Song of the Cuckoo Bird

by Amulya Malladi

“Old bitch,” Puttamma muttered to Renuka’s back as she left the courtyard. “You need anything, you tell me, Kokila Amma. I’m very proud of you.”

  “Thanks, Puttamma,” Kokila said with a smile. “It is hard work but I feel like I’m alive. I’m doing something worthwhile.”

  “Those who have small minds and small hearts can’t understand,” Puttamma said firmly. “I’m surprised Charvi Amma had any objection. But she is a higher being, she is such a great lady.”

  Kokila wrote to Manasa about the clinic and Shankar. She described the clinic as best she could, though she worried that this might not be the kind of thing one said to an eight-year-old. But Manasa wrote back saying that she was very happy that Kokila was helping out the “poor leper people.” Then she added some news.

  My brother is very beautiful. Nanna named him Manav, so that his name is like mine. Mallika left a few months after Manav was born and now Amma says that she is Manav’s mother. I don’t understand. I thought Mallika was Manav’s mother. She grew big and fat with him in her belly. I heard the servants say that Mallika is from a poor family so she came to have Manav and Nanna gave her money and then she left. I miss Mallika. She was nice to me. But I’m supposed to say that Amma had Manav while she was in Kanyakumari. It’s a lie but my father said that it was a good lie. I don’t think they’ll mind if I tell you the truth. And in any case, all the servants know.

  Amma and Nanna don’t fight at all anymore. Nanna is even nicer to me though we all have to take care of Manav all the time. We went to Kashmir for vacation this summer and it was very nice there. We stayed in a houseboat and Amma was so scared that Manav might fall into the water. I didn’t want him to fall into the water but I thought it could be fun to see what would happen.

  I bought you a sweater there. Amma said that it is a very nice sweater made with sheep’s wool. A special sheep. And the sweater is called a cashmere sweater. I hope you will like it. I wanted to buy the red one but Amma said the blue one would be better.

  Please give our regards to Charvi Auntie and everyone else. Amma bought Charvi Auntie a shawl as well that she will send separately.

  I miss you very much. Maybe when you get married you will find a husband in Hyderabad and we can see each other all the time.

  Lots of love,

  Manasa

  The sweater came at a good time. Winter was coming up on Bheemunipatnam and Kokila’s old sweater had become too thin and worn. She decided to wear her new blue sweater for especially cold evenings, so that it wouldn’t get old too soon.

  Kokila stopped making papads for Kanka Lakshmi, who had fired Kokila after learning that she was working at the leprosy clinic. But it didn’t bother Kokila. There was a pleasant rhythm to her days. She left Tella Meda every morning and came back in the evening. It was a relief to leave and a relief to come back.

  She still didn’t like going with Shankar to the huts but she steeled herself every day and went with him. She had become adept at not smelling the foulness of the disease and not cringing when parts of a finger broke off while she was cleaning a diseased hand.

  The lepers who lived in the huts always came and chatted with Kokila. They asked questions about Charvi and Tella Meda. They talked about their children, their grandchildren, their wives, and their husbands. The loneliness and desolation they felt was assuaged a little by the presence of Shankar and Kokila. They loved Shankar. They called him their god and savior. Kokila couldn’t understand how it didn’t go to Shankar’s head. People said the same things to Charvi and she behaved like she was a real goddess. Shankar seemed unaffected.

  “But don’t you feel proud?” Kokila couldn’t believe how he could be so humble, how anyone could be.

  “I see people die of this disease, lose their eyesight, their family . . . what should I take pride in? That I can stand being next to them?” Shankar asked.

  His goodness attracted Kokila to him. This was a man with a clean heart, as Puttamma would put it. He had no malice, only the desire to help people. He helped everyone he could. He saw such despair in his line of work, yet every morning Kokila would see him come to the clinic with a smile on his face. He was ready to take on the day and its challenges.

  At Tella Meda, things were easing. Ramanandam was still not coming to Kokila’s room and she wasn’t going to his. Kokila thought it was a lovers’ spat and they would make up again. But with every passing day she felt that a distance was opening between them that she couldn’t breach. And since she met Shankar, it was a distance she didn’t want to breach. Shankar was interesting and enjoyable to be around. He was not torn in two inside or worrying about larger moral dilemmas. He did what he could and admitted that some things were beyond him. He worked hard at the clinic but also made time to visit his parents, go out with friends, and even go to the cinema. He invited Kokila to join him and she did.

  They were becoming good friends and Kokila was starting to value that relationship. The hurt she felt at Ramanandam’s departure was assuaged by Shankar’s arrival.

  But the gossipmongers had also started to talk. Of course, no one believed that Shankar, a doctor from a good family, would marry a girl from Tella Meda, but no one would really blame him for taking advantage of one. After all, the women living at Tella Meda were not the most respectable. Women like Kokila couldn’t expect marriage and family; no decent man would marry a woman who lived in the ashram, an orphan, a discard of society who had spurned one marriage already. If a woman didn’t have a good family to stand by her, all she could expect were shameful liaisons with men out to take advantage of her. Kokila heard the loud whispers, but she ignored them, which was easy to do after a lifetime in Tella Meda.

  The rash came three months after she started working in the clinic. She wasn’t the first to notice it. Her arms had been itching all day but she didn’t think much about it. It was getting colder and her skin always itched when it was dry. As she scratched she didn’t notice the red welts on her skin until Renuka pointed them out.

  “There, you’ve got it,” Renuka cried out, hugging Bhanu close to her. “Charvi, Subhadra, she’s got it. Look at her arms.”

  Fear ran through Kokila. She couldn’t have it, could she? Shankar said that it took three years before any symptoms would appear even if she did get leprosy, which was highly unlikely since she protected herself constantly.

  Charvi looked at Kokila’s arms and sighed. “I’ll send word for Dr. Shankar. Until then, Kokila, please stay in your room. Subhadra, take her food there, in a separate plate.”

  Kokila was speechless. “But it could be anything. Shankar said that leprosy only comes three years or more after exposure. This is not leprosy.”

  Charvi held up her hand. “I warned you that at the first sign of trouble we’d have to do something.”

  “If you had to do charity, couldn’t you find something safer?” Chetana said as she looked at the red rash on Kokila’s arms in disgust. “So, are you going to start losing your fingers and toes now?”

  Kokila sighed. “No. Nothing is going to happen. Look, this can’t be leprosy, okay? Leprosy—”

  “Until a doctor says otherwise, why should we believe you?” Ravi demanded. “You are so stupid, Kokila. Going there to help those people, what did you think you’d get, a medal?”

  Ramanandam was also asked to come and look at the rash. He shook his head somberly. “I’m so sorry,” he said to Kokila, and she felt frustration bubble over.

  “It’s just a rash. It’s winter, I get rashes during winter,” Kokila said. “This is not leprosy.”

  “But until we know for sure . . . There are other people here, a baby is here. We have to let Shankar come and take a look,” Ramanandam suggested softly. “In any case, you said that there was medicine. You’ll be fine.”

  “If you’re so sure, why are you asking me to sit inside my room and not step out?” Kokila asked, her eyes filled with accusation.

  “Because we don’t want what you have,” Renuka said. “Now go before
we get it from you.”

  Disgusted, confused, and rejected, Kokila went into her room and closed the door. She wanted to leave then, she wanted to go away, as far away as she could, but she had no place to go. I should’ve left with my in-laws when they came all those years ago, she thought as self-pity rose within her. It seemed that no matter how long she stayed in Tella Meda she couldn’t escape that decision she made years ago. Look how the people of Tella Meda treated her. Even Ramanandam, after all they had been to each other. She had given up her youth for him, had cleaned his vomit, his clothes, and . . . Oh, God, what was she going to do?

  Puttamma came that afternoon, after she cleaned the bathrooms, with Telugu movie magazines and some fruit. She sat down at the foot of the bed where Kokila was sitting, still in shock that she had been discarded.

  “That new actress, what’s her name . . . ah, anyway, she’s having NTR’s illegitimate baby,” Puttamma said with glee. “It’s all here in the magazine. I bought it for you after they told me. You read and enjoy. And eat some bananas, they are supposed to be good for you.”

  “Thanks, Puttamma,” Kokila said, and slid off the bed to sit on the floor but not too close to Puttamma. “What are they saying?”

  Puttamma snorted and moved closer to Kokila. “I say it’s not leprosy. I know all about leprosy. It takes a while to get to you. But it can happen earlier too. I don’t believe you have it. It must be something else. Good people like you don’t get such a disease. God isn’t that unfair.”

  Kokila nodded. “They aren’t saying anything nice, are they?”

  “It’s just that old bitch, Renuka, and that new bitch, Chetana,” Puttamma said bitterly. “Both of them banding together. And that no-good husband of Chetana’s . . . that man should drown in the bay and die. No-good son of a whore. You don’t worry about anything. If they ask you to leave, you come and stay in my hut until you get settled. My husband just left with that bitch Girija, so you come and stay with me, Kokila Amma. I’ll take care of you.”

  That evening Subhadra brought dinner for Kokila in the same plate used by women who had to sit out when they had their period.

  “Shankar said he’ll be here tomorrow morning,” Subhadra said sheepishly. “He doesn’t think it can be leprosy.”

  Kokila nodded. “You should go. Who knows what you’ll get from me.”

  Subhadra wiped tears off her cheeks. “You did a good thing and a bad thing happened to you. Sometimes there is no justice.”

  After Subhadra left, Kokila stared at the food that she didn’t think she could eat. She had done a good thing and a bad thing did happen to her. But the bad thing was not leprosy. The people at Tella Meda, the family she had started thinking of as her own, had made the bad thing happen. Forget compassion—they had rushed her out of their sight at the first sign of trouble.

  That night Kokila didn’t sleep and contemplated how she could leave Tella Meda and what she could do to live a better life. Though even as she thought, she knew that if she had leprosy, one of the huts in the leprosy slum might be her fate.

  Shankar saw the rash and shook his head. “It’s not leprosy,” he said quietly.

  Kokila took a deep breath and let the air out. She searched for Ramanandam among those standing outside her doorway. He wasn’t there.

  “Then what is it?” Renuka demanded, Bhanu held tightly in her arms.

  “Maybe she got something else,” Ravi said, and Chetana made an assenting sound.

  “It’s just a rash,” Shankar said, and then sighed. He looked around Kokila’s room and his eyes fell on the blue cashmere sweater Manasa had sent. “Is this new?” he asked.

  Kokila nodded.

  Shankar held up the sweater and looked at its label. “You don’t have leprosy. You’re allergic to the kind of wool used in the sweater.”

  “What if she has leprosy and you’re just lying to us?” Renuka asked.

  “Why would he lie?” Subhadra demanded, and came inside Kokila’s room. “Chetana, go get Charvi.” Then she hugged Kokila tightly. “Just a rash! By the grace of Lord Venkateshwara Swami, you’re saved.”

  Kokila felt stifled within the embrace. It had been just one night since they started treating her like an untouchable, but that embrace already felt foreign. She stepped away from Subhadra, her face expressionless.

  “Everyone please go back to your rooms and business,” Charvi said in the queen-of-the-house tone she had perfected in the past few years. “Hello, Shankar. Chetana said something but between her overexcited utterances and nonsense I don’t think I understood anything. What should we do with Kokila?”

  The question struck Kokila like a tidal wave. What should we do with Kokila? Is that what Charvi had asked? And what did that really mean?

  “Nothing,” Shankar said calmly. “I think she should put some Lactocalamine lotion on her rash, but nothing else.”

  “Are you saying it’s not leprosy?” Charvi asked carefully.

  “It’s not,” Shankar replied. “It’s just a rash that I suspect she got from this new cashmere sweater of hers.”

  “That was sent by a devotee of mine,” Charvi said, and nodded. “They sent me a shawl too, which I, as you can see, am wearing regularly. I don’t have any rash.”

  Shankar made an exasperated sound. “Everyone has different skin. Your skin is probably not as sensitive as Kokila’s to cashmere.”

  “So you’re saying she’s more delicate?” Charvi asked.

  “No, all I’m saying is that her skin reacts to the wool and yours doesn’t,” Shankar said. “And she wouldn’t get leprosy so quickly. It takes at least one year, but usually four to five years, before someone starts showing symptoms. And she hasn’t been at the clinic long enough yet. I can’t believe you treated someone in your house like this.”

  Charvi raised her eyebrows in shock. Shankar was always polite and humble, and no one spoke to Charvi like this. If Kokila hadn’t been feeling so numb inside, she would’ve taken pleasure in the words Shankar dispatched to Charvi.

  “You’re supposed to be a guru, a goddess with a big heart, and yet you shun a woman for doing good? She was only trying to help the needy. Kokila, if you want to leave Tella Meda, you can come and stay with me,” Shankar said.

  A hush fell. Kokila ran his words through her mind over and over again to ascertain that they had meant what she thought they had the first time she heard them.

  “And how would that look?” Charvi demanded, her tone still polite, but there was anger and bitterness. “A young woman staying alone with a single man? And already Kokila has quite a reputation, what with—”

  “That’s enough, Charvi Amma.” Ramanandam’s voice pierced through Kokila’s numbness. She hadn’t even seen him standing outside her door listening to what was going on within. “Shankar, thank you so much for coming here. We will always be indebted to you. Charvi did what she thought was best for the people who live in Tella Meda and . . . we’re very happy to hear that Kokila doesn’t have leprosy.”

  Shankar ignored him and turned to Kokila. “I don’t care what people say. My offer will always be open. You can come anytime and live with me.”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” Ramanandam said, his eyes darting toward Kokila.

  They were all looking at her, Kokila realized. She had to say something to let them know what her decision was. She had to let them know if she was staying or leaving.

  “I need some time to think about this,” Kokila said, a quiver in her voice. “Shankar, thank you.”

  “Let me know when you have decided,” Shankar said, and left without saying good-bye to Charvi or Ramanandam. He never came back to Tella Meda again.

  “I did what I thought I had to do,” Charvi said to Kokila. “And I’m sorry that your feelings were hurt. I would very much like it if you would stay at Tella Meda.”

  After Charvi left, Ramanandam came inside her room and closed the door behind him. Kokila sank onto the bed and looked out of the window into the
backyard, her heart hammering against her ribs. This had seemed like a prison just a day ago. This room had been suffocating. Now she was free again. She wouldn’t have to live in some slum while her body disintegrated.

  “How are you feeling?” Ramanandam asked.

  Kokila barely noticed his presence. What she had been through had been tragic, almost akin to death, albeit emotional, and now she had a fresh perspective on life. Ramanandam was not going to be part of this new life she planned to lead.

  “Healthy,” Kokila said.

  “I’m relieved that you are well,” Ramanandam said, and approached her, his feet moving silently against the tiled floor. “I have missed you.”

  Kokila understood why he was here, knew what he wanted from her.

  “You can’t go live with Shankar. There will be too much talk and—”

  “Just like there is talk about you and me?” Kokila asked. “You didn’t seem to care much about the talk when it was you and me, yet now you worry about that same talk if it was about Shankar and me. Why?”

  Ramanandam shook his head. He took her hands in his. “I love you.”

  “No,” Kokila said with absolute certainty. “If you loved me, you would have been here with me regardless of my health. That is true love, where you can be with someone no matter how bad the situation is. You have never loved anyone except yourself. You disguise your selfishness with talk of independence but you don’t fool me anymore. I stayed in this ashram because this was the only real home I ever had and because . . . because of Vidura. I’m not going to stay because of you now.”

  “You can’t just go live with some—”

  Kokila raised her hand to silence Ramanandam. “I’m not going to live with Shankar. But I’m staying here not for you but for myself.” It was true, she couldn’t go with Shankar. The scandal of it would be unbearable without the protection of Tella Meda. And Shankar had not asked her to marry him; how could she go then?

  “What are you saying?” Ramanandam asked.

  “You and I cannot be the way we used to be,” Kokila said calmly. “It was perverse then, but because I loved you, I could bear it. Now I don’t love you and I know that you don’t love me. Whatever we share now would just be lust and that would be even more perverse . . . it would be monstrous.”