“What stories is he telling?” Kokila asked casually as she removed the towel from around her head and shook her hair. Water sprayed around her as she started rubbing the moisture out with the towel.
“About the war and how those Pakis can come kill us here,” Puttamma said. “You have lovely hair, Kokila Amma. Someday a man is going to come and make a grab for you.”
Kokila ran a hand through her wet waist-length hair and laughed. The sun was shining on her face when she turned her head and her eyes fell on the man who had already grabbed her.
He was sitting on a cloth chair in the verandah in front of his room, comfortable, watching her. She turned away from him, afraid someone would see. But how could they not see what was going on? Were they all blind? Could no one see how happiness glittered in her eyes? How she smiled all the time?
“I say, why scare those poor women, eh?” Puttamma continued. “War is happening way up in the north and he says they’ll throw bombs down here and kill everyone. I say, why make stories that make no sense? I say—”
“What are you bitching about now?” Chetana asked, her perfumed Lux soap in one hand and a white towel hanging over her shoulder. “Are you done cleaning? I need to take a bath.”
“Your husband is a no-good fellow,” Puttamma told Chetana, who sighed.
“He is my husband, I’ll worry about him, you worry about yours,” she said. “So, how is your husband?”
“Which one?” Puttamma asked on a harsh laugh. “My third husband left yesterday. Ran away, that son of a whore, took my copper pot and gold earrings with him.”
“You don’t have gold earrings,” Chetana pointed out.
“Well, he thought I did, stupid bastard,” Puttamma said slyly. “You go take a bath now. I will clean up after you are done. Kokila Amma, I’m going to go to the garden to smoke a bidi.”
Kokila nodded. “I’ll come along. I have to get some flowers for the temple room. And you can tell me all about your third husband.”
Kokila knew Ramanandam was watching her as she walked toward the garden with Puttamma. He was always watching her. It was unnerving, flattering, exciting. Her heart felt like it was on a giant wheel, up and down, up and down, and every time the excitement mounted and mounted.
Since that first night they had been together, Ramanandam and Kokila had spent countless nights together, sometimes in his room, sometimes in hers. She used to share her room with Chetana but with her married and staying with Ravi, Kokila was alone in her room.
For two years now she and Ramanandam had been lovers. Two years of great joy, torture, and uncertainty. Sometimes Kokila would wonder where all of this was going. Other times she didn’t want to know. No one seemed to notice the change in her behavior or her status in the ashram. Kokila had taken over so many responsibilities. She kept the books, paid the bills, did the accounting. The money from devotees and the residents didn’t go to Subhadra anymore, who always used to make a mess of the finances, but came to Kokila. She used Ramanandam’s room to store the books and keep track of money.
Maybe that was what everyone thought she was doing in Ramanandam’s room. Yes, that is what they must think, Kokila decided. She wasn’t sure how she would feel if her relationship with Ramanandam became public knowledge. She wasn’t sure what others would say, especially Charvi, who was possessive about Ramanandam. Chetana would probably be appalled and hurt at not being made privy to such juicy information about Kokila’s life.
Chetana had related in full, excruciating detail to Kokila the events of her shobhanam night. She had told Kokila everything, but Kokila had not told her about Ramanandam. But what could she say? She knew that her relationship with Ramanandam would not be accepted. Ramanandam was thirty-nine years her senior and they were not married. He said he didn’t believe in marriage as an institution and after his wife died he had sworn that he wouldn’t enter that fraudulent institution again. He didn’t judge those who believed in marriage and even admired their faith in the partnership but said he felt he couldn’t bind himself like that again.
“If two people love each other, why do they feel the need for their relationship to be validated by society?” he told Kokila.
In any case, Kokila couldn’t imagine marrying Ramanandam. She didn’t think of him as a husband, even now, even when they did those secret things that made her blush.
So who was Ramanandam to her? Lover? Father figure? Protector? Benefactor? All?
Puttamma enjoyed smoking her bidi very much. You could usually find her walking down the street, bidi in mouth, as she yapped away with a companion. She knew everyone in Bheemunipatnam and lived in one of the thatched huts that filled a part of the small town. The poor, the hungry, the wretched ended up there, scraping through life.
A gutter went through the area where the thatched huts were; it was considered the bad neighborhood, where the red-light district more or less survived and toddy shops lined the perimeter. Despite the poverty and the desperation that thrived in the slum, there was a certain sense of happiness that prevailed. Marriages, a girl’s first step into womanhood, childbirth, death—everything was celebrated with great gusto. Songs would be played at full volume on loudspeakers late into the night and early into the morning and toddy would flow from the shops along with the drunks. Whenever Kokila found herself passing the slum she wondered if she would’ve ended up there if she hadn’t found Tella Meda and then she would realize she would have ended up in her husband’s home if she hadn’t found Tella Meda. She wasn’t sure if she was distressed about having stayed. Sometimes she craved the security, the normalcy, of a husband, a home and family.
At Tella Meda she had a roof over her head but not the respectability of a married and decent woman. People in Bheemunipatnam knew the life stories of most of those who lived in Tella Meda. Everyone knew that Kokila had refused to leave with her husband and that Chetana was a prostitute’s discarded daughter. Every drunk in town had made a play at Kokila and Chetana while they were out in the bazaar or at the cinema, anywhere outside the protection of Tella Meda. Women looked at them with a combination of scorn, pity, and disdain. It was one thing to visit Tella Meda as a devotee of Charvi, quite another to live in Tella Meda. Those who lived in Tella Meda lived there because they were outcasts. As a child Kokila had seen the beautiful house by the beach as a place where there was always food, even if in meager amounts, and clean clothes, four walls, and a roof. As a child Kokila had thought that would be enough. As a woman she had begun to realize that by choosing Tella Meda she had rejected a respectable life as a wife. By choosing Tella Meda she had condemned herself to live on the sidelines of society.
“I see Ravi there all the time, at Mangalam’s toddy shop,” Puttamma gossiped as she smoked the thin brown cigarette filled with tobacco, hand-rolled in a temburni leaf and secured with a string at one end. She was standing in Tella Meda’s front garden with Kokila.
“Chetana said he stopped going a week ago,” Kokila told her. Usually she didn’t indulge in gossip but sometimes it was hard to resist and after all she was a woman, wasn’t she?
“Stopped? I saw him last night, piss-faced drunk. Manikyam Amma will be so sad to hear that her son is traipsing down to the toddy shops and”—Puttamma’s voice dropped to a whisper—“going to Sundari’s room.”
“No,” Kokila gasped. “No, Puttamma, you must be mistaken. Chetana would never allow Ravi to go to a prostitute.”
“Uh-uh.” Puttamma only made a sound and continued to smoke her bidi.
“Are you sure?” Kokila asked.
Puttamma nodded.
“Poor Chetana. If she finds out . . .”
“She knows,” Puttamma said, surprising Kokila.
“She knows?”
Puttamma nodded smugly. “Came by three days ago in the afternoon and yelled the place down. Called Sundari names. Told that munda to keep her hands off her husband and find someone else to . . . Well, Chetana never did have a clean mouth.”
Kokila was s
hocked. Maybe there were things that Chetana didn’t tell her anymore. She was obviously embarrassed by Ravi’s behavior. And then Kokila wondered if she was embarrassed about Ramanandam and if that was why she kept their relationship a secret. Was it a dirty thing they did? Yes, it was a dirty thing. Unclean, impure, without the benefit of marriage, a sin, and yet she loved him and loved being with him. Yes, she was embarrassed, but not enough to walk away from him.
“This is terrible.” Kokila sighed. “We need to do something. I will ask Sastri Garu to speak with Ravi. He will listen to his grandfather.”
“Whatever you say,” Puttamma said, obviously thinking that Ravi was a lost cause and no one could help him. “Maybe Charvi Amma could talk some sense into him. She is such a bright light in all our lives. I come here to clean so that I can catch glimpses of her. She is such a goddess, looks so beautiful and peaceful. Once, I touched her feet and she put her hand on my forehead . . . ah, what bliss.”
“Ay, Puttamma, the verandah is dirty, dirty, dirty,” Subhadra called out from the kitchen window that looked into the front garden. “Stop smoking that disgusting thing and get to work, woman.”
“Coming, coming.” Puttamma threw her bidi on the grass and stepped on it with her bare right foot. “That Subhadra Amma, she has no patience. I’m here all day, so I take a bidi break—what’s wrong, eh, I ask, what’s wrong with that?”
She muttered all the way back into the house while Kokila picked flowers and tried to figure out how to solve this crisis with Ravi and Chetana.
“You know I believe in personal freedom,” Ramanandam said clearly as he stroked her naked arm and then cupped her small breast.
Kokila shrugged his hand off by moving her body. “This is not about personal freedom, Ramanandam, this is about wasting one’s life.”
“It’s his life,” Ramanandam said with a smile, and kissed her softly on the mouth. “If people knew about you and me, don’t you think they would try to tear us apart?”
She couldn’t win an argument with him. He was smarter, wiser, and not afraid to use his advantage.
“For Chetana’s sake you must talk to Ravi. He can’t wander around brothels and toddy shops. I thought he was going to start college but . . . Manikyam sends money and he spends it on toddy and women and nothing is left to go to college with,” Kokila said angrily. “And you won’t do anything about it. He’s your grandson. If you won’t try to steer him onto the right path, who will?”
She sounded like a nagging wife; it was there in her tone, her demeanor. Instead of getting irritated Ramanandam was amused.
“This is not funny,” Kokila raged at him.
“You are beautiful,” he said, and kissed her. “You are so beautiful, so young, so soft . . . I can’t believe that I have you with me like this. When you are gone in the morning I can’t believe you stayed all night. It feels like a dream, like a fantasy.”
Kokila softened immediately. These were words she lived to hear. All day she would listen to his voice and remember his words and remember his hands and remember the slide of his body into hers.
When Chetana told Kokila about sex it sounded like a rushed thing, a physical thing, but with Ramanandam there was affection, there was love, and most of all, there was beauty.
Chetana had always thought sex to be an ugly thing. How could it not be? Her mother had been in the business of selling it and Ravi didn’t even bother to take Chetana’s clothes off when they did it. He just hiked Chetana’s sari up and undid his pants. Kokila felt sorry that Chetana would never know the ecstasy of love and she couldn’t explain it in words anyway. And what would she say? Sastri Garu is a wonderful lover? Chee-chee, just because they were doing it didn’t mean she had to announce it to the world.
“I’ll ask Charvi to talk to Ravi, then,” Kokila said thoughtfully as Ramanandam started to doze off.
He chuckled. “You never give up, my little tigress,” he said before falling asleep.
Charvi was no better than her father.
“This is a personal matter, Kokila. If Chetana came to me, I could help. If Dr. Nageshwar Rao or Manikyam Akka came to me, I would try to talk to them and then ask them to talk to Ravi. But we shouldn’t interfere in someone else’s marriage and life,” Charvi said. “I don’t think drinking is . . . And going to brothels? He is really going to a prostitute? Well, everyone has their karma to contend with.”
Kokila didn’t understand why Charvi couldn’t just talk to Ravi and see if maybe she could lead him away from bad women and alcohol. What was this nonsense about personal matters? Everyone at Tella Meda always interfered in everything, yet now they were pretending that they didn’t?
“Just talk to him,” Kokila said in exasperation. “He’s your nephew. Just talk and see if you can’t convince him to start college, that’s all.”
Charvi smiled. “You’re a good friend to Chetana. I’ll see what I can do. But he’s chosen his path. Only he can make the changes in his life to make the wrongs right.”
Kokila didn’t say anything to that. Even though she agreed that only Ravi could change his life, she didn’t think that help was unwarranted. The strongest people needed help and Ravi was such a weakling.
“I’ll try and talk to him tonight after bhajan—if he’s there, that is,” Charvi said in a placating tone.
“Thank you,” Kokila murmured, and left Charvi to do whatever it is she did all day in her rooms.
Lately, Kokila was starting to get frustrated with Charvi and everyone else in the ashram. The more she looked at the finances, the more she was depressed. Narayan Garu had not paid his “rent” in four months. Renuka hadn’t bothered to give Subhadra any money for eight months now. Ravi and Chetana had promised to put some money into the running of Tella Meda but they had not. Kokila now knew in intimate detail how much money Manikyam sent to her son without her husband’s permission and where that money went. But Kokila felt she couldn’t demand that anyone give money because she didn’t add any income to the Tella Meda finances either.
She needed a job, she decided. She talked about it to Subhadra, who was instantly enthusiastic and had several suggestions.
“You can talk to this woman, she comes to the temple every Wednesday afternoon and distributes raw ingredients for papads and takes back the finished product,” Subhadra explained. “You go there tomorrow. You can sit right here in Tella Meda and make papads. This girl, she’s eight months pregnant, her husband is a soldier, he’s in the war. She makes thirty packets every week and gets thirty rupees. It’s good money.”
When Kokila asked Chetana to join her she was reluctant but went along with her to the temple on top of the hill all the same. It was the same temple where Chetana had married Ravi and the priest nodded at her when he saw her.
“How is your husband doing?” he asked, and Chetana murmured appropriate words in response.
“One of these days I’m going to say my husband’s a drunk who can’t get his lingam up at night. Maybe then they’ll all just shut up and stop asking me how Ravi is doing,” Chetana said angrily.
Kokila wisely kept silent. These days it was better to not offer any marital advice to Chetana, as she would go into a rage. Charvi’s conversation with Ravi had never taken place and Kokila didn’t press the matter. She herself tried to talk to Ravi but he made a blatant pass at her, which made Kokila realize that Ravi was probably as unredeemable as everyone said he was. Maybe Chetana could save his soul but Kokila seriously doubted it.
Kanka Lakshmi was a large, matronly woman who wore a hand-woven white cotton sari with an orange border. She sat on a chair while the women who made papads sat on the floor in a corner of the temple. Two large gold rings adorned her ears and a diamond nose ring flashed as she spoke. She wore gold bangles and a big thick gold chain, but it was not a mangalsutra. Kokila didn’t think the woman was married.
A large dark man carried supplies into the temple and carted away the finished packets of papads to a three-wheeled yellow and black a
uto rickshaw at the bottom of the hill. Kanka Lakshmi spoke in a manly and stern voice. She chastised the women who hadn’t made enough papads and those who had ruined their ingredients and produced bad papads. She even fired one woman, accusing her of stealing ingredients and using them in her kitchen instead of for the papads.
Radhika was eight months pregnant and the only woman who was praised for her good work. She rented a room in a house owned by an elderly couple near the temple. She was waiting for her husband to return from the war. The rumor, of course (which had already reached Chetana and Kokila, who had been at the temple for less than an hour), was that Radhika was carrying an illegitimate child and the husband at war was just a fabrication to cover up her sin.
Radhika was a demure woman with beautiful fair skin. If you didn’t look at her belly, she didn’t look pregnant at all. Her arms and face were still thin and she had a healthy glow about her. She talked very softly and often smiled shyly. How anyone could think this woman was sleeping around and conceiving illegitimate children, Kokila wasn’t sure. She looked like a nice woman, a wife and a mother-to-be.
Kanka Lakshmi asked Radhika to stay back with the new women who wanted to make papads. There were four of them, including Chetana and Kokila.
“It’s very simple,” Kanka Lakshmi said. “Radhika, can you make some so that we can show these women how it is done?”
Radhika immediately went into action. “I’ll make plain papads and then those with chili flakes in them, okay?” she said sweetly.
She measured flour, salt, oil, a tablespoon of turmeric and water and poured them into a big steel bowl. Then she kneaded the mixture until it was a soft dough. “Now you have to roll out the papads,” she explained, and pulled out a wooden base and a thin rolling pin. Efficiently, she rolled out fifteen papads in no time, and then made more dough, this time adding red chili flakes from a packet.
“We give you everything you need. If we want you to make papads with chili flakes or black pepper, we will provide you with the ingredients,” Kanka Lakshmi told all the women.
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