Song of the Cuckoo Bird

by Amulya Malladi

  “All done,” Neeraja said with a smile as she started to fold her sari. She now wore a lime green nightie with smocking on the top decorated with tiny pink flowers. She even had a robe to go with the nightie; it was also lime green and had smocking on the pockets and the waist where a button held the lapels of the robe together. It was made of light cotton and filled the compartment with the smell of newness and jasmine.

  “So, what were we talking about?” Neeraja asked as she sat down, her legs crossed. She looked like a little girl, eager for more conversation as if it were sweets.

  “Ah . . . you were saying something about your husband,” Kokila prompted. She felt silly. She was forty years old and here she was blushing like a schoolgirl because a movie actress was speaking with her. And she wanted to know more about Neeraja’s husband, Neeraja’s life.

  Chetana would rattle on and on about the lives of movies actors and actresses that she read about in gossip and movie magazines. They had big mansions and big cars. Women smoked and drank and cavorted shamelessly with men. All actresses had to sleep with producers and directors to get movie roles. They were all unsubstantiated rumors but generally were accepted as fact.

  “Ah, Suman,” Neeraja said, and then sighed. “You know how it is. He is a major character actor now, big-name star, and he has power. You know how it is.”

  Kokila nodded vaguely. How would she know how it was?

  “He has so many contacts and he owns a big part of Arpita Studios, so they all listen to him,” Neeraja said bitterly. “He sleeps with all the young actresses. They know they have to if they want the roles in movies he produces. And he is shameless about it. Everyone in the business is shameless about it. They say it’s cleaner in Bombay with Hindi movies . . . I don’t think so. I think it is all bad. Filthy. Filthy. Filthy.”

  Kokila licked her lips, not wanting to say what she was thinking, but she couldn’t help herself. “If it’s so filthy, why are you still in it?”

  Neeraja sighed again. “I have nothing else to do and one has to earn a living.”

  “But you must have lots of money and your husband is rich. Why should you work for a living?” Kokila asked boldly.

  “You are so naive,” Neeraja said with a small smile. “I have to live like a movie star and that costs money. I have a lot of money but I need to make sure I have enough for later on. And Suman’s money is his money. We don’t have that kind of marriage. We . . . Actually, we’re getting divorced. Suman wants to marry . . .” Her voice choked up and tears filled her eyes. “He wants to marry that new actress, Vaijayanthi. That whore slept with half of Hyderabad and now he wants to marry her. We were married for twenty years, and now he wants children, he says. She can give them to him, he says. So I have to work and make some money. Otherwise what will happen to me in my old age? I don’t want to be like Savitri, old and poor with no one to take care of me. It’s so sad, isn’t it, Kokila?”

  Husbands leaving wives and marrying younger women who slept around . . . Kokila wasn’t sure if she was listening to the story line of a bad Telugu movie or real life.

  “And now I’m playing mother roles. It’s just so hard,” Neeraja said, and started to weep openly.

  After that the conversation was mostly about how terrible Neeraja’s life was. She had a big house and a big car (several big cars, really) and lots of money, yet she claimed her life was pathetic and she just had to work for a living. All the awe Kokila had felt in talking to a movie actress faded into irritation as the night started to grow old. Finally, Kokila excused herself and went to the top berth and fell asleep, grateful not to hear about Neeraja’s glamorous life anymore.

  In the morning, Neeraja was dressed up and ready, as if she hadn’t spent the night weeping and wailing. Her demeanor was stiff and she appeared not to want to have anything to do with Kokila.

  When the train arrived at Visakhapatnam at six in the morning, Neeraja said a hasty good-bye while instructing a studio driver, who had come to the train station, to take her suitcase into the car. She didn’t even offer Kokila a ride to the bus station or ask her anything else about Tella Meda and how she could come and visit.

  By the time Kokila got home she had quite forgotten about Neeraja in her urgency to see Karthik again and hold his warm and soft body in her arms.

  He came running to her as she walked into the courtyard, his little feet carrying him to her as fast as they could. Shanthi had dressed him in a pair of blue shorts and a white shirt. He looked like a little young man instead of a three-year-old boy.

  “Oh, I missed you,” Kokila said as she hugged him close and smelled Shanthi’s Ponds powder on him. My son, she thought joyously.

  “Amma, Shanthi said that we could make ladoos today because you were coming back,” Karthik said. “And she said I can eat two ladoos. Can I eat two ladoos?”

  He can do anything he wants to do, Kokila thought, anything at all.

  “So, how was Subhadra doing when you dropped her off?” Chetana asked while they all got together to make ladoos in the kitchen that afternoon.

  “Good. Chandra’s son bought a car,” Kokila said.

  “Is it a Maruti? What color?” Chetana asked immediately.

  “Red,” Kokila said as she rolled the coconut, sugar, and fried flour mixture between the oiled palms of her hands.

  “Karthik do it, Karthik do it,” Karthik cried out, his hands dipping into the ladoo mixture, intent on making some ladoos himself.

  Kokila gave him a small ladoo and he happily rolled it between the palms of his hands before tiring of the game, eating the ladoo, and then asking for more.

  “Those cars are nice,” Chetana said. “Not like those big, bulky, ugly Ambassadors. Premier Padminis are okay but Maruti, that’s the car to have if you have to have a car.”

  “Right and you should talk about cars, our expert,” Renuka piped up. She was sitting in a corner with a string of Rudrakasha beads, slipping one after the other between her fingers as she invoked the name of God. In between she would stop and tell everyone what she thought of them. Since Bhanu had left Renuka had become more and more ornery. She was waiting for Bhanu to get pregnant—the sooner the better, she thought, but Bhanu said they were being careful.

  “I’m using birth control pills, we want to wait a while before we have children,” she had announced to the scandalized Renuka. Women from good families didn’t utter nonsense like that. Good girls got pregnant after marriage and that was that.

  Chetana thought it was a sensible decision. Bhanu was a child herself and it would be good for her to grow up a little before having a baby. Bhanu had admitted easily and without any guilt that she had lied about being pregnant so that Chetana and Renuka would let her marry Babu. “As if I’d let him touch me before the marriage,” she told Chetana a few weeks after the wedding. “You think he’d marry me then? Now he thinks when I let him do it that I’m doing him a big favor. And I don’t let him do it every night. I think we can start with two or three times a week so that he doesn’t get too used to it. What do you think, Amma?”

  Chetana could only shake her head and wonder where Bhanu had learned such slyness. Whatever her reasons and methods, Bhanu’s marriage to Babu appeared to be a happy one. Babu might take pictures of naked women for pornographic magazines but in reality he had eyes only for Bhanu. He brought her jewelry and saris and took her on vacation to Ooty and Goa. Every summer he would ask her where she would like to go and he would make it happen. Chetana had no complaints. It looked like her daughter had managed what she had been unable to do: find a husband who could afford to keep her happy.

  “Srinivas is buying a car,” Chetana said to Renuka. “A blue Maruti.”

  “So what if he’s buying a car? He isn’t your husband,” Renuka said and muttered something under her breath that sounded a lot like “slut.”

  “Old woman, just sit with your Rudrakasha and don’t worry about who’s going to marry me,” Chetana snapped at her, then turned toward the others. “
So the car is going to have AC. And the windows, you don’t have to roll them down. You press a button and they go down, whoosh, like magic.”

  “He must be doing very well if he can buy a car,” Sushila said.

  Chetana nodded with a broad smile. “All those tickets he sells on the black market, all that money he pockets.”

  “What a rogue, selling tickets illegally on the black market. If the cinema owners find out he’ll lose his job,” Renuka said.

  “Everyone sells tickets like that,” Chetana said. “It’s good business sense. And Srinivas has made a lot of money with his good business sense. He’s even thinking about building a house here.”

  “But is he thinking about marrying you?” Renuka asked.

  Chetana sighed. “Maybe I am the one who doesn’t want to marry him. Have you thought about that?”

  “Why wouldn’t you want to marry him? These days widows get married all the time and it isn’t like you even dress like a widow,” Renuka said.

  “What is it with this old hag?” Chetana said angrily. “Always interested in my life and my children. Mind your own business, old woman.”

  “Ah . . . I met someone while I was coming back.” Kokila changed the topic and when everyone looked at her expectantly, she told them.

  “Neeraja? The actress? Really? Oh, I love her in Chintamani, ” Sushila said. “What was she like?”

  Kokila frowned because she really couldn’t describe what Neeraja was like. She told them what Neeraja had told her and how she seemed completely altered the next morning.

  “Maybe she was drunk in the night,” Chetana offered.

  “No, no, she didn’t have any alcohol with her and I would’ve smelled it,” Kokila said. “It was very strange. One night she was friendly and nice and in the morning she was just cold.”

  “Maybe you said something to upset her,” Renuka commented.

  “Maybe you should shut up,” Chetana snapped at Renuka. “She’s just getting worse and worse. Mumbles to herself and—”

  “She’s just getting old,” Shanthi said in a low voice and tossed a ladoo toward Karthik. He played with the ladoo for a moment before popping it into his mouth.

  “He’s not going to be able to eat any dinner,” Kokila said as she wiped coconut crumbs from her son’s face.

  “So he won’t,” Shanthi said with a smile. “Once in a while you should eat just ladoo all day.”

  “Is Neeraja coming to Tella Meda?” Sushila asked eagerly.

  “Why will she come? Kokila must’ve said something to insult her. That’s why she didn’t want to talk with her in the morning,” Renuka said. “Mark my words, women who have no respect for tradition will all suffer in hell.”

  Everyone sighed and continued making the ladoos in silence.

  A week later Neeraja showed up at Tella Meda in a big white Maruti 1000. She drove herself, which caused everyone to raise their eyebrows. It wasn’t common, at least in Bheemunipatnam, to see women drive cars. Maybe in the big cities women were driving scooters and mopeds but in Bheemunipatnam, women walked or took the rickshaw or taxi and didn’t go gallivanting around driving automobiles of any kind.

  Neeraja was dressed in a light blue salwar kameez and looked ten years younger than her real age. She hugged a surprised Kokila as soon as she saw her.

  “Oh, it’s so good to see you,” she said, and Kokila could only gape.

  Sushila rushed into the kitchen to prepare fresh snacks and tea for the celebrity guest. Charvi was informed that Neeraja was in Tella Meda and had come to stay for a few days and had driven her car all by herself from Visakhapatnam to Bheemunipatnam.

  Neeraja was polite and charming and answered everyone’s questions about her movies and the actors and actresses she worked with.

  “Kokila said this was a beautiful house and it is,” Neeraja said. “And she said that you were a dear guru, a wonderful goddess,” she said to Charvi, who lit up like Tella Meda on Diwali night.

  Kokila had never said any such thing about Charvi to Neeraja, just that she was the guru of Tella Meda.

  “Kokila is one of our longest-term residents,” Charvi said. “And my favorite disciple.”

  Disciple? Kokila wasn’t sure whom Charvi was talking about. And Charvi never called herself guru or those who lived in Tella Meda disciples.

  Tella Meda was done up like a bride for the benefit of Neeraja. She helped cook in the kitchen, leaving Sushila speechless and prostrate in wonder. Shanthi couldn’t help but be swept away. Bhanu came with Babu to see Neeraja but wasn’t as much in awe as the others. Now if Amala or Ramya Krishna had been at Tella Meda, that would be different—they were her generation. This woman, she was old, and only other old people were interested in her.

  The women of Tella Meda, however, did care. Even Puttamma spent her days at Tella Meda; thrilled beyond belief that Neeraja bothered to speak with her and even touched her hand. Puttamma was so humbled that she took a picture of Neeraja and put it along with the idols and photos of gods and goddesses in the small temple in her hut.

  Charvi was acknowledging that she was a guru to Neeraja in front of everyone. No one seemed surprised or shocked the way Kokila was.

  “My father, Ramanandam Sastri, he said he could see the goddess in me,” Charvi told Neeraja in her soothing, musical voice. “And that’s all I have ever known. I feel a light inside me, blazing fire sometimes, sometimes warm, but always present. I think that is the power of enlightenment.”

  Neeraja was taken with Charvi and thanked Kokila for opening this spiritual door for her. “My husband will be so pleased to see you,” Neeraja said. “Next time, I will bring him along. He hates it when I go somewhere without him. You know how it is—after twenty years of marriage; you just get so used to each other that being apart is very difficult.”

  “I see so much happiness in your future,” Charvi said.

  “We never had children.” Neeraja sighed. “But that was in God’s hands. It hasn’t mattered one bit to my Suman. We have each other, he says, and that’s enough.”

  “You are so lucky to have a nice husband like that,” Charvi told Neeraja.

  Kokila wasn’t sure who was the actress here, Charvi or Neeraja.

  “She told me she and her husband were getting a divorce,” Kokila said to Chetana.

  “I told you she was drunk that night and that’s why she was telling the truth. Now she’s . . . Look at Charvi,” Chetana urged with a broad grin. “She’s holding her hand up and closing her eyes like she really is a goddess.”

  “Hush, the two of you,” Shanthi said. She didn’t quite believe that Charvi was a goddess but still respected her for her knowledge and kindness.

  The three days Neeraja was at Tella Meda, Charvi transformed from somber lady of the house to transcendental goddess. She talked about God and how he spoke with her; she talked about how she had healing powers; she talked about how she could see the future. No one seemed surprised by the change in her and accepted it as a special situation because Neeraja was there.

  And Neeraja transformed from the weepy woman in the first-class compartment to a happy actress who had a wonderful family life.

  The evening before she was to leave, Neeraja came to Kokila’s room while everyone was congregated in the TV room.

  “You must think I’m a total fake,” Neeraja said sheepishly as soon as she stepped into Kokila’s room. She looked around and nodded uncomfortably. “It’s a nice room. My room is nicer, though.”

  “We save the front rooms for guests,” Kokila said. “You can sit if you like.” She pointed to a wooden rocking chair she had acquired after she got Karthik.

  “Am I waking him up?” Neeraja asked, looking at Karthik, who was fast asleep in Kokila’s bed. After Karthik had come to Tella Meda Kokila got rid of her old metal cot and bought a bigger wooden bed with a good mattress. It would have cost a fortune but the owner of the furniture shop gave her a discount because the bed had been returned by a customer and because he was a
devotee of Charvi. The bed was big enough for Karthik and Kokila to sleep in, with plenty of room for Karthik to play in the bed when he woke up in the morning.

  “No, he sleeps like a log. He plays hard all day and then collapses,” Kokila said.

  “Is he starting school soon?” Neeraja asked.

  Kokila nodded. “Next year. Nothing great here, you know, as it’s a small town, but it’s a good school and Sushila’s daughter Padma and Chetana’s daughter Meena are doing well there. They both want to become doctors.”

  Neeraja wasn’t listening to her, Kokila realized. She was staring at the courtyard through the window.

  “I don’t want anyone to know about my problems. I don’t know why I told you, but I hope you won’t tell anyone,” Neeraja said.

  “Well some people at Tella Meda already know. I told them. I didn’t think you would be coming,” Kokila said defensively. “But whom else would I tell? And who would believe me?” Especially after your performance, Kokila wanted to add.

  Neeraja shifted uneasily. “I mean the magazines. I don’t want you to tell them what I told you about my past and my marriage. Look, I know I made a mistake in telling you too much. I should have kept my mouth shut but I was just so depressed and . . . Look, if you want some money, I can help. I—”

  “I won’t tell any magazines anything,” Kokila said in disgust. “Now, if you could leave? I have a long day tomorrow.”

  Neeraja nodded and bit her upper lip nervously. “I didn’t mean to insult you just now. I . . . I was planning to leave money for Tella Meda, but maybe I could just give it to you.”

  “You don’t have to bribe me. I don’t have any interest in talking to magazines about your sordid little life,” Kokila said in exasperation. “You know what your problem is? You’ve forgotten how to be normal, just a regular person and not an actress.”

  Neeraja smiled then. “Everyone is always acting, don’t ever forget that. Your Charvi is putting on a good act about being a goddess. See, we all do what we have to do to survive. Haven’t you ever acted and become someone else to get what you wanted?”