Song of the Cuckoo Bird

by Amulya Malladi

  “It was only eighty thousand rupees,” Madhu told Kokila in a low voice. “She likes to say one lakh because it sounds better. And it isn’t a new car. Three years old, that’s why it was only eighty.”

  Kokila smiled at him. “I think you should be proud. Not everyone has a car, you know. I know only one or two people who have their own cars.”

  If Chandra was proud of her son and the car, Madhu’s wife was downright snobbish about it. Her eldest son was now twelve and the youngest one was eight.

  “I heard Chetana had a daughter,” Harini said while Kokila sat in the kitchen with her to help with cooking. “She didn’t tonsure her head, I remember. I had a son because Madhu did what he promised to do at Tirumala. It’s all fate anyway. So, do you have any children? Marriage?”

  Kokila nodded, too proud of Karthik to hide him away from the world. “I adopted a boy, Karthik. He’s at Tella Meda now and I miss him very much. He’s just three years old. Do you want to see a photo?” Before Harini could say yes or no, Kokila pulled out a photo from her purse. “Isn’t he beautiful?” she asked.

  “Yes, he is,” Harini said uncomfortably. “Adoption? But you don’t know what kind of blood is in the boy. It could be dangerous.”

  Kokila put the photo away immediately, angry and ready to jump to Karthik’s defense. “What could be dangerous?”

  Harini shrugged and laughed nervously, realizing that she had hurt Kokila.

  “He is very beautiful,” Harini said instead and then changed the subject. “I thought I will make mango pappu today. It’s so hot, isn’t it?”

  Kokila stayed for two days only. She had a return ticket but Subhadra surprised her by changing it.

  “First class? No, no, Subhadra,” Kokila said. “I can’t take it. First class is so expensive.”

  “It’s a gift from Chandra and me,” Subhadra said. “You came all this way to give me company and I want you to go back comfortably. You will be in a two-berth coupe and if there is another passenger, it will be a woman. It will be nice. Don’t say no. This is my way of saying thank you. And you are like my daughter. Daughters shouldn’t say no to their mothers.”

  Kokila had not been in trains often and she definitely had never been in the first-class compartment. The seats were made of gray leather and the maroon floors were actually clean. Each compartment had a door that could be shut and locked from the inside for privacy. Even the bathrooms at the end of the compartment were clean and shiny.

  Kokila had the bottom berth but even if she had the top berth the rule was that she could sit down and look out of the window until after dinner. In any case, it wasn’t always that both berths were taken. She could travel all the way to Visakhapatnam alone in the compartment and that thought perked her up immensely.

  Even though she had been very reluctant to go, sure that she would miss Karthik too much, it had been nice to change the rhythm of her life. She constantly thought about Karthik and wanted nothing more than to feel his chubby arms go around her and to hear him talk, tell her about his day and kiss her. Still, it was good to have done something away from Tella Meda. It was nice to sleep through the night without Karthik waking up because of a nightmare or asking for water.

  She thought about Subhadra and hoped that she would be happy with Chandra and her son. They seemed eager to please Subhadra and treated her with great respect. It hadn’t sunk in yet but Kokila was sure that once she was in Tella Meda she would start to feel Subhadra’s absence. In the beginning it would be painful and then slowly the pain would fade away. She wondered if she would ever leave Tella Meda. Maybe once Karthik grew up, she could go and live with him and his family. She would cook good meals for Karthik and his wife and his children, take care of them. She would make sure she got along well with her daughter-in-law. She wouldn’t be like Manikyam and Chetana, fighting all the time. She would be her daughter-in-law’s friend. Oh and she would have grandchildren now, she thought with a smug smile.

  Right before the train left the Tirupati railway station the door to Kokila’s compartment opened and her hope that she would have the coupe all to herself was crushed.

  A woman wearing stylish sunglasses and smelling of sweet perfume stepped in. A coolie was behind her and she instructed him to put her suitcase underneath the berth. She carried a beautiful sequined black purse from which she pulled out a few rupees to give to the coolie.

  She looked familiar, Kokila thought, but she couldn’t place her. The woman had a big leather bag with her, the same color as her fleshcolored high-heeled sandals. She sighed as she sat down on the berth next to Kokila and opened her bag to drop the black purse in and bring out a bottle of water. She drank the water thirstily and put the bottle back in the bag.

  “It’s so hot, isn’t it?” she said to no one in general. “Are you going all the way to Visakhapatnam?” she asked Kokila as she took off her sunglasses.

  Kokila nodded with a tight smile. Where had she seen this woman before?

  “I think I have the top berth,” the woman said, and sighed again. “It was on such short notice that they couldn’t find me anything else.”

  Kokila nodded again. She had heard this woman’s voice before as well, she was certain of it. She just couldn’t remember from where and when.

  The woman pulled out a glossy magazine from her bag and put it beside her. Kokila looked at the magazine cover and then at the woman. Everything fell into place. This was Sharada, the legendary Neeraja from movies such as Manchimanusu, Chinnawadu, and others. Kokila had seen several of her movies, but she looked different on film, less stylish, because she always played the role of a traditional woman. The real woman wore a starched cotton sari in vibrant gold and red. She had a slim gold watch on one wrist while a bunch of shiny gold bangles adorned the other.

  There were three or four strands of gold chains around her neck and diamonds studded her earlobes. She must have been wearing makeup because her face was lighter than her neck and there was lipstick on her lips. She had dark kajal around her eyes and her eyelashes seemed to be artificially long and thick.

  Kokila couldn’t understand why Neeraja would wear makeup while traveling, especially in such heat, and why a rich woman such as Neeraja would travel in first class and not the comfortable and better air-conditioned compartment. Maybe she wasn’t rich anymore. She was a yesteryear star. Now she did mother roles and bit parts in movies. She still was talked about in magazines, like the one Neeraja was reading herself, but the fire was gone from her stardom.

  Kokila felt gauche with her white-and-green cotton sari and her slightly graying hair. Neeraja’s hair was completely black and she was at least fifty years old. Kokila always braided her hair and now tried to discreetly look at Neeraja’s stylish bun to see how it was done. When she had been young, Kokila had hardly bothered with her looks. Everyone could see that Chetana was the beautiful one, the attractive one. Kokila never wanted to compete, not that she could. Kokila’s skin was not as fair as Chetana’s. It was what was known as wheatish color in matrimonial descriptions and though her skin was smooth, wrinkles were starting to show. She wasn’t young, she was forty years old now. Her hair was supposed to be graying and her skin was supposed to be folding. Yet Neeraja didn’t seem to be having any of those problems. Her skin still looked smooth, probably because of all those creams and lotions actresses were rumored to use to keep their skin looking young, and her hair was glossy, not like the women Kokila saw in Bheemunipatnam who dyed their hair themselves and the strands became wiry and stringy.

  In the magazines Puttamma made Chetana read out loud to her as she went about her chores at Tella Meda it said that Neeraja was having some serious marital problems. She was married to a fellow thespian, Suman Kiran, who was known for his emotional films from the sixties and seventies. Now he played older brother and father roles in movies but they were always meaty roles and he was well respected in the industry. The rumor was that either Suman Kiran was cheating on Neeraja with a young film actress or that
he drank too much and beat up Neeraja. Kokila suddenly wished she had listened more carefully to Chetana and Puttamma’s movie-star gossip.

  She wondered with just a little glee what Chetana and Puttamma would make of her spending the night in the same compartment with Neeraja. They both would be red-hot jealous!

  “So hot,” Neeraja said again, and smiled at Kokila. “They didn’t have any seats in the AC compartment. These producers, you know, they ask at the last minute if I’ll come here or there. They’re shooting in Visakhapatnam, an outdoor set, and Rama, Rama, sometimes I think I should retire and not run around like this.”

  Kokila wasn’t sure if Neeraja was venting or showing off, so she decided to keep quiet and listen. It didn’t seem as if Neeraja needed her to respond anyway.

  Neeraja seemed nervous though as she flipped desultorily through the pages of the magazine, her light pink polished nails a blur as the pages moved.

  “It’s so hot, isn’t it?” she said again and Kokila nodded again. “So, are you going all the way to Visakhapatnam?”

  Kokila wanted to frown. Hadn’t she just answered that question a while ago?

  “Yes,” Kokila said, and looked out of the window. The landscape had changed from city to suburb to farmland. Cattle were being herded home as the day was coming to an end and the sky was vermilion like the bindi on a bride’s forehead. Women were carrying pots on their heads and people were soon silhouettes against the dying sun. How different it all was! From the city with its new cars and open sewers to the almost beatific farms and villages. Kokila loved to look out of the window when in a train. She wished she had traveled more, seen more. She had never even been to Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh.

  They said Hyderabad bustled with life and there were so many people there that the city never slept. Most people who lived in Hyderabad had their own cars, refrigerators, and VCRs.

  It had taken a devotee’s special donation to buy a fridge for Tella Meda two years ago. There had been so much debate about the fridge that ultimately Kokila and Sushila had had to make a unilateral decision. Subhadra couldn’t imagine why Tella Meda needed a refrigerator and had fought it for years. The children complained there was never any ice cream and the water from the earthen pot was never cold enough but Subhadra wouldn’t budge. She wasn’t about to cave in on any newfangled technology. They had managed fine for many years without a fridge; there was no reason to get one now. Sushila’s argument that vegetables stayed fresh in a refrigerator longer was thwarted by Subhadra’s demand that vegetables be brought fresh every day. There was no need to let them lie in a fridge to become limp. And what with the current being taken off all the time, the food would spoil despite being in the fridge.

  Finally, Kokila and Sushila, after getting Charvi’s permission, ordered the fridge and had it installed, right in front of Subhadra’s horrified eyes. Once the fridge was there, everyone became accustomed to it almost immediately and by the time Subhadra left Tella Meda even she couldn’t remember how they had survived without it.

  In Hyderabad and other big cities there was no such argument and debate over household appliances. People saw refrigerators as a necessity. They also had big color TVs with remote controls and women drove around on scooters, just like the men.

  Maybe someday she could go to Hyderabad too, Kokila thought, maybe not to visit, but to live. She and Karthik could have their own home with a TV and a fridge and everything else everyone in the big city had. When Karthik grew up . . . oh, who knew what he would become. Maybe he would live in Hyderabad, maybe Bombay or Delhi or some other big city. Or maybe he would go to America like so many Indians were doing these days. And Kokila would go live with him, in a big city in America.

  As Kokila daydreamed, the sun set completely, leaving behind dark patches of night outside the train compartment’s window. A knock on the compartment door reminded her again of her famous companion. Neeraja was still leafing through her magazine.

  The ticket collector saw Neeraja and started to stammer, telling her how much he loved her movies and how he had watched a certain film more than fifteen times. Neeraja was charming and smiled often at the compliments and seemed quite humble about the praise. The conductor even forgot to ask either of them for their ticket and left with a big smile on his face. It wasn’t every day that you got to speak with your favorite movie star while you were at work.

  “They are always so nice—fans, you know,” Neeraja said, and smiled at Kokila. “I have brought dinner with me. I can’t eat this train food. I fall sick and I can’t afford to fall sick. Would you like to join me?”

  Kokila wanted to say yes. Imagine the stories she could tell about eating the same food as Neeraja, with Neeraja. But she was too reserved for this kind of intimacy with a stranger.

  “I brought my own,” she said. Harini had packed a tiffin carrier for Kokila with curd rice, tamarind rice, a few chapattis, some bhindi curry, sambhar, and mango pickle. In a separate tiffin box, she had even packed some kesari so that Kokila would have something sweet to eat during her journey.

  “Oh,” Neeraja said. “Maybe we can eat together.”

  It would be rude to say otherwise and Kokila was starstruck enough to want to eat with Neeraja. They brought their food out and in companionable silence ate what they had.

  Kokila eyed what looked like chicken in Neeraja’s tiffin carrier surreptitiously. Tella Meda was strictly vegetarian and Kokila had never touched any kind of meat. Sitting this close to a piece of chicken made her uncomfortable.

  But Neeraja wasn’t a Brahmin and she was wealthy, so it was obvious that she would eat meat, Kokila told herself.

  After dinner they went to the bathroom one after the other to wash their hands. Neeraja had brought some nice-smelling soap and she offered it to Kokila for use after she was done.

  The soap smelled of sandalwood and Kokila was impressed with Neeraja’s generosity. Here was Kokila, a veritable stranger, yet Neeraja had offered her food and soap. She seemed like a nice woman.

  “I can’t sleep these days,” Neeraja confided in Kokila. “Do you mind sleeping up so that I can stay down? If you can’t, that’s no—”

  “Okay,” Kokila said immediately. “Do you want me to go now?”

  “No, no, whenever you’re ready to go to sleep,” Neeraja said with a smile. “Thank you very much.”

  Kokila nodded. So this was why she offered food and soap, so that she could get the bottom berth, she thought cynically.

  “My husband says I talk too much,” Neeraja said all of a sudden. “I think I do. I have been talking and talking and you haven’t said anything.”

  Kokila cleared her throat. What did Neeraja want her to say?

  “So, where are you from?” Neeraja asked.

  “My people are from a village near Simhachalam and now I live in Bheemunipatnam,” Kokila said.

  “So, your husband is not with you today?” Neeraja asked.

  Kokila wanted to squirm. At Tella Meda no one asked such questions and she had little interaction with people from the outside world. Yet it was a pertinent question.

  “Not married,” Kokila said.

  “Oh,” Neeraja said, her tone suddenly accusatory and full of pity at the same time. “You’ve never been married?”

  Kokila shrugged. “Long time ago. But I was just thirteen then.”

  “So, what happened?”

  Kokila shrugged again. “He is now married to someone else, has kids and everything. I have a son, he is adopted, but he is my son. My Karthik. Would you like to see a photo?”

  Neeraja agreed enthusiastically and made all the appropriate sounds when she saw Karthik’s picture. He was so beautiful. He was so fair. Such a wonderful-looking boy. That smile of his . . . it was just so warm and loving. Anyone could see he was intelligent.

  “I can’t have children,” Neeraja said after she returned Karthik’s picture to Kokila. “In the beginning, I was so young, I made some mistakes and . . . you won’t tell anyone
, will you?” Kokila shook her head in earnest and Neeraja continued. “This is a bad business, the film industry and I made some mistakes. I had two abortions before I was even twenty and the doctor did something wrong. Now I can’t have children.”

  “Oh,” Kokila said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Neeraja’s eyes were filled with tears. “So you live on your own with your son?”

  Kokila then told Neeraja about Tella Meda. She listened in fascination.

  “Do you think I could come there?” she asked. “Could I stay there for a few days? My shoot is only for two or three days in Visakhapatnam and I don’t have anything lined up for . . . oh, months now. And I would love to meet Charvi. My life is in such chaos these days that . . . Do you think Charvi would maybe be able to help me? Maybe I could stay for a few days. What do you think?”

  Kokila could only hope that a celebrity such as Neeraja would grace Tella Meda. It would be a matter of such pride and everyone would know that Neeraja was in Tella Meda because of Kokila, not Charvi. Even though she would never voice her feelings, Kokila was in awe of Neeraja. This was a movie actress and a part of Kokila wanted to jump up and down and tell everyone that she was talking to Neeraja, eating with Neeraja, and sleeping in the same compartment as her. And Neeraja had told her a secret about her two abortions before she turned twenty.

  They talked late into the night. Kokila did most of the listening, greedily soaking in every word Neeraja uttered so that she could tell Shanthi and Chetana about it later on. It wasn’t like her, she knew, but this was different. This was a famous movie actress who was baring her heart to Kokila.

  “Suman is nice, but he is still a man,” Neeraja said with a small laugh. “Do you mind if I change into my nightie? I am always more comfortable in that at night.”

  Kokila nodded and buried her nose in the magazine Neeraja had brought with her. She could hear the sari come off and fall next to her. The blouse followed. There was a rustle here and a rustle there.