film
Sholay,
and then when they are sad, my heart melts,” Kokila said.

“Ravi goes about crying a lot and I don’t see your heart melting for him,” Shanthi said as she examined the now finished bright yellow blouse.

“First the man has to be a man. Ravi is not a real man,” Kokila muttered. “He’s found a new whore. Now he doesn’t even give any money to Chetana. Blames her for Meena also being a girl, says that if she had been a boy, his father would have taken them home. Bad
karma
that family has. Have you heard about Prasad? That boy is going down the drain too.”

Shanthi rarely indulged in gossip and merely nodded. She didn’t know Manikyam or Ravi or any of the others Kokila and Chetana talked about very well. She had met Manikyam only a few times and kept away from Ravi, who made her uncomfortable with his lecherous ways. He had lost more weight and was thin, like an old, diseased, dying man. His skin was not as light as it used to be and had darkened because of the time he spent lying outside toddy shops, under the sun. His cheeks and eyes were sunken and the smell of toddy always clung to him.

Charvi had ordered him to take a bath as soon as he came into Tella Meda and had warned him that if he ever came for dinner or
bhajan
smelling like a toddy shop, she would throw him out of Tella Meda. He didn’t pay much heed to her and she didn’t make good on her threat. He was her sister’s son, and as wayward as he was, he was still her family. Charvi could threaten him into making his life better but she would not show him the door. He didn’t have any other place to go.

Charvi still didn’t speak with Manikyam, but Charvi would listen to Manikyam rant and rave about her fate and how even though she had two sons, she had no peace.

Now the story was that Prasad had started drinking as well. He had finished his degree in commerce but refused to take up a job. Having thrown his older son out of his home, Dr. Nageshwar Rao was holding on to the younger one very tightly. They even got him married to a nice Brahmin girl from Srikakulam, the daughter of a well-known doctor and friend. But that didn’t straighten him out. As luck would have it, their new daughter-in-law, Sita, miscarried three pregnancies and was unable to conceive after that.

“If only Prasad had children,” Manikyam would wail. She was convinced that a grandson from Prasad would bring her family back to the right path of goodness and fruitfulness. But now Sita stayed more often with her parents in Srikakulam than in Visakhapatnam. She would go home for this festival and that marriage and stay for two or three months before returning. And usually it would take several letters, phone calls, and a visit from Manikyam before Sita would come home.

Sita’s father had even warned Dr. Nageshwar Rao that if he didn’t get Prasad to stop drinking there was a good chance that a divorce might have to be considered. But that was an empty threat. No self-respecting parent would encourage his daughter to divorce her husband, no matter what his flaws. And Sita didn’t appear to have Shanthi’s backbone, so it was unlikely she would leave her husband and start her own life.

And it wasn’t easy to leave a husband, as Shanthi had learned. Soon after she left him, Shanthi’s husband tracked her down through her sister in Visakhapatnam and came to Tella Meda to take her back home.

It had taken the strength of two male guests and Puttamma’s fourth husband to push the violent man away from Shanthi and lock the front door of Tella Meda. Shanthi’s husband stayed, camped out in front of the gate of Tella Meda, insisting he would only leave with his wife. Finally, Puttamma’s husband had brought some of his friends to “talk” with Shanthi’s husband and he left with a broken jaw and a black eye. That was two years ago and he hadn’t bothered Shanthi since. Shanthi had not talked about the incident to anyone, though she confided in Kokila that she immensely enjoyed hearing about her husband’s beating by Puttamma’s husband and friends. Now he would know what physical violence meant.

With Subhadra’s yellow blouse finished, Shanthi threw it toward Kokila. “Iron this for me, will you,” she said, pointing to the small iron Shanthi had purchased to press the stitched clothes. It made the clothes look better and the customers happier.

As Kokila ironed, Shanthi got busy on a second blouse, this one for Chetana. “All fancy things she wants. Frills on the sleeve, low back . . . shameless, that girl is,” Shanthi said with a grin as she read her note on the blouse cloth. “Low round cut and tight cup, that’s what she wants. Why bother with a blouse? Just wear a brassiere and a
sari.
”

“Chetana likes to show her body and her fair skin,” Kokila said.

“She’s lucky she stays so thin. My older sister had one child and that was it for her. She is fatter than Manikyam,” Shanthi said, and then looked up from Chetana’s blouse cloth to Kokila. “You know, happiness is short-lived. You were happy with Ramanandam but it didn’t last very long. How long will there be happiness with Manjunath Garu, you think?”

Kokila ironed the yellow blouse sleeve carefully and thought about Shanthi’s question. “However short-lived, happiness is happiness and I want to grab it with both hands every chance I get.”

Everyone was appalled at the easy affection that flowed between Manjunath and Kokila during the next week. For once even Charvi interfered with a personal matter, something she never did.

“You will ruin your reputation and Tella Meda’s,” Charvi warned her. “The former I can do nothing about, but Tella Meda’s integrity must be maintained. If people find out about you and Manjunath, Tella Meda will earn a bad name.”

“I’m doing nothing to hurt anyone,” Kokila protested. “I’m just offering friendship to a man who is in need.”

“This man carries some deep pain,” Charvi said. “Be very careful what you get into.”

“I don’t think he got a girl pregnant,” Kokila said.

Charvi shook her head. “I don’t care about rumors. I’m telling you what I see. He has a deep pain. He can’t give you any happiness because he doesn’t know what it means anymore.”

It sounded too much like Charvi’s regular prattle and Kokila ignored the advice. Maybe she shouldn’t have, maybe she should’ve paid attention and stayed away from Manjunath. But her mind had already been made up, and even if her mind could be altered, her heart was decided and that Kokila couldn’t and wouldn’t change.

It felt like spring, spring after a very cold winter. Kokila ignored the fact that Manjunath was married, that he would be gone soon, that he was a sad man with a broken heart. It was joyous to have a man pay attention to her. It was fulfilling and satisfying to have someone of her own to talk to. And it was special to be the cause of a sad man’s smile.

But the relationship didn’t move beyond the boundaries of propriety. After that first night, Manjunath was cautious and careful about where he was seen with Kokila.

“Reputations are like clay pots. Once broken they can be mended but there is always a crack,” he told Kokila.

She laughed at that. “This clay pot has been in pieces for years and cannot even be mended anymore.”

It would have been impossible for Manjunath not to have heard about Kokila’s relationship with Ramanandam. It was common knowledge in Tella Meda and most of Bheemunipatnam. Kokila was not a highly respected woman, but then except for Charvi, no Tella Meda woman was all that respected. Discards of society didn’t enjoy the benefits of respectability.

“Are you leaving soon?” Kokila asked him when four weeks had passed and Manjunath’s wife had written over five letters asking him to come back home.

Manjunath shrugged. “I’m not ready to leave.”

She found him crying again on the terrace. Whatever burden he was carrying was immense and Kokila’s heart tore itself into pieces for him. How could she help him? she thought desperately. There must be some way to assuage his pain.

She held him again, as she had the previous time, and he wept on her bosom.

“Tell me,” she whispered as she stroked his graying hair. “It’ll help to let it all out.” She wanted to give him release but she was also curious.

Manjunath shook his head, his body trembling with pent-up tears.

“I heard some girl committed suicide because she was pregnant,” Kokila said. “But I really don’t know. It could be all rumors. If you don’t tell me, how can I help you?”