Song of the Cuckoo Bird Page 9

  “Uh-uh.” Chetana shook her head. “I’m not going to tell you. Come with me to the temple tonight. We’re getting married there.”

  Kokila sighed and put a hand against her forehead. “Why can’t you tell anyone? You could get married here, in Tella Meda. Ramanandam would be happy to do that for you.”

  “Ramanandam? You are calling him Ramanandam now? What happened to Sastri Garu?”

  Kokila shrugged. “Who is the boy, Chetana?”

  Chetana gave her a sly smile. “You promise you won’t tell anyone.”

  “Yes, ottu, I won’t tell anyone,” Kokila said.

  “I’m getting married to Ravi,” Chetana said.

  “No!” Kokila cried. “Are you mad? He’s one year younger than you. He’s my age, Chetana, and he’s spoiled. I hear that he already drinks and smokes. And Manikyam will kill you if you marry her son without her permission.”

  “And what about your precious Ramanandam? You think he’ll care that his grandson is marrying the daughter of a prostitute?” Chetana demanded.

  “Wise men like him see beyond the tragedy of birth. But I think if you marry like this, in stealth, you’ll hurt his feelings, Subhadra’s feelings, and Charvi’s as well,” Kokila said confidently.

  Chetana made a face and picked up a red sari that was lying on the floor. “I’m twenty years old. I have to get married. Or do I have to spend the rest of my life here?”

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t marry Ravi. All I’m saying is that—”

  “You’re jealous that I’m getting married and you have to live here and serve sambhar and whatnot to everyone at every meal before you can eat,” Chetana cried out. “You don’t have to come to the temple. I’ll manage without you. But don’t you mention a word of this to anyone or I’ll kill you.”

  As Kokila had predicted, the news that his grandson had eloped and married a ward of his caused the already sad Ramanandam a considerable amount of pain.

  “That boy grew up here,” he said, patting his knee. “And now he marries without saying a word to me? I wouldn’t have cared whom he married but he should’ve at least . . . Oh, Kokila, why are all my children hurting me so?”

  Kokila sat down beside him on his bed and took his hand in hers. “They seem to be really taken with each other. Maybe she’ll straighten him out.”

  “Maybe,” Ramanandam said, and smiled at Kokila, lacing his fingers with hers. “You are my savior, my Garuda. You carried me out of trouble.”

  “And you gave me a home,” Kokila said, smiling back at him.

  “Then we’re even?”

  “No. I will never be able to repay you,” Kokila said. “But you should come to the courtyard and say something. Manikyam is yelling at Chetana, and Charvi just shut the door of her room. Subhadra is crying and Renuka . . . ah, well, she’s telling Manikyam that she said so.”

  Ramanandam shook his head. “I can’t, Amma Kokila. Why don’t you go and tell them how I feel?”

  “You have to come,” Kokila said sternly. “Come this one time and if things get too bad, I’ll bring you back. After all, I am your Garuda. And if you’re really good out there, I’ll coax Subhadra to make kesari for you.”

  Ramanandam reluctantly came into the courtyard. The scene was as Kokila had described. Chetana stood defiantly next to her new husband. Ravi was a good-looking boy with fair skin and silky hair that fell on his forehead. He stood there lazily until Ramanandam came out and then he stiffened a little.

  “Nanna, see what has happened? My son is ruined. Married, they say. How can a nice Brahmin boy marry some Devdasi?” Manikyam sobbed, her hands going up in the air dramatically.

  “Manikyam,” Ramanandam said softly to stop her from screaming any more, “it’s done.”

  “It can be undone,” Manikyam said, looking at Chetana with hatred. “There are no witnesses to this alleged wedding—”

  “It can’t be undone,” Ravi said evenly. “Amma, we’re married and—”

  “Your father will disinherit you. You still have to start college— how will you do that if we kick you out of the house?” Manikyam demanded.

  “He’ll get a job,” Chetana said coolly. “And we’ll rent a nice house in Visakhapatnam and live as a couple.”

  “What kind of a job will a metric pass get?” Manikyam yelled. “You whore—”

  “Amma, watch what you say, she is my wife now,” Ravi said. “And if you don’t want to help us with money, I will get a job.”

  “You can stay here,” Ramanandam suggested wearily. “Until you find your feet.”

  “No,” Chetana said, and Kokila could see panic set into her. She had married Ravi clandestinely and in a hurry because she wanted to get away from Tella Meda, not stay here. “We will rent a house . . .”

  “We have no money,” Ravi hissed at her. “For now we can stay here and then find a place when the time is right.”

  Manikyam started sobbing even more loudly. “My husband is so angry, Nanna. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with Ravi or this house. He blames you and so do I. I sent Ravi here in summer holidays in your care and you allowed this to happen? How could you, Nanna?”

  Kokila leaped to Ramanandam’s defense. “It isn’t like he knew.”

  “Did you know?” Renuka demanded, looking at Kokila pointedly.

  “She did not,” Chetana answered for Kokila. “No one knew because we didn’t tell anyone. We knew that this was how you’d all react.”

  Subhadra, who was sitting quietly by the tulasi plant, rose, shaking her head. “I thought you were my daughter,” she said to Chetana accusingly. “I thought you were mine and then you do something like this without even telling me?”

  Chetana looked at her surrogate mother for a moment and Kokila thought she would apologize but she also knew that Chetana was stubborn. She had plotted this, planned this to the last minute, and she had achieved her goal. She wasn’t going to apologize for trying to make a life for herself. She would see it as her right and even her obligation to get married to a man who could give her a better life and get her out of Tella Meda.

  “What am I going to do, Nanna? We are ruined. Our good name is destroyed,” Manikyam said, crying. “Oh, Ravi, the dreams I had for you. You could have gotten a good wife with a lot of dowry. Now you’re saddled with this whore’s daughter. You’ll go nowhere in life.”

  Manikyam’s husband, Dr. Nageshwar Rao, came to the ashram the next day, hoping to dismiss the marriage. In front of Ravi he frankly asked Chetana how much money it would take to end the “alleged” marriage.

  Kokila didn’t know where her loyalties lay anymore. Chetana was her closest friend. They had known each other from childhood, yet at this time she couldn’t stand behind her; nor could she go against her. Kokila couldn’t condone what Chetana did. She had cold-bloodedly hurt everyone who cared for her. But it was a terrible insult to have your father-in-law ask you what your price was, and Chetana, who had stood with a stiff neck despite everything that was said, was also shaken up.

  The man had asked her her price, as if she were no better than her mother. But she was. Chetana wanted a home, a husband, dignity. She wasn’t going to settle for less.

  “I didn’t marry him for money,” she said, and Kokila knew she lied. She had married him because his family was wealthy and because she had known they would not turn their back on their oldest son. Chetana was confident that Ravi’s parents would bring him home and she would go with him. She hoped to live like a queen in their big house in Visakhapatnam.

  “Then why did you marry him?” Nageshwar Rao asked. He was a dark, fat man with a balding head. He wore big steel-rimmed spectacles and had a round face. It was a mystery how he and Manikyam could have produced boys as good-looking as Ravi and Prasad.

  “Because I love him,” Chetana said, and her father-in-law laughed.

  “What do you know about love? You are a little girl . . .”

  “I’m twenty years old,” Chetana said defensively. “We j
ust want a chance to live our lives happily.”

  “If you stay with her, you are not my son,” Nageshwar Rao said to Ravi, who shrugged.

  “I was never your son. Prasad has always been your son. Maybe my brother will give you what you want. I’m going to do what makes me happy,” Ravi said nonchalantly. “If you don’t want us to live with you, we’ll live at Tella Meda.”

  Nageshwar Rao pursed his lips and looked straight at Ramanandam, who was slouched on the floor. They were sitting in the temple room by the musical instruments. Charvi was there as well, though she didn’t say anything. She hadn’t uttered a single word since Ravi and Chetana came to Tella Meda and announced they were married. She looked forlorn and sad, as if she had been personally betrayed.

  “Charvi, will you let them live here?” Nageshwar Rao demanded.

  Charvi looked at her father and then at Chetana. “They need a home. I never turn away the needy.”

  “Sastri Garu, I have done everything you have ever wanted me to do. This time, however, I cannot abide by your word and take Ravi home with me,” Dr. Nageshwar Rao said politely. “I hope that after living in hardship for a while Ravi will leave this woman and come home.”

  He turned to his son and patted him on his shoulder. “You are my eldest son and I love you. You can always come home, as long as you leave her behind. I will not tolerate a girl from a lower caste in my house.”

  Chetana and Ravi were given one of the empty rooms reserved for guests in the front of the house. The room had two doors, one opening to the front verandah and another to the one that surrounded the courtyard.

  Subhadra and Kokila made the bed with new white sheets that Subhadra had been saving for an important guest. She was crying as she put the pillows inside the cases and smoothed the creases on the sheets.

  “How could she not tell me?” Subhadra kept saying as she wiped fresh tears with the pallu of her sari. “Kokila, you don’t do such a thing, okay?”

  Kokila nodded. “Who will marry me, Subhadra?”

  “You should’ve gone with your husband. He married again. Already has a son, and is expecting another child,” Subhadra told her.

  Kokila tried to feel some regret at what she had thrown away but she couldn’t dredge up any. Tella Meda was home and she couldn’t imagine living elsewhere even with the pain of Vidura’s departure.

  They ripped petals off roses Narayan Garu had painstakingly grown in the front garden and spread the petals all over the bed. Subhadra lit sandalwood incense and left a plateful of ladoos and other sweets by the bedside.

  “You spray rosewater around the room,” Subhadra said, handing a silver perfumed water sprayer to Kokila. “And I’ll get the almond milk ready. You make sure Ravi is here and we will send Chetana in. It is her wedding night—so what if Manikyam doesn’t want to take her home? She can have a good life here until they get it all sorted out. You know, don’t you, that Manikyam will take them back?”

  Kokila didn’t know any such thing but wisely didn’t say that. From what she had seen of Manikyam’s husband, it didn’t seem likely that he would accept Ravi unless he left Chetana. Oh, what a web Chetana had woven and how trapped she was in it. Poor Chetana—she had wanted to leave Tella Meda but now she had to stay, for God only knew how long.

  Chetana was dressed in one of Subhadra’s white silk saris for her shobhanam night. Kokila had braided her long hair and put a garland of jasmine flowers on the braid.

  “I’m so happy,” Chetana told Kokila as she gazed at her reflection in the mirror she was sitting in front of. “I’m a married woman, Kokila.”

  “I wish you all the happiness in the world,” Kokila said, hoping that despite all the warning signs, somehow this marriage would work out.

  “He loves me and soon that bitch of a mother of his will ask us to come and live with them. He’ll go to college and become a business-man and I . . . Oh, Kokila, I’ll get out of here and live in a real house, in my house,” Chetana said with stars in her eyes.

  Chetana took the warm glass of almond milk Subhadra gave to her and started walking toward her new bedroom, where her husband waited. Her silver anklets made music as she walked with Kokila.

  “Are you terribly jealous?” Chetana asked happily just before she entered the room.

  “Yes,” Kokila lied so as to not disappoint her best friend.

  Ramanandam was furious. Gone was the dejected man. In his place was a man who was pacing his room, his hands locked behind his back.

  As soon as Kokila came to his room with dinner, he snarled at her. “I have been waiting for an hour,” he accused.

  “We were getting Chetana ready for the first night,” Kokila said, pleased that he wasn’t sitting on the bed, as usual, with a wooden expression on his face.

  “Ah . . . what could I expect from Chetana? Like mother, like daughter,” he said wearily, and sat down on the bed. “Did Subhadra make kesari again?”

  “Yes,” Kokila said. “You are very angry.”

  “Yes,” he said as he stuffed his mouth with rice and sambhar. “She married my grandson.”

  “She is very happy and so is he,” Kokila reminded him. “And he’s already a wayward boy. Marriage will straighten him out. She’ll make sure he’s straightened out.”

  Ramanandam shook his head. “Manikyam ruined his life with too much pampering. Both those boys are . . . Maybe Prasad will have the better sense to marry the girl his parents put in front of him.”

  “And I thought you believed in the individual’s right to choose their own spouse,” Kokila teased him.

  “How do you know what I believe in?”

  “I read your first book,” Kokila told him, and saw the surprise on his face.

  “What else have you been doing behind my back?” he asked as he continued to eat, his anger abated.

  “Nothing,” Kokila said shyly. “I think you’re a wonderful writer.”

  “I haven’t written in a long while,” he said.

  Kokila sat down by his feet and looked up at him. “I think you just need to be inspired. After Vidura . . . Ramanandam, you have so much to give the world with your writing. Why would you stop?”

  “I am Ramanandam now?” he asked, amused.

  Kokila put a hand against her mouth. “I—”

  “It’s okay, you can call me Ramanandam,” he said, and set his plate down on the floor beside her. He washed his hands with his glass of water and pushed the plate aside.

  He sat down on the floor next to her and took her face in his hands. “You think I can write again?”

  “Yes,” Kokila whispered, the blood pounding inside her at Ramanandam’s closeness. When had this happened? she wondered. When had she lost her heart to this man?

  “Will you be my muse?” Ramanandam asked.

  Kokila nodded and closed her eyes.

  She felt his breath close to her face and she could smell the kesari he had just eaten. He kissed her then; their lips locked and Kokila felt her universe implode.

  The next morning Kokila hurried from Ramanandam’s room like a thief and slid into hers, which was two rooms away. An empty room and that of Subhadra lay in between. No one saw her as it was still dark.

  She had left him sleeping and naked. Her heart pounded as she remembered what they had done, what he had done to her. It was craziness, she decided, utter madness to have done what they did.

  She lay down on her bed as the first rays of the sun kissed Bheemunipatnam. She hid her face in her hands and a laugh burst out from inside her. It was the laugh of a girl who had just discovered the brilliance of love.

  It would be years before Kokila realized that what happened between Ramanandam and her was not love. It was the need of an old man to prove he was younger and the need of a young girl to protect her benefactor and make him feel younger.

  1971 3 December 1971. The third Indo-Pakistan war officially commenced and a national emergency was declared by Indian president Zakir Husain. The first night of hostilities c
ommenced with Pakistan bombing several Indian airfields. The Indian ships Rajput and Akshay left Visakhapatnam harbor when they obtained a sonar contact. They fired several depth charges, and then a loud explosion was heard off the Visakhapatnam beach. The Pakistani submarine Ghazi (a Tench-class submarine obtained from the United States in 1964) came to grief.

  17 December 1971. The war ended on this day when a cease-fire was called between India and Pakistan.

  Casualties

  Even though the war was taking place in the northern part of India, there was a tense atmosphere everywhere. Rumors were brewing about big Pakistani rockets that could be launched all the way from Karachi and land on southern India.

  Just a few days before, the sound of war had reached Visakhapatnam when a Pakistani submarine was destroyed by Indian ships off Visakhapatnam harbor. Windows had rattled and it had felt like a small earthquake had shaken the world. No one had ever believed that the Pakistani army could find a way to come so far south and the level of fear had increased all over the country.

  “They have very powerful bombs,” Ravi was telling poor frightened Subhadra, nervous Renuka, and unperturbed Puttamma, the maid who had been hired recently to clean the bathrooms and the outside verandahs. “We can all die. Tella Meda”—he snapped his fingers—“will be gone, just like that. Poof!”

  Subhadra and Renuka listened intently, while Puttamma was not buying it. “India is most powerful,” she said. “No one can touch us.”

  Ravi shook his head. “What do you know? Go, get to work and stay out of talk that you know nothing about.”

  “ ‘What do you know?’ he says,” Puttamma said angrily as she left to clean a bathroom. “I know plenty. What does he know? Idiot, son of a whore, talks to me like I am no one. Thinks he knows everything. Useless drunk! Son of a whore that—”

  “Puttamma, what’s wrong?” Kokila asked as she came out of the bathroom, a towel around her wet hair and her sari-wrapped body still a little damp after her bath.

  Puttamma gargled in her throat and spat on the tiled floor. “It’s that boy Ravi, telling stories to Subhadra Amma and Renuka Amma. That boy is up to no good. Chetana should’ve had better sense than to marry that loser.”