Song of the Cuckoo Bird

by Amulya Malladi

  Kokila knew that leprosy was contagious. She had seen lepers with their fingers and toes falling off, their dirty clothes, their deformed bodies. She was afraid she would become one of them as well but something compelled her to curb that fear and accept the challenge.

  “I’m sure,” Kokila told him. “I’ll be very careful. This is my chance to help people.”

  Shankar smiled. He had just lost one of his helpers to marriage and was shorthanded, as always. Kokila’s offer had come at an opportune time.

  “We open the clinic at eight in the morning. I see patients who come by at that time. At ten I make rounds around the huts. You will have to accompany me on those rounds. We have lunch at noon and then we stay in the clinic until four in the evening. You will get paid one hundred rupees a month. I know it isn’t much but that’s the best I can do,” Shankar said.

  “When do I start?” Kokila asked.

  The reaction from Charvi and the others at Tella Meda was predictable.

  “Well then, she can’t come into the house if she goes there,” Renuka was the first to say. “What if she gives it to Bhanu?”

  “All of us will be at risk,” Ravi claimed. “This is pure suicide. Why should she drag us all down with her?”

  Subhadra was the only one who didn’t see anything wrong with what Kokila was planning to do. “She’s trying to help people. We all should have such big hearts.”

  “It’s not a matter of a big heart.” Charvi joined the criticizers. “This is a matter of her health, everyone’s health. Leprosy is contracted by touch, breath, everything. We will all be at a very high risk. Kokila, I don’t think you should do this. I’m sure Shankar will understand if you explain to him . . .”

  “Explain what? That Charvi doesn’t think I should go? Or that everyone is so scared that I will become a leper and give the disease to them? Someone has to help these people and if Shankar has managed to work there for three years without an infection, why should I be scared?” Kokila demanded.

  “Shankar is rich—” Chetana began, but Kokila interrupted her with a glare.

  “And being rich is some antidote to disease?” she asked, looking pointedly at Ravi, the son of a rich man.

  “There is no cure, Kokila,” Charvi tried again, and Kokila shook her head.

  “There is. Shankar told me that they have done some research in Malta and—”

  “That doesn’t even sound like a real place. Malta? What kind of name is that?” Renuka piped up. “And I wouldn’t believe anything that boy says. Too slick for my liking. Watch it, Kokila, you’ll get infected too and then what? I say, stay at Tella Meda and be healthy.”

  Kokila wanted to scream that if she stayed at Tella Meda any longer, she’d go mad. She looked at Ramanandam, who hadn’t said a word and continued to eat his dinner quietly. She never addressed him in public, never spoke with him freely. Their relationship, though not clandestine anymore, was still very private and discreet.

  “Ramanandam, what do you think?” she asked softly but loudly enough for everyone to hear.

  The fact that she’d called him Ramanandam and not Sastri Garu didn’t go unnoticed. Even Narayan Garu, who was trying to stay out of the discussion, looked up in shock.

  Oh, let them look, Kokila thought bitterly. I’m good enough to sleep with him and I’m good enough to take care of him now that he’s sick but not good enough to call him by his first name? If I can do in it private, why not in the open?

  “It’s your decision. I don’t believe in interfering in anyone’s life,” Ramanandam said, unperturbed by her use of his first name in public. “But I also think that you’re taking a considerable risk, and of course, there is a risk to all of us if you bring it into Tella Meda.”

  Kokila felt a tightness fill her insides. She was numb. He was not her husband, not her lover, just an old man who used her, she thought. Because a husband, a lover, would have stood by her and supported her, no matter what the consequence.

  “I didn’t tell you all this so I could get your opinion on whether I should work at the clinic or not,” Kokila finally said. “I told you as a courtesy. I will not be at Tella Meda from seven in the morning until after five in the evening. The daily things that I used to take care of will have to be taken care of by someone else. I will still manage the finances and all the other work on Sundays. I will also help with the cooking and the cleaning every evening.”

  “As if we’ll let you anywhere near our food or clothes,” Renuka muttered. “If you go there, don’t come near me or Bhanu. Stay in your room. We’ll leave food for you there.”

  Subhadra gasped at Renuka’s rudeness. “Renuka, she’s just trying to do some good,” she admonished.

  “Good or wood, I don’t care. If she’s going to get that disease, she can live in a corner,” Renuka said, and from the expressions others wore it was obvious they agreed with her.

  That night Ramanandam came to Kokila’s room. Chetana was back with Ravi in one of the front rooms and once again, Ramanandam was visiting Kokila in the nights when he was not ill.

  “I need to wake up early in the morning to go to the clinic,” Kokila told him as soon as he came inside.

  “It’s not always sex I want when I come here,” Ramanandam said, and closed the door behind him.

  “Well, whatever it is that you have come for tonight, I can’t give, as I need to go to sleep,” Kokila said, feeling like a nagging wife. “Or did you come in thinking that you can have one more night? After all, from tomorrow I become a high risk for disease.”

  Ramanandam shook his head. “It’s an ugly disease. I don’t understand why you want to be part of this. Is it that boy Shankar?”

  “Shankar?”

  Ramanandam sighed and then smiled in self-amusement. “He’s young, good-looking, and a good man. I wouldn’t blame you if you were attracted to him.”

  Rage built up again inside Kokila. “You have a filthy and rotten mind. Why can’t I just want to do something with my life, something good? Why is that so hard to believe? If I want to work in the clinic, there has to be some ulterior motive?”

  “He’s a young man,” Ramanandam said quietly.

  “There are a lot of young men everywhere,” Kokila spat out. “I’m not attracted to any of them and actually, right now, I’m not even attracted to you. You and your free mind and Charvi’s godliness have their limitations, don’t they?”

  “Charvi has nothing to do with this,” Ramanandam warned.

  Kokila opened the door he had just closed. “You can leave, and take your ideologies with you. I expected you to say that no matter what I did and where I did it, you’d support me.”

  “I do support you,” Ramanandam said weakly, looking at the opened door with fear in his eyes. “Don’t turn me away,” he pleaded.

  “I’m not doing the turning away, you are,” Kokila said, biting back tears of frustration, sadness, and love. She loved him. He might be old, ill, and narrow-minded, but she loved him.

  Ramanandam nodded and walked out of her room.

  Kokila expected the first day at the clinic to be easy. It would just be about explaining the work; how hard could that be? When she looked back, she realized that the first day was the hardest. She’d heard stories about the leper slums, the lepers, the dirt and filth, the ugliness, the sadness, the disease, the decrepit bodies, and the crippled children, but seeing all of it firsthand was haunting in its intensity.

  She hadn’t expected to be fastidious about the gloves or the mask, but the first man who came into the clinic was rotting away and she put them on in a hurry.

  “We have to put new dressing on your wounds, Ramanaih,” Shankar said kindly to the man. “Why haven’t you come for six months? If you don’t take medicine, it will only get worse.”

  Kokila couldn’t place Ramanaih’s age. He wore a filthy shirt over a filthy dhoti. His bare feet were dirty and his toes were covered with bandages that were as filthy as his toes. Flies were swarming around his feet and he
emanated a foul smell.

  “Kokila, can you unwrap his hands and clean them in the potassium solution?” Shankar said. He’d walked her through the routine, shown her how to mix potassium in water in a white basin to make a pale violet mixture.

  Kokila’s hands shook as she removed the dirty bandage wrapped around Ramanaih’s hands. Vomit threatened to spill out of her. His fingers were stubby, the thumb on his right hand was missing, and there was pus everywhere. She threw the soiled bandage in the dustbin with a lid and dipped Ramanaih’s hands in the cleaning solution. Bits and pieces of skin and dirt floated away from his hands and Kokila had to look away. Her heart was hammering and all she wanted to do was run away, run as far as she could, so that she would never smell the stench of rotting flesh again.

  She wanted to catch the red and yellow bus that had brought her here to go back to Tella Meda. But pride and pity kept her from turning her back on the dirty old man. If he could live with his disease, she could at least show compassion.

  Ramanaih’s hands didn’t look much better when they were clean. A red rash was streaked all over what remained of his fingers. There were sores on his knuckles and Shankar made a sound of distress when he saw Ramanaih’s cleaned hands.

  “I told you to be careful. What happened to the thumb?” Shankar demanded.

  Ramanaih mumbled something incomprehensible.

  As Shankar put an ointment over Ramanaih’s hands and wrapped them again he lectured Ramanaih on the merits of coming to the clinic regularly.

  He had to come to the clinic to take his medicine. He lived in the huts, so why couldn’t he just come by? And where was he when Shankar went on his rounds? Ramanaih didn’t participate much in the conversation, just mumbled an apology once in a while.

  “You have to be careful,” Shankar told him again. “The disease takes away sensation from your fingers and that’s why you don’t feel anything when one gets cut off. You better come regularly, okay? Now, Kokila Amma is going to give you medicine. Drink it now with water and she’ll give you a packet for the next month. Take three tablets every day, in the morning, afternoon, and night. Okay?”

  Ramanaih swallowed the pill Kokila handed him and put the packet of pills she gave him in his shirt pocket.

  “Thanks, Amma, thanks, Shankar Garu.”

  “How is your daughter doing?” Shankar asked as Ramanaih was about to leave.

  This time Ramanaih spoke clearly. “She is doing very well. Her mother has fixed her marriage with a boy from Guntur.”

  Shankar shook his head. “Your daughter is thirteen years old, Ramanaih.”

  Ramanaih nodded with a smile. “Good time for marriage, very good time.”

  “Good time, he says,” Shankar said to Kokila when Ramanaih left. “Poor man, his wife and daughter refuse to see him. He goes by their house once in a while and they give him some food. He’s not even contagious anymore but no one seems to care about that.”

  “Then why is he still . . . sick?” Kokila asked.

  “Because he doesn’t take his medication properly. But he’s not going to give anyone leprosy now. The first two weeks of medication kills the disease-causing bacteria.”

  “What is bacteria?” Kokila asked.

  “Bacteria are very small living things . . . like an insect, but so small that we can’t see them with the naked eye,” Shankar explained.

  Kokila nodded. “And bacteria are bad?”

  “Not all bacteria are bad,” Shankar said. “There are bacteria inside our body that are very helpful. And curds, they are full of bacteria. After lunch I’ll show you what curds look like under the microscope.”

  The first two hours at the clinic seemed endless to Kokila. Half-eaten men, women, and children came in and left after being treated and advised. How could a small insectlike thing that one couldn’t even see with the naked eye cause this much havoc? Kokila wondered.

  Shankar and Kokila ate together. Shankar brought tiffin from his house, where he had a cook, and had told Kokila that she could share with him and not worry about bringing her own lunch. The tiffin carrier had four compartments filled with rice, bhindi curry, sambhar, and curds. Shankar’s cook had also sent a separate steel tiffin box with payasam in it.

  During lunch Shankar talked about his plans for the clinic and how he was hoping to get funding from the Andhra Pradesh government to keep it going.

  “Most politicians don’t care about the patients because they don’t vote. But this is a serious problem. Over a million people have leprosy in India,” Shankar said, and then smiled. “Are you overwhelmed?”

  Kokila nodded. “Terrified, also. And . . . a little disgusted. I just want to go home and never come back. I guess I’m not as good a person at heart as I thought.”

  Shankar patted her hand comfortingly. “I would have been surprised if you were not disgusted. It’s a disgusting disease. It’s an ugly disease. If you don’t come back tomorrow, I won’t be angry or disappointed. I understand that this is tough.”

  “Then why do you do it? Everyone knows you come from a rich family. You have a lot of money. Why do you choose to do this?” Kokila asked.

  “While I was growing up, there was this boy I knew in school. His grandfather had leprosy and the grandfather was kept in a separate area and no one spoke with him or went near him. He was completely isolated. I didn’t think anything of it then, but as I grew up and went to medical college, I knew what I wanted to do,” Shankar said. “My parents have money—that’s why I can choose to do this and not worry about putting a roof over my head. And these people who live here in these shabby huts are better off than my friend’s grandfather. At least here people have each other for company. That man died alone.”

  Kokila realized there was a vast difference between the man Ramanandam was and the man Shankar was. Ramanandam could talk about a lot of things but hardly put any of it into action. On the other hand, Shankar was doing what he set out to do. No matter how ugly the job, how tainted his reputation, and how isolated his life because of his chosen profession, he was still doing it, every day.

  “How do your parents feel about this?” Kokila asked.

  “They wish I’d get married but they’re not against my work. My father is a doctor as well and he worked in Burma for many years while I was with my mother in India,” Shankar said. “He also had the luxury to do as he pleased because his father was a wealthy land-lord.”

  “So, are you going to get married?” Kokila asked.

  Shankar smiled broadly and a dimple appeared on his left cheek. He was a personable young man, just a few years older than Kokila. She realized that Ramanandam was right in wondering if she was attracted to him because she knew she could be. If she worked with him every day and every day they had lunch like this, wouldn’t she feel something stir in her heart? Wasn’t there already a stirring? His goodness was not a façade and that to Kokila was his most attractive quality.

  “Sometime in the future I would like to get married, but I have no plans right now,” Shankar said. “So, do you want to see what curds looks like under the microscope?”

  It looked like several thousand living worms were wriggling against each other.

  “Oh,” Kokila said weakly. “I’m never going to eat curds again.”

  Her first day at work had been agonizing, fun, informative, and blissfully tiring. When she came back to Tella Meda, Renuka stood guard outside.

  “You will have to stay in your room,” Renuka announced as soon as Kokila opened the gate that led into the front garden of Tella Meda. “Subhadra will bring you food but you will have to eat it by yourself and wash your plate separately and keep it in your room. You—”

  “Who do you think you are, talking to me like this?” Kokila demanded as she closed the gate shut. “Who do you think you are?”

  “Stay away from me, you leper,” Renuka squealed as Kokila came closer to her. “And stay away from Bhanu.”

  “Then get the hell out of my way, you old bitch,”
Kokila cried.

  Without washing her feet, as everyone always did after coming from outside, Kokila stormed into Charvi’s room. Charvi was sitting at her study table, reading. She looked up and raised her eyebrows in query.

  “Did you ask Renuka to tell me to stay in my room and live like a leper?”

  Charvi shook her head.

  “Then talk to her and tell her that I’m working with lepers—that doesn’t make me one. And even if I did by some chance get leprosy, with treatment I won’t even be contagious after two weeks,” Kokila said. “Can you do that or are you so against me that this is what you’ve been waiting for?”

  Charvi looked at Kokila for a long moment. “I’m not against you.”

  “You hate me. You think I can’t see that? You think I don’t know that you disapprove of what . . . of your father and me?” Kokila asked, a thin hysteria tainting her voice. She was tired and the meeting with Renuka had increased her emotional stress.

  “I don’t hate you,” Charvi said softly. “You are not in isolation. If Renuka doesn’t like that, she can live elsewhere. But at the first sign that there might be a problem, I want you to tell us and get treatment. I think you’re very brave and very foolish. I am concerned, but I will never be against you.”

  Kokila stared at Charvi, all the wind knocked out of her at Charvi’s simple words. She turned and left the room more quietly than she had entered it.

  Puttamma didn’t seem to care where Kokila worked and was ready to fight against anyone and everyone to protect Kokila.

  “You are doing good, Kokila Amma. Don’t let anyone stop you,” she said. “Those people need help. Dr. Shankar is a god and you’re his helper. It is a good deed. Your soul is clean.”

  “But what will we do if her body isn’t?” Renuka demanded, and Puttamma waved her away with a flick of her hand.

  “Some people’s hearts are not clean. That’s where the problem is,” Puttamma retorted, her meaning unmistakable.