“If it’s just for a few days, you should go,” Sushila advised. “If we had anyplace to go, I’d take Padma and leave.”
“So you don’t believe in Charvi?” Chetana asked.
“Of course I do. That’s why I want to leave,” Sushila said.
Chetana shrugged condescendingly. “If you believe in her ability to predict the big wave that will eat us up, you should also believe in her ability to save us. That’s what I think.”
While Chetana and Meena debated the possibility of Charvi having lost her mind, Kokila wrote a letter to Kedarnath explaining why it was important to let Charvi continue to live in Tella Meda. She suggested that Kedarnath could decide on rent if he liked, though Kokila wasn’t sure how they would all survive if they had to pay rent, especially after people found out that Charvi was just menopausal and couldn’t really see disasters in the future.
Karthik was full of questions about Charvi. He never really saw Charvi as the guru of the ashram, just as this old lady everyone deferred to. Now he was old enough to understand that she was someone different and was curious if she was really able to see the future.
“Do you think she can tell if I’ll get good marks in my science exam?” he asked Kokila.
“I don’t think so,” Kokila said.
“If she can’t even see that, how can she see the destruction of a whole town?” Karthik wanted to know.
Kokila didn’t want to disparage Charvi in front of her son. No matter how she looked at it, they all lived in Tella Meda because of Charvi. And Charvi was an old lady. Kokila didn’t want Karthik to think poorly of Charvi for being unable to control her emotions due to surging hormones.
“Maybe she only sees important things,” Kokila said. “And there’s no guarantee that a tidal wave will consume our town. Okay?”
Karthik wasn’t sure and wandered around the house listening in on conversations about the upcoming pralayam and dropping by Kokila to give her the details of what everyone was saying and how he had more questions because he was listening to them.
Finally, the day before the pralayam, Kokila finished the letter to Kedarnath and dropped it in the postbox. She said a small prayer to Lord Venkateshwara Swami by the postbox and put her faith in the goodness of a strange man and the miracle of God.
Back in Tella Meda, Charvi was delighted at how much attention she was getting from everyone. The letter asking her to leave Tella Meda in six months was all but forgotten. She had given that problem to Kokila, she decided, and therefore she didn’t have to worry about it anymore. The sun was bright and the sky was blue but Charvi wasn’t daunted; she knew what she had seen and she could feel the force of knowledge, of power, within her.
Having heard of her sister’s pronouncement, Manikyam had arrived in Tella Meda as well to show her support for her estranged sister. Charvi still refused to speak with Manikyam and her husband, no matter how many people tried to convince her otherwise. Manikyam’s husband didn’t really bother much with trying to convince Charvi to accept him again but Manikyam did. She sincerely believed that Charvi was a true incarnation of a goddess and being disliked by her was a catastrophe in itself. As she was getting older, Manikyam was turning more and more to religion and piety and it was becoming very important to her that Charvi accept her and forgive her for her past behavior.
Manikyam came frequently to Tella Meda, wanting to spend time with Meena and Bhanu, whom she openly called her granddaughters now. She showered Shashank, her great-grandson, with clothes and jewelry when he was born. She knew this was the only future for her family, as Prasad’s wife had passed away a few years ago and everyone had thought it was a blessing for her. Prasad was dying slowly; at least that’s what her husband told her. Due to heavy drinking, Prasad had serious liver problems and spent as much time in hospitals as he did in bars.
Bhanu accepted Manikyam with a polite and pleasant demeanor but Meena didn’t bother with her at all. Chetana seemed to encourage Meena’s behavior and never failed to remind Manikyam that if only she had been able to convince her husband to accept them in the beginning, they all could have been a family, a happy one, living in Manikyam’s big and now empty house in Visakhapatnam.
Charvi’s other sister, Lavanya, also heard of Charvi’s forecast of imminent disaster and wrote her a scathing letter that would not reach Charvi until long after the day of pralayam passed.
There were critics, but mostly people believed Charvi and she was flattered, humbled, and delighted. More and more people came to Tella Meda every day, bringing her offerings, and Charvi was torn between weeping and laughing most of the time.
“See,” she wanted to tell Kokila, “look at how people believe in me. Not like you—you have never believed.”
Charvi was guru again, in charge of Tella Meda. Kokila could make the small domestic decisions, Charvi decided, but she wasn’t going to take over the ashram. She was just a servant, while Charvi was the mistress of the house. Just because she wasn’t bothered with the small details of running the household didn’t mean she was less important than the servant.
On the morning of the day of the full moon night people started to fill the temple from dawn. Devotional songs were played on loudspeakers and there was a festive atmosphere at the temple. People brought along their precious belongings and took refuge in the temple, praying to God, hoping to avert the upcoming disaster with their faith and prayer.
“There isn’t a cloud in sight,” Chetana remarked, looking at the perfectly blue sky. “They’re going to lynch her in that temple.”
Sushila had convinced Chetana to come to the temple and she now sat with Kokila, who sat next to an excited Karthik.
“So, if this happens, there will be no school tomorrow, right?” Karthik asked.
“There will be school tomorrow,” Kokila said.
“But all my friends said that there will be no school tomorrow . . . no school building, so no school,” he said.
“Well then, we’ll just have to find you a new school to go to,” Kokila said.
Karthik thought about it for a moment and smiled. “But that will take some time and I will get a free holiday.”
“And what will you do? We won’t even have a home. If the school building is eaten up by the big wave, so will Tella Meda,” Kokila pointed out.
Karthik nodded gravely. “That is a problem. Let me think about it.”
A local Visakhapatnam television news crew, a cameraman and a man with a microphone, had also made their way to the temple. They were filming the people and had done interviews with Charvi, the pujari, and some of the people at the temple.
“Do you believe in pralayam?” the man with the microphone asked Kokila and Chetana as they were sitting together.
For an instant they didn’t answer and then Kokila said, “We are here, aren’t we?”
The man moved on, hoping for more detailed answers.
“We should have told him the truth,” Chetana said.
“And achieved what?”
“I don’t know. I’m just so angry to be here. This is foolish,” she said right before Charvi, who was seated on a podium by the idols of the temple gods, started to speak.
Devotees were sitting next to her, tuning musical instruments, getting ready to sing and celebrate the power of God.
And even though the celebration was about preventing a pralayam and showing respect for God, people were still trying to make money out of it. The man who ran the canteen by the toddy shops in Bheemunipatnam had set up a food stall with the permission of Pujari Garu. He had promised the temple 25 percent of all his earnings from the night. Plates of food were priced exorbitantly.
“They’re making money off people’s misery,” Chetana said.
“You don’t have to buy that food. I have brought food for all of us,” Sushila said, and opened three tiffin carriers full of rice, sambhar, curds, pickles, fried potato, and green bean curry.
As the day slid into afternoon, the sky remained clear, but a
s the afternoon became evening, the skies started to change, to become dark.
“The weather forecast didn’t say anything about this,” Meena said.
“I told you that you can’t always rely on the weather forecast,” Padma said smugly.
The people in the temple started to sing songs for Lord Venkateshwara Swami with greater gusto and Charvi’s voice was the loudest as she sat in front of the microphone.
“It’s happening,” people cried out.
“Amma, Charvi, save us,” some others cried out.
“This is nonsense,” Chetana muttered.
But now even she wasn’t so sure. Rain started to fall in big large drops, and the wind blew hard. The bright day dissolved under ominous-looking clouds and the air smelled of a storm.
Charvi, who’d never had any doubts, was not surprised. She had known that this would happen, that a storm would come and a wave would rise.
“So, what do you think?” Chetana asked Kokila, who just raised her eyebrows in amusement.
“Looks like Charvi might be able to predict storms,” Kokila said.
“See, I told you, you can’t rely on the weather forecast. Amma is right—Charvi does have the power to see into the future,” Padma said to Meena, pleased with herself.
“It’s just a coincidence,” Meena said defiantly.
As coincidences went, Kokila had to give high marks to Charvi in the luck department. The two hundred people gathered in the temple were talking excitedly while Charvi read scriptures from the Bhagavad-Gita and Upanishads on the microphone.
“Usually she gets tired if she has to sit and eat with all of us. Today, look at her sing and preach,” Chetana remarked.
It was as if Charvi had received a new shot of energy. As the rain slapped onto the earth and waves clamored to reach the sandy shore of the Bay of Bengal, her strength rose. Charvi was in full goddess mode, sure of her ability to predict the future.
Since the rain had begun, more people had come to the temple, skeptics mostly, who had never thought Charvi could be right.
The dark evening was cold and people huddled together, now truly frightened of what lay ahead.
“Amma, are bad things going to happen?” Karthik asked, looking around him with his big black eyes.
“No,” Kokila said firmly. “While I’m here with you, nothing bad is ever going to happen.”
“Are you sure?” Karthik asked, and huddled into Kokila’s lap as lightning scarred the skies and was then followed by the rumble of thunder.
Charvi was filling people with more fear, warning them that the thunder and lightning were Lord Venkateshwara Swami’s message to everyone that he was unhappy. The pace of the prayers increased and the volume of the people who were singing rose a few notches each time there was lightning and thunder.
The prayers continued through the night and people fell asleep on top of each other, leaning against walls, sagging on the floor. It was a long night and even Charvi fell asleep, sitting on the podium, leaning against soft cushions.
The storm ran out of steam sometime in the middle of the night and dawn broke at five in the morning, showing a wet landscape but not one marred by the washout of a large tsunami.
“We have been saved,” someone cried out. “Charvi Amma saved us with prayer.”
Kokila and Chetana’s fears that if Charvi was wrong it would prove calamitous were unfounded. People were pleased that the storm had passed without leaving behind any damage. And Charvi was bright and alive, looking years younger than she had just a few days ago. She had turned fifty, people said, and she had acquired a new power, the power to look into the future.
The local TV news in Visakhapatnam had a clip about Charvi and her prediction. All of a sudden, Charvi’s fame spread beyond the bounds of Bheemunipatnam.
Kedarnath Somayajula’s wife, a devout and pious woman, read about Charvi and her ashram in Tella Meda in the Deccan Chronicle, where there was a small news item with a photograph of Charvi and Tella Meda. She put two and two together and convinced her husband to let the holy woman stay on with her flock. Her husband and his brothers reluctantly agreed, especially after hearing how Charvi had stopped a tidal wave from engulfing all of Bheemunipatnam with just prayer. It was obvious that the woman was powerful and not to be trifled with.
“I just got a letter from Kedarnath Somayajula,” Kokila told Charvi excitedly.
“He’s letting us stay, isn’t he?” she asked, and when Kokila nodded, Charvi took a deep breath. “I predicted it. I knew we would not be turned out of Tella Meda,” she said. “We could find another place, certainly, but I like it here. Now I have to go for my walk.”
As Kokila turned to leave Charvi’s sitting room, she saw a letter on her desk with a familiar postmark. She picked it up after ensuring that Charvi had indeed left. The contents of the letter made Kokila smile. It was a letter from Kedarnath Somayajula’s wife sent a day earlier than the letter her husband had mailed to Kokila. It told Charvi that her husband would let them stay in Tella Meda, with no rent, just as her father-in-law had, and she also said that she would like to come and visit Charvi and stay in the beautiful house.
So much for Charvi’s prediction, Kokila thought with a smile as she put the letter back on the desk.
1995 12 May 1995. India refused to sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty because of what it called its discriminatory form.
24 October 1995. A total solar eclipse was seen over Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal, while a partial eclipse was seen in the rest of the country.
The Whore’s Granddaughters
Sushila didn’t sleep at all the night she waited for the Engineering and Medical College Entrance Test (EAMCET) results to be announced. Both Padma and Meena had taken the test after studying almost every waking hour for the past two years.
They, like other sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds all over Andhra Pradesh, were waiting to find out what rank they had received and if the rank would qualify them to enter a medical and/or engineering college. Sushila knew Padma had to get a rank under six hundred because that was the only way she could get into Andhra University in Visakhapatnam, a good medical college. But even then it would be a financial stretch.
“I hope Meena’s rank is not too high,” Chetana confessed to Kokila while the girls waited to get the newspaper where their ranks would be displayed next to their examination roll numbers.
“Why would you hope that?” Kokila said, surprised.
“How will I pay for medical college? How will I pay dormitory fees? Sushila is planning to take a bank loan. As if anyone will give her one. But she at least has some pension. I have nothing,” Chetana said. “And since Srinivas got married to that cousin of his, I don’t even get free balcony tickets at the cinema anymore. How will I pay for her education?”
Kokila tilted her head and made a sound.
“I’m not going to ask Manikyam,” Chetana said, interpreting Kokila’s sound accurately.
“It’s her future and if her rank is good, why not? And Manikyam has already offered to help,” Kokila reminded her.
“No,” Chetana said emphatically. “Don’t try to convince me otherwise.”
“Okay,” Kokila said just as the newspaper arrived and the commotion on the front verandah began.
“Eighty-three,” Meena screamed as she came running into the courtyard where Kokila and Chetana were drinking their morning tea. “My rank is under one hundred. Can you believe it, Amma? Can you?”
Chetana set her tea aside and hugged Meena tight. “I’m so proud of you. Under one hundred . . . oh my God . . . oh my God. You are a genius, aren’t you?”
Meena started to cry then. “I can’t believe it. Maybe I should look again, maybe I read it wrong.”
Chetana cast an eye at a somber Sushila and a weeping Padma coming into the courtyard and thought that if Meena had read her number wrong, Sushila would let them know.
“Congratulations, Meena,” Sushila said with a tight sm
ile.
“What’s your rank?” Meena asked Padma, wiping her tears.
Padma sobbed even more loudly then and ran to the room she shared with Sushila.
“Two thousand and three,” Sushila said quietly. “No medical college; she’ll have to do her degree somewhere . . . I don’t know.”
“She can take the EAMCET again next year,” Kokila said. “Many students try again and get a good rank.”
“But how can that be?” Meena asked, genuinely shocked. “We studied together and I know everything she knows. Are you sure? Give me the paper, let me look.”
But it was quite clear that Meena had gotten a much better rank and Padma was not going to get into any medical college in Andhra Pradesh. It was an honor and a matter of great pride, Meena knew, to be ranked so high. Over forty thousand students took EAMCET in 1995 and she was in the top one hundred. She wished Padma had done well because now she couldn’t shout with joy as she wanted to; she had to be careful so as to not hurt Padma’s feelings. But inside she was so excited she couldn’t stop smiling.
“Now what am I going to do?” Chetana said to Kokila that night. “I’m so glad. I mean, a rank of less than one hundred . . . oh my God, not even in my wildest dreams did I think she would get such a good rank. And I’m so happy her rank is good because I look at Padma and I don’t know if I could stand it if Meena was that sad. But now she can go to medical college, any one she wants. What am I going to do? How am I going to pay for this?”
“I have something to tell you. Don’t start screaming right away,” Kokila warned. She went into her room and came back. “Here,” she said, and handed over the bank passbook Dr. Nageshwar Rao had given her after Ravi passed away.
Chetana went through the passbook and her expression didn’t change as she scanned through the pages. “How long have you had this?” she demanded, her anger just below the calm surface of her question.
Song of the Cuckoo Bird Page 34