Kokila looked at Charvi and saw the intent on her face. She might have changed, become more conceited, and believed she was a goddess, but her heart was still in the right place.
“We could do with a tailor in Tella Meda,” Kokila said, and Charvi smiled at her. “We all live there. It’s Charvi’s home and she shares it with us.”
Chetana grinned then. “And you and I can set up a tailor shop there. I can stitch sari falls, I have a very clean hand.”
Shanthi looked at the women and suspicion clouded her eyes. It was not uncommon for madams to recruit unsuspecting young women for their brothels like this.
“She really is a guru,” Gayatri Devi confirmed. “She is Ramanandam Sastri’s daughter. Do you know who he is? A great writer.”
Shanthi shook her head uncomfortably. She obviously had no idea who Ramanandam Sastri was and what being a great writer meant.
“I promise that this will be a home for you, not another hell,” Kokila said, taking Shanthi’s hand in hers. “It’s not much but it has walls and it is secure.”
Shanthi nodded, still unsure but realizing that she didn’t have many options and this, if true, was a gift from God.
“You’ll have to pay some rent,” Chetana said. “But you can manage that with the tailoring. What do you say? Do you want to be partners with me?”
“Yes,” Shanthi said, and smiled for the first time since her husband had beaten her. Sometimes fate brought you home. Years later when she and Kokila would reminisce about her train journey to Visakhapatnam, Shanthi would always say that it was Kokila, not Charvi, who convinced her that Tella Meda could be her home too.
1981–1982 14 January 1980. Indira Gandhi was sworn in as the prime minister of India for the second time.
16 July 1981. India performs a nuclear test.
30 November 1982. The world premiere of Sir Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi was held in New Delhi to record audiences.
The Professor
There was a slight chill in the air as Kokila climbed the small wooden stool to pluck flowers from the neem tree growing in the front garden. Narayan Garu had painstakingly planted three neem trees seven years ago but only one had survived. One had died as a sapling and the second had been torn off the ground during a hurricane.
Every year, Kokila was thankful that this neem tree had survived, because every January, for the Telugu new year, Ugadi, Kokila plucked the neem flowers for the traditional Ugadi pachadi. Dr. Vishnu Mohan and his wife, Saraswati, along with several others in the area, also got neem flowers for their Ugadi pachadi from the Tella Meda neem tree.
The Ugadi pachadi contained the three prominent flavors, sweet, sour, and bitter. The sweet was from jaggery, the sour from unripe mangoes, and the bitter from the neem leaves. Subhadra bought fresh jaggery from the market for the pachadi and some unripe mangoes from Dr. Vishnu Mohan’s garden where six mango trees thrived and produced different and flavorful mangoes.
“Good year this year will be. I can just feel it, can’t you, Kokila Amma?” Puttamma said as she sat on the grass smoking a bidi.
It was on the tip of Kokila’s tongue to say that it was going to be just another year, like the previous years had been.
“It’s just not the same, is it, without Sastri Garu,” Puttamma said, mistaking the sadness in Kokila’s eyes as being for the man who had died three years ago.
Kokila nodded and then smiled. “People go and people come.”
And that was true as well. There were many new faces at Tella Meda. Shanthi had settled in nicely, taking the big room in one corner for her tailoring shop and living space. Chetana and she had come up with a system of stitching clothes and dividing the income. They were becoming popular with the locals as well as with guests who would come to Tella Meda for a week or two. The regular guests would bring various pieces of cloth along so that Shanthi and Chetana could make clothes from measurements they took then and there. It was a decent business and like the bruises on Shanthi’s face, her past had faded away. She couldn’t remember her life before Tella Meda and Kokila was happy that this life was better than the previous one.
Chetana had a second daughter and she was convinced that she had yet another girl because she had refused to have her head tonsured at Tirupati when she was seven months pregnant.
“I didn’t fulfill the vow and see, another girl,” she told Kokila. But she was smiling this time. This time she didn’t care about Ravi’s disappointment or anyone else’s. This time she fed her baby and clothed her with a possessiveness that surprised everyone and hurt Bhanu, who was now seven years old and understood that Renuka was her surrogate mother while her real mother was busy with her sibling.
Chetana named her daughter Meena Kumari after her favorite Hindi movie actress. The name got shortened to Meena. She was only three years old now but she had her mother’s determination and stubbornness.
“That girl, she’ll be trouble,” Puttamma announced to Kokila as she crushed her bidi and watched Meena stealthily follow one of the new cats at Tella Meda. This one was really a kitten, gray in color with dark stripes running over its little body.
“She’s a good girl,” Kokila immediately defended Meena as the little girl pounced on the cat. It screeched in fright and ran away from its tormentor. Meena chased the cat into the house, making growling sounds.
“No, no, this one has malice in her soul . . . just like her mother. Mark my words, she will grow up to be just like her mother,” Puttamma said clearly. Her affection for Chetana had not increased in the past years.
Puttamma thought that a woman who couldn’t keep her husband in line was not a good woman or a strong woman. “A bad wife is the reason a man strays from home,” Puttamma said. “I know because I’ve had enough husbands stray from home.”
“Ravi was spoiled long before he married her,” Kokila told Puttamma. “You stay for some Ugadi pachadi, okay?”
“If Subhadra Amma is making it, it’ll taste like amrutam, ” Puttamma declared. Indeed, Subhadra’s pachadi did taste like food for the gods.
Every year for Ugadi, everyone at Tella Meda wore new clothes and celebrated with a lunch of tamarind rice, fresh yogurt, rice, mango pappu, sweet pulusu, gongura pachadi, and plenty of sweet rice payasam.
Large amounts of food disappeared as many guests came to wish Charvi a happy new year and take her blessings so that their new year would be prosperous and happy.
This year, for the first time in her life, Kokila bought herself dangling gold earrings. They were small with a little hat hanging from a gold knob. A piece of red coral adorned the gold knob. The earrings cost her all her savings, but it was Ugadi and she had promised herself she would renew herself and try to be happy this year.
“Look at those earrings,” Chetana had teased her. “Are you trying to impress someone?” she asked as she looked at the guest who had arrived just the day before.
Professor Manjunath Kaakateeya had been coming for a week every summer for the past three years. Every year he would arrive, full of anecdotes and gossip. He was a lively man who was respectful to everyone but still managed to be playful. Chetana always insisted that he looked at Kokila with a man’s eyes, to which Kokila only rolled her own.
This year, Professor Manjunath came early and he was quiet and hesitant. Something had happened to bring him here early, everyone was certain, but no one dared to ask.
“He always brings blouse pieces for his wife and daughters,” Shanthi said with concern. “Nothing this time.”
“Maybe he has had some bad news,” Subhadra said as she squeezed out tamarind pulp for the tamarind rice. “Even Charvi was talking about it. It isn’t healthy to be this sad during Ugadi. It’s the time of renewal. Ah, poor man, God knows what happened.”
Ugadi at Tella Meda was always a festive occasion. Devotional music played on the radio, accompanied by the smell of payasam that had been simmering for hours. Kokila could almost taste the new year, it was so palpable. This year she would turn thir
ty. She was an old woman already, in her middle age, with nothing to show for her years. It was time she turned her life around, she told herself. And so she had started with the earrings.
“Kokila, you should talk with the professor,” Subhadra suggested.
“Yes, Kokila,” Chetana teased. “You must, you must.”
“Unlike you gossipmongers, I like to mind my own business,” Kokila said smoothly, and left the kitchen, her new earrings swishing just a little as she walked with a bounce.
And she would have minded her own business if he had at least shown up for lunch. Just before they started serving, Manjunath came up to Kokila and said he wasn’t hungry and was going for a walk. There was such desolation in his expression that Kokila wanted to follow him out and ask what was wrong, how she could help. But she decided that it was none of her business and there were so many guests to take care of she didn’t have time for Manjunath and his problems. The Ugadi lunch was boisterous and happy, and Kokila vowed to not let Manjunath’s sorrow dampen her spirits.
It was a well-known fact that Dr. Manjunath Kaakateeya was a very bright man, teaching mathematics at Andhra University in Visakhapatnam. His oldest daughter had married recently while his youngest daughter had received top marks in the state medical entrance exam, EAMCET. She was studying to be a doctor in Osmania Medical College in Hyderabad.
When he had come to Tella Meda the previous summer, Manjunath had been gushing about his youngest daughter and how bright she was. Manjunath himself had studied in America on some kind of scholarship.
Charvi said that the Fulbright scholarship was given to exceptionally smart people and she was very flattered that an intelligent man such as Manjunath came to Tella Meda to find peace and solace.
“Vacation away from family,” he would say. “But I tell them that it is a holy vacation and after all I’m coming to your holy home, Charvi Amma.”
For his accomplishments, and the list was long, he was still very young. He had married young and had his first daughter when he was only twenty years old. He was considered a dynamic young professor who someday would become vice chancellor at Andhra University. The vice chancellor position was a political one but most people in the know had already decided that Dr. Manjunath Kaakateeya was the man for the job.
He respected Charvi. He sat with her during bhajan in the evening and he prayed with her in the morning. During the day, he spent time chatting with Narayan Garu and the women of the house. He went for long walks and came back with seashells and wildflowers for everyone. He helped with the cooking on Sundays and was always full of charming wit. An excellent human being, everyone said. When Manjunath visited, Dr. Vishnu Mohan, who lived two houses away, had his meals at Tella Meda. Even his wife, Saraswati, would spend more time than usual at the ashram. Such was Manjunath’s appeal. Everyone liked him and everyone knew him as a cheerful man who brightened the day, so it was especially noticeable when he came to Tella Meda without his humor and welcoming smile.
He sat in the temple room for hours, watching Charvi meditate or staring at the idol of Lord Venkateshwara Swami. His walks were getting longer and he would return with a heavier face than the one he left with.
“He didn’t eat lunch,” Kokila told Subhadra.
“The rumor is that he got some girl pregnant,” Renuka said, and both Kokila and Subhadra glared at her. “Saraswati said something about it. She talked to some friend of Doctor Garu’s at Andhra University and he said so. I’m not making up stories.”
Kokila sighed. “But you don’t even know if this is true. Why say things like this and ruin a man’s good name?”
Renuka sighed, big tears filling her eyes, as they always could on command. “Everyone blames me because I’m a widow. Maybe he did get a girl pregnant, why is that so hard to believe?”
“Because he’s a good man,” Subhadra snapped at Renuka. “Sometimes, Renuka, you just . . . You have a big mouth and one day it will hurt you. Now, why don’t you go out of my kitchen and leave me to cook dinner in peace.”
Renuka made a face and sighed a little before walking away. Having caused mischief, she had accomplished her mission, it appeared.
That evening, during bhajan, Saraswati confirmed the rumor.
“A young girl committed suicide,” Saraswati whispered to Subhadra and Kokila.
Chetana craned her neck as she was sitting behind Saraswati. “Really? How young? A student?” She was full of questions. Gossip was always welcome at Tella Meda.
Saraswati nodded. “Eighteen-year-old girl, they say. That’s how old his youngest daughter is. I thought he was a good man . . . chee-chee, now I find this out. It’s just not right that he’s here in the presence of Charvi.”
“I don’t believe it,” Kokila said, a little miffed that they all were turning against a man they had always been friendly with. “He seems to have too much integrity to do what you accuse him of. And who is this friend of yours in Visakhapatnam who told you this?”
Saraswati shook her head. “Not Visakhapatnam. Vishnu’s friend is a professor at the Regional Engineering College in Warrangal. Well, he used to be a professor there, ten years ago, but he still has good contacts and he heard this from a friend whose sister is married to a professor who works at Andhra University.”
Chetana laughed softly. “Looks like this story has been through so many mouths that there is probably more masala in the story than story.”
“No, no, it really happened,” Saraswati claimed, her voice rising above a whisper. Charvi didn’t say anything but paused in her singing and looked straight at Saraswati, who became quiet immediately.
After the bhajan, Saraswati profusely apologized to Charvi for speaking during her singing and was immediately forgiven, though Charvi did hold her hand up to silence Saraswati when she tried to implicate Kokila and Chetana as well.
Manjunath didn’t come for dinner that Ugadi night and neither did he show up for the special bhajan in the evening. He sat quietly in the backyard by the well, smoking cigarette after cigarette.
Subhadra saw him from her room’s window and asked Kokila to go find out what was wrong.
“I’m scared he’ll jump into the well,” Subhadra said truthfully. “Whatever he did, he did. What do we know? Just go and check on him and make sure he comes inside. That well doesn’t look deep but it is. You jump in, you die, not just end up with broken bones.”
Kokila wanted to tell Subhadra to go talk to him herself if she was so worried but she knew that Subhadra would never interfere in a stranger’s personal business quite so blatantly.
Kokila had always thought that Manjunath was a good-looking man. He was tall and broad-shouldered and looked more like a big construction worker than a Brahmin professor. The white and yellow cigarette looked small in his large hands. His spectacles had slid down his nose, his kurta was smudged with black streaks, and his dark pants had not been ironed before he wore them. There was a week’s worth of stubble on his face and his hair looked greasy and dirty, as if it hadn’t been washed in a while.
As soon as Manjunath saw Kokila, he politely dropped the cigarette on the grass and crushed it under his blue rubber slipper.
“I’m sorry I missed bhajan,” Manjunath said, his voice a little scratchy because of too much smoking and lack of sleep.
Kokila shook her head. “Don’t worry about it.” She knew she should say something else but didn’t quite know what to say. She barely knew this man. He came once a year for a week or two and during his stay he chatted with everyone and it wasn’t like when he talked with Kokila he spoke with any extra closeness.
“I’ll go to sleep then,” Manjunath said when he realized that Kokila wasn’t going to say anything more and the uncomfortable silence was not being broken.
“Okay,” Kokila managed, and watched him walk away.
She felt miserable. She should’ve said something, she knew, but what could she say? You seem di ferent this time, Manjunath Garu? Any problems in your life you want to sha
re with everyone at Tella Meda?
She hoped that he’d talk to Charvi. She was the guru of the ashram and the one who could give advice and offer salvation. This wasn’t her problem, Kokila decided; she had many problems, but Professor Manjunath was not one of them.
That changed eventually.
It was during his third week in Tella Meda that Kokila saw him crying on the terrace in the night.
Subhadra and Kokila had left chilies to dry on the terrace and forgot to bring them down in the evening after the sun had set. Just before she went to sleep, Kokila remembered and rushed upstairs with a flashlight to bring the chilies to the kitchen. If left all night, they’d get wet again in the morning dew.
He was sitting in a corner, his head bent and hidden on his knees, his body shaking as small sobs escaped him.
Kokila wouldn’t have even noticed him in the dark. But as soon as she heard a sob, she turned the flashlight toward the sound. His head came up in shock.
“Manjunath Garu?” Kokila said as she looked curiously, wanting to make sure it was indeed him. Is he crying? she wondered with a little fear. Would she have to console him? Did she know how?
He cleared his throat and covered his face with the back of his hand to avoid inspection and the glare of the light. “Yes. I was just resting here,” he said in a clear voice.
“Oh,” Kokila said, and turned the light away from him. She quietly folded the muslin cloth on which the red chilies lay and packed it neatly so that she could carry them downstairs without dropping any chilies on the way.
Curiosity burned within her. She wanted to ask him why he had been crying. She wanted to ask him if she could help, though she couldn’t imagine how she could help. What would she say? And what if it was true that he had made some girl pregnant and she committed suicide? No, no, it was better not to get involved. She couldn’t help this man.
Kokila put the flashlight on top of the muslin. Holding the cloth with both hands, she started to walk toward the stairs.
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