Kokila thought back and came up empty. “No,” she said triumphantly. “Unlike you and Charvi, I don’t need to act to survive. I have more honest means.”
“Living off charity? Is that what you’re calling honest?” Neeraja demanded softly. “You’re just as much a party to Charvi’s acting as she is because you live off her acting. Look, I don’t want to hurt your feelings or insult you or any of that. I like you. That’s why I told you those things in the train. I just want to leave some money. Can I do that?”
“It would be better if you gave it to Charvi,” Kokila said.
Neeraja then leaned down to kiss Karthik’s cheek. “He is beautiful. Maybe I should think about adopting too.”
“Maybe you should,” Kokila said, even though she was unable to imagine how a woman who appeared to be as selfish as Neeraja could ever give a big part of herself away to a child.
“I think I’ll come back here. Even though she acts a little, there is something inside her, isn’t there?” Neeraja said.
Kokila nodded. “Yes, there is. She has a good heart and above all that is most important.”
“Well, I should go. They have rented a VCR and a movie of mine,” Neeraja said with a gleam in her eye. “Even though I am growing old, I can watch the old movies and remember my youth. It’s like I can become young again. I love these videotapes and the VCR. I can watch my movies all the time, if I want.”
And she was chirpy again as she went to the TV room, excited about her movie.
Kokila left Karthik to sleep and joined the others to watch Neeraja become young again in a movie made a long time ago.
1991 21 May 1991. Rajiv Gandhi, former Indian prime minster (1984–89), was assassinated by a suicide bomber. The assassination was rumored to be plotted by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist group.
Of Bombs and Bullets
They killed him, they killed him,” Padma said as she came running from the TV room into the courtyard.
“Who died?” Chetana asked, bleary-eyed. She had just woken up and was nursing a cup of coffee.
“A bomb exploded and he’s dead,” Meena said as she came running as well.
“This is what comes of letting them watch too much TV,” Renuka said to Sushila. It was seven in the morning and the girls had made it a habit to watch the morning news while they ate breakfast before heading to school.
Puttamma was sweeping the courtyard and pointed a finger at Meena. “I heard too. Some LTTE people killed Rajiv Gandhi.”
“Killed him?” Kokila said in surprise. “How?”
“Rajiv Gandhi? Dead?” Chetana seemed to wake up a little.
“A bomb, they say,” Meena said. “A bomb went off and he’s dead. They are showing it on TV.”
Everyone rushed into the TV room and listened and watched the news in silence.
“Does this mean Doordarshan is going into mourning again?” Puttamma asked.
“At least ten days,” Padma said. “He was once PM.”
“True,” Meena said, and sighed. “Ah, well, maybe we can rent the VCR and watch some movies on Sunday. Amma?”
“We’ll talk about Sunday later on,” Chetana said as she turned the television off. “Why don’t you both go out and wait for your rickshaw?”
Padma and Meena shared a rickshaw with another girl their age, Ramya, who lived down the street. Since Padma and Meena were doing well in school, a lot of parents overlooked the fact that they lived in Tella Meda and allowed their children to associate with them in the hopes that some of Padma’s and Meena’s intelligence would rub off on their kids as well.
The rickshaw picked them up at 7:30 AM and got them to school ten minutes before the morning assembly began at eight. And then the rickshaw brought them home by 4:20 PM. If they were even five minutes late coming home from school, Sushila would start pacing the road watching for them. Chetana tried to tell Sushila that she worried too much but Sushila shut her up by making an oblique remark about Chetana’s bad parenting skills.
The television was left turned on almost all day as news about Rajiv Gandhi’s death came pouring in.
“Poor wife of his. First they killed his brother, then his mother, and now him,” Charvi said sadly as she sat with the others in the TV room. “Tonight we will have a special bhajan and pray that his wife and children have peace and his spirit meets with his mother’s.”
“You think his wife will go back to Italy now?” Shanthi wondered. “Why would she stay in India?”
“Because of her children,” Sushila said. “Her children are Indian and so what if she is Italian? Sonia Gandhi looks Indian enough to me.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Chetana said. “Look at how pale her skin is!”
“Your skin would also be pale if your husband just died,” Puttamma said.
“My husband did die and my skin never went that pale,” Chetana snapped at her.
“Hush, we’re trying to listen to the news,” Meena and Padma both cried out in unison.
Bhanu, who was now five months pregnant, came to Tella Meda every morning after Babu left for the photo studio and went back in the evening when it was time for him to come home. She started crying as she watched images of Rajiv Gandhi’s wife, Sonia Gandhi, wearing dark glasses on TV.
“The poor woman,” she wailed. “What would I do if someone killed Babu? Oh, Amma, those poor children have no father now.”
“But they have lots of money,” Chetana said, uncomfortable with Bhanu being quite so emotional. Ever since she got pregnant Bhanu had softened considerably and Chetana couldn’t stand that she cried all the time.
“What good is money if your husband is dead?” Renuka said.
“I’d rather have money than a husband,” Chetana said, and sighed. “Now I have neither.”
Soon details about the bombing started to filter in. A woman named Dhanu, whose photograph was shown constantly on TV, had been the human bomb that detonated next to Rajiv Gandhi.
“She touched his feet and then as he was lifting her up she turned the bomb on,” Padma explained during dinner. “Her severed head is what they used to identify her.”
“And all the pictures we see,” Meena said, “those are taken of her severed head.”
“We’re eating, Padma, Meena,” Sushila admonished. “Talking of bombs and bullets and severed heads . . . what has this world come to?”
“It is bad times, Sushila Amma,” and Narayan Garu, who rarely spoke. “But I must say I support the LTTE on this matter. If Rajiv Gandhi had become PM again the Sri Lankan Tamils would suffer more.”
It wasn’t that Narayan Garu was talking that was the most shocking, it was that he held political opinions. He was the only male left in Tella Meda besides Karthik. He stayed in his room most of the day and puttered around the garden with Puttamma’s son, Balaji, who was the official Tella Meda gardener. He was a conscientious boy and seemed to have a lot of patience with Narayan Garu, who at eighty was getting crankier about the garden.
“The LTTE is a terrorist organization,” Meena said immediately. She had been reading the newspaper and watching the news regularly, and she and Padma had discussed the matter at length.
“What do you know about anything?” Chetana said. The girls were all of twelve years old and they talked as if they knew everything. But what does that Narayan Garu know either, the old man? He should just shut up and eat his food, she thought as she watched Meena and Padma glare at Narayan Garu mutinously.
“They are not terrorists,” Narayan Garu said, his voice actually rising. “Wait here.”
He washed his hands in his half-eaten plate and went toward his room.
“Meena, he’s an old man, don’t agitate him,” Chetana said.
“I think the girls should be allowed to voice their opinion,” Sushila countered. “It’s good for them to have opinions. So tell me, Padma, what is this LTTE all about?”
Padma cleared her throat as if getting ready for an oral exam. “The Liberati
on Tigers of Tamil Eelam were founded in 1975 to win the freedom of the Sri Lankan Tamils from the Sri Lankan government. The organization was started because Tamils started to feel that they needed to use nonpeaceful measures to gain independence from Sri Lanka.”
Meena cleared her throat next and got ready to impart the rest of what they knew about the LTTE.
When she had gone to school, they never came back knowing so much about the world around them, Kokila thought. And then she looked at Karthik, who was playing with a piece of ladyfinger on his plate, and wondered how much more he would know than she did.
“Their leader is a man called Velupillai Prabhakaran and they say he has died several times. He’s a difficult man to kill and people have tried very hard but he keeps surviving,” Meena said. “Our social studies teacher told us that because Rajiv Gandhi sent Indian peacekeeping forces to Jaffna when he was prime minister, the LTTE is angry with him. They were probably afraid that he would become PM again, and why wouldn’t he considering how badly VP Singh has done? That’s why LTTE killed him.”
Narayan Garu came back with several pamphlets in his hands. “Here, see this,” he said, and put them down in front of Meena and Padma, who were sitting next to each other. “This is what Rajiv Gandhi did to the Sri Lankan Tamils.”
Meena and Padma both glanced at the pamphlets and nodded in tandem. “These look like propaganda pamphlets. The LTTE are known to use brainwashing techniques to recruit new members for their organization.”
“These pamphlets tell the truth,” Narayan Garu said, and spit flew from his mouth as he spoke. “Charvi, tell them, you know.”
Charvi looked up from her food, surprised that someone was talking to her.
“What?” she asked, not having followed the conversation.
“The LTTE is helping Tamils,” Narayan Garu said. “Tell these girls that.”
“The LTTE is helping Tamils? Okay,” Charvi said, and shrugged when Narayan Garu made a sound of protest. “Narayan Garu, I don’t know anything about politics and it is beyond me. You should sit down and not get so agitated. It isn’t good at your age.”
“LTTE have assassinated many Sri Lankan leaders and so many Tamils have had to leave Sri Lanka to live in refugee camps since this civil war began,” Meena said. “Violence is not how problems are solved.”
“What would you know, you chit of a disrespectful girl?” Narayan Garu thundered. “How dare you go against what I say?”
Meena and Padma looked at Narayan Garu, unperturbed by his anger. “We believe what we believe, and you believe what you believe,” Padma said. “Our teacher said that people are divided about Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, but you have to admit that it wasn’t right to kill the man.”
Narayan Garu looked in disgust at everyone sitting at the table and walked into his room.
“Next time don’t get into a debate with him,” Charvi instructed with a smile on her face. “He’s old and he’s not going to change.”
“Then he shouldn’t try to change us,” Meena pointed out.
Charvi nodded. “But he’s set in his ways. You have to be the older one here and let him say what he wants.”
Narayan Garu passed away that night in his room. Dr. Vishnu Mohan and the new local doctor, Dr. Lakshman Prasad, both determined that it looked like he had a heart attack. They weren’t surprised as Narayan Garu was almost eighty and had been having heart problems for years now.
“It’s just old age,” Dr. Lakshman Prasad said.
“So it wasn’t because he was angry?” Meena asked, her trembling upper lip caught between her teeth. “Padma and I . . . we argued with him yesterday and . . . we . . .” She burst into tears then.
“No, no, it wasn’t because of an argument,” Dr. Lakshman Prasad said, looking around at the women of Tella Meda for help in calming Meena down. “He was quite old, he was ready to go.”
Chetana put her arm around Meena and kissed her forehead. “He was an old man with one foot in the grave. Your argument didn’t put him there.”
“But next time, don’t go about yelling and arguing with old people,” Renuka said. “We die easily.”
There wasn’t anyone to really mourn Narayan Garu and his body was cremated quietly. His children didn’t show up to bury him but Narayan Garu had left provisions with Kokila in the form of his wife’s jewelry to pay for his funeral. He had said that any money left should go toward the keeping of Tella Meda.
There were a set of six thick gold bangles, two gold and ruby rings, and one pair of diamond earrings. Except for the diamond earrings, everything else was actually silver-plated with gold and not worth much. The stones in the rings were not rubies but red coral. Kokila found out the truth when she took the jewelry to the jeweler wanting to sell them to pay for Narayan Garu’s funeral. The diamond earrings brought in some money but the diamonds were small, less than half a carat each, and the money was all used up to pay for the funeral.
A Brahmin was hired to light the fire to Narayan Garu’s pyre as his own sons didn’t bother to do so.
Meena and Padma, feeling guilty about his death, cleaned up Narayan Garu’s room. There wasn’t much to clean. His clothes were given away to the poor and his books, those which Meena and Padma didn’t claim, were sold as waste paper. In all the years he lived in Tella Meda he had accumulated little and at the end there had been no one even to mourn or miss him.
Puttamma suggested that Balaji stay in Narayan Garu’s room and take care of the garden. He was twenty years old now and had recently married a young girl from Puttamma’s village, Karuna. If he and his wife could live in Tella Meda and take care of the garden and the housework, that could constitute rent. Balaji also had a job at a small printing press, which would suffice for their other expenses.
Kokila talked to Charvi about it and it was decided that Balaji and Karuna would take up residence in Narayan Garu’s room. Just a week after Narayan Garu died, his room was occupied again. This time with a woman’s touch.
Karuna took over all of Puttamma’s responsibilities and also offered to wash the dishes. Puttamma would still come to Tella Meda every day, mostly to gossip with the women there and check on her son.
“At my age I shouldn’t have to work,” Puttamma said to Kokila. “But I still have to clean houses and wash dishes. You save up for old age, okay? Being old and poor is just not good.”
“Being poor is just not good, no matter what your age,” Kokila said.
“Did you hear they are doing interrogations, even here, for the Rajiv Gandhi killing?” Puttamma said. “There were these two Tamils who came to stay with some friend or something in the basti and the police arrested them. They were from Sri Lanka, some refugee camp. No one has heard from them. People in my basti are scared, it used to be a safe area, now . . . ”
Kokila sighed. “God knows why people go about killing each other.”
Puttamma shrugged. “Balaji was telling me how what Rajiv Gandhi did in Sri Lanka when he was the PM was very bad. The Indian army’s soldiers killed men, raped women . . . not good what the army did.”
“They did that? Really? Are you sure?” Kokila asked.
Puttamma nodded. “The owner of the press where Balaji works, he is good friends with lots of important Tamils in Madras. He tells Balaji how things are in Sri Lanka. What do we know? We stay here and we don’t know anything.”
Kokila wasn’t sure if she should believe Puttamma and Balaji. On the other hand, she didn’t really care who did what in Sri Lanka. These days she was busy getting Karthik ready to start school in September. There were two schools in Bheemunipatnam and Kokila wanted Karthik to join the good one. It was a little expensive, but she would just hand over that thousand rupees Bangaru sent every month to the school if necessary. She wanted the best for Karthik and he was such a bright boy too. He had passed the good school’s entrance exam and had top marks.
Chetana thought the world was going to hell if four-year-olds were being asked to take exams.
> The police and the Central Bureau of Investigation were determined to find the killers of Rajiv Gandhi. People with ties to the LTTE and supporters of the Tamil Eelam were being questioned routinely. Those who had carried out the assassination were still at large and a massive manhunt was on for a man named One-eyed Jack Shivrasan and a woman named Shubha who had been a backup human bomb.
Their pictures were plastered all over newspapers and transmitted on television.
“We’re keeping our eyes open,” Meena announced. “If they come to Bheemunipatnam, we know the direct phone number to the chief inspector’s office.”
Chetana sighed. “Why will they come all the way to this pit?”
“It could be quite a safe place,” Padma said seriously. “Not too many people live here and it’s far away from the city.”
“If I was running away I would hide in a big city,” Chetana said. Her younger daughter was influenced largely by Padma and Chetana couldn’t really complain. Meena’s marks in school were right next to Padma’s and they were always first and second in class, always competing with each other. They were constantly together, studying, and were the closest of friends. They reminded Chetana of how she and Kokila had run around Tella Meda.
“Somehow, I remember having a lot more fun than these two,” Chetana told Kokila while she watched her daughter and Meena argue over how to solve a mathematics problem. “These two are always studying. Do you see them do anything but study or talk like they know so much more than everyone else?”
Kokila smiled. “We should’ve also gotten a good education. Who knows how our lives would have turned out.”
“Bhanu’s turned out fine and she isn’t even metric pass. Didn’t want to go to college after tenth class and I didn’t press her,” Chetana said, and then nodded. “I know, I know. Can you imagine my daughter being a doctor? A prostitute’s granddaughter will become a doctor? Unimaginable!”
“There’s more to who she is than Ambika’s granddaughter,” Kokila said.
It was then that a hubbub could be heard coming from the temple room and front verandah. Kokila rushed to investigate when she heard Charvi call out for her.
Song of the Cuckoo Bird Page 31