Song of the Cuckoo Bird

by Amulya Malladi

  This seemed like the most insurmountable thing he had ever faced in his life. Kokila was intractable and Charvi . . . well, she wouldn’t even listen. Usually Charvi heard him out and then told him why she thought he should listen to his mother, even if she disagreed with Kokila. This time, she had just put her hands to her ears and shook her head.

  “No, Karthik. This is a religious house. We won’t have that kind of nonsense here,” Charvi said, and then smiled because she had a soft spot for the handsome Karthik. “Why don’t you buy yourself a tape recorder? Then you can hear whatever music you want. I’ll give you money for the tape recorder, okay?”

  Karthik didn’t have the heart to explain to Charvi that tape recorders were passé and what he really wanted and couldn’t afford was a CD player. These were the times he wished he had a father just like his friends did. Fathers earned money and ensured that mothers and their sons didn’t live in ashrams.

  He was adopted. He knew his mother had died and Kokila had taken him in. He had no complaints, really, except that Amma could be so stubborn about certain things, such as satellite TV. If he had real parents, he was sure, they would have succumbed to his pleas by now. And they would have bought a new color TV with those fancy remote controls as well. He would also have gotten a CD player and loads of other stuff people seem to have. Not all his friends were fortunate enough to have well-earning fathers but they had homes, real homes, not a strange home with so many people in it and people who randomly came and went. Whenever Karthik thought of the guest rooms in the front, he had the image of faces rushing past him like faces framed in the windows of a fast train. He remembered no one and he didn’t care all that much for living in Tella Meda.

  He was bored. Summer was here, there was no school, and Tella Meda was mind-numbing. In addition, everyone was so busy with Padma’s wedding. Like he cared. And the boy she was marrying looked like a total geek.

  Karthik didn’t mind geeks. He himself could be called one because he was very good at math, but still, Padma’s future husband looked weird. And what a show-off, sending pictures of himself standing next to cars and whatnot.

  Karthik didn’t admit it to anyone but he wanted to go to America as well. He followed Meena’s example and talked about nationality and staying in India because he wanted a good EAMCET rank like her. Besides, he also wanted to become a pilot. He was planning to take the National Defense Academy exam after his twelfth class so that he could join the Indian Defense Services as an officer. He wanted to be an air force pilot and wear those cool dark glasses along with the gray bomber jackets. He had watched Top Gun several times on video, as one of his friends had the tape, and he thought that flying was very cool. Even cooler was the motorbike in that movie. But it was such an old movie and a girlie movie at that, so he didn’t admit to anyone that he liked it.

  When he thought about the movies he watched, the books he read, and the games he played, he knew Kokila would understand none of that. She didn’t even speak English and understood very little of the language. Why, she didn’t even speak Hindi, even though she understood it. His life was more than his mother’s had ever been, even in small-town Bheemunipatnam. And because Kokila didn’t understand the things he understood and took for granted, Karthik felt his mother didn’t really understand him or his needs. It wasn’t just satellite TV, it was everything. Kokila didn’t understand his need to spend more time with his friends or go to Visakhapatnam with them and eat pizza in the new pizza restaurant there. She didn’t understand that he knew what a McDonald’s was and all his friends had been to Visakhapatnam and had actually eaten a chicken burger, while he had only seen one and could only imagine how good it tasted.

  At Tella Meda there was only vegetarian food and the only times Karthik had eaten meat and omelets had been at his friend Rajan’s house. Rajan’s father worked in the bank at Bheemunipatnam. They were not Brahmins but Kammas, and their caste permitted them to eat meat. Rajan’s mother made goat curry and she put omelets and bread in Rajan’s lunch box.

  When Karthik once suggested to Kokila that maybe they should try to eat some nonvegetarian food, she had been appalled.

  “Why? Why would you want to kill and eat some poor animal? Our food is not good enough? It’s good food. Why would you want to eat that disgusting meat? Tell me? Why?”

  Kokila had been so upset that Karthik never brought up the subject again. He didn’t know why he liked meat, he just liked it and he wanted to eat it more often. Even Rajan’s mother didn’t cook meat that often because of how expensive it was, but whenever she did, Rajan would sneak away some juicy morsels for Karthik. Rajan was Karthik’s very best friend and they both made plans to become pilots and fly jet planes.

  Rajan lived in the next street, where new houses had been built a few years ago. Earlier there was no street, just barren land behind Tella Meda, but now streets had developed and paved roads had emerged from the muddy and empty land. Houses were being built constantly, and more and more businesses were opening in Bheemunipatnam. It still wasn’t as nice as Visakhapatnam, but things were happening in the sleepy coastal town. There was a vacation resort being constructed on the beach some thirty kilometers away from Tella Meda where rich people were buying space in summer cottages. The resort promised to have tourists from all over the world. The plan was to make Bheemunipatnam the “Goa of the east.”

  Even though so many things were happening in Bheemunipatnam, Karthik felt that everything was at a standstill in Tella Meda. People were going about their lives in the very same fashion as they had for decades. Everyone talked about how important caste was and they discussed religion all the time. They didn’t eat any meat and refused to have satellite TV. Sometimes, Karthik hated, hated, hated, hated Tella Meda and wished his real parents were alive so that he could go live with them. Of course, he’d take Kokila along because he loved her so much, but he wouldn’t live in Tella Meda. Not if he could help it.

  The argument for satellite TV reached new heights when Sushila rented a VCR from the video store along with videotapes that Padma said would appeal to Manoj and his friends who were coming for the wedding from America.

  “Why for them and never for me?” Karthik demanded as the VCR was placed on a small settee next to the television and the video store boy hooked it up.

  “Because they are the bridegroom’s people and this is a temporary thing,” Sushila informed him. “When you’re old enough to get married, I’m sure your wife’s family will also get for you whatever you want.”

  “Amma, why can’t we just get satellite TV? Star TV is great and I’m sure that Padma’s Manoj will like it,” Karthik suggested.

  Kokila shook her head. “You have to sign a contract for one whole year and I don’t want to commit for that long. Now that the VCR is here, you can also get some tapes and watch, if you like. Can he, Sushila?”

  Sushila cleared her throat and smiled uncomfortably. “I’d like to leave it free from tomorrow onward when Manoj and his family arrive. This is for them. Karthik can rent the VCR some other time.”

  Karthik glared at Kokila and Sushila. “I live here,” he yelled at Kokila. “Do you even care about me?”

  Kokila sighed. “Karthik,” she called, but he ran out of the TV room, into the temple room, and then straight out of Tella Meda.

  “I’m sorry but this is for the bridegroom’s family and—” Sushila began, but Kokila shook her head.

  “It’s okay. He’s just being so difficult these days. Nothing is good enough . . . It was so much easier when he was smaller,” Kokila said.

  “It’s the age and he’s a boy. Boys have more tantrums than girls,” Sushila said. “He’ll come around, don’t worry.”

  But Kokila worried and her worry increased when Karthik didn’t come home that night. She went to Rajan’s house to see if he was there, but Rajan was missing as well.

  The boys, it seemed, had run away together.

  “Oh, it’s my wedding in two days and he has to run away now?
” Padma demanded angrily. “Does anyone care about me? Now I have to worry about him when I should be happy about getting married. How can he do this to me?”

  Sushila agreed that Karthik’s timing could have been better. “We’ll just focus on what we have to do. The boys will come back, don’t worry about that. Where will they go?”

  They could go anywhere, Kokila thought, anywhere at all. There were five hundred rupees missing from Rajan’s home. On that money, two boys could go anywhere.

  She couldn’t sleep the night the boys went missing. No one had seen them and no one had heard anything. Other friends of Rajan and Karthik didn’t know where they were. Some thought they might have gone to Visakhapatnam because that was where they always wanted to go, while others were sure that they had drowned while playing in the water. Some others thought that UFOs were involved. Rajan’s mother confided in Kokila that she feared the boys might indeed be in Visakhapatnam to watch the India-versus-Australia one-day international cricket match being played there. The police had been informed but they had no leads. Kokila felt like she was in the past again, running around as she had done so many years ago when Vidura ran away.

  “Remember Vidura?” Kokila asked as she and Chetana sat on the terrace, Kokila standing where Ramanandam Sastri had years ago, waiting for his son to come home.

  Chetana smiled and nodded. “Ramanandam had beaten him a few days before he ran away,” she said as if remembering an old, old story.

  “Really?” Kokila was surprised. “You never told.”

  “I didn’t?” Chetana shrugged. “Ramanandam came to me and said that I should not tell anyone about it as it had nothing to do with Vidura running away. He made me promise and he was crying, so I forgot about it. I thought I told you; I guess I didn’t.”

  “Is that why he ran away, you think?” Kokila asked.

  “Who knows why he ran away. I have seen enough of the world to know that people do strange things for strange reasons.” Chetana sighed. “But don’t compare Vidura with Karthik. Karthik is coming back home when that money runs out. Vidura had other demons chasing him.”

  “Like what?” Kokila asked.

  “Like he hated Charvi and he hated his father. Vidura was thirteen but he had already had sex . . . did you know that? He would kiss me and touch me and . . . Oh, I had almost forgotten about Vidura,” Chetana said with a laugh. “I thought I was the queen around here and obviously better than you because Vidura did more kissing with me than with you.”

  “He kissed me once, did I tell you?” Kokila said. “We went for a walk on the beach.”

  Chetana laughed out loud. “I know, I saw you go with him. That’s where he always took me and kissed me, right behind the big rock there. Looks like he wanted to take advantage of both of us and we’d have let him too. Stupid, we were.”

  “What happened to him, you think?” Kokila asked.

  “Anything could have happened,” Chetana said. “The world out there is dangerous . . . but don’t think about that. Karthik is fine. He will come home and you will scold him for running away. In a few years you will laugh about this.”

  She would never laugh about this, Kokila thought, she would never be able to laugh about feeling like this.

  Kokila looked at the empty road in front of Tella Meda and felt panic clench her. The house below was full of people and this was a festive time but she could not stop the terror within her from rising. Karthik had run away and what if she never saw him again? Just imagining that was crippling and she strained her eyes to see farther so that she could catch a glimpse of Karthik coming back home with Rajan.

  “Do you think Karthik will disappear and never return like Vidura?” Kokila asked, tears filling her eyes.

  “Vidura had no one to love him here. Karthik has you. He’ll come back. He just wanted to have some fun and that’s all. He isn’t like Vidura,” Chetana said.

  “Why did Ramanandam beat Vidura?” Kokila asked.

  “I don’t know. Something about something Vidura had seen or said. Vidura wasn’t very clear when he talked to me. Then two days later, he ran away. I talked to Ramanandam and he then asked me not to tell anyone about the beating. Those days I thought Ramanandam was second to none and what did I know? I was a little girl,” Chetana said.

  “Ramanandam never told me,” Kokila said, suddenly feeling betrayed by a man who had been dead for over two decades. “He never said anything to me about Vidura. I was crazy about Vidura. I stayed in Tella Meda and didn’t go with that boy I was married to because of him. I was scared you’d steal him away if I left.”

  Chetana smiled. “And I would have too if he hadn’t run away.”

  “I can’t bear it, Chetana, if Karthik doesn’t come back. I will die,” Kokila said bleakly.

  Chetana put an arm around Kokila. “He’ll come back. He’s just out there blowing off five hundred rupees. He’ll be home by . . . I say, tomorrow night. That’s how long that money will last them and then they’ll come running home, too scared to face the world alone.”

  “He’s angry that we won’t get satellite TV at Tella Meda,” Kokila said as she sniffled, pushing the tears off her face with her hands.

  “If it wasn’t satellite TV it would be something else. With children there’s always something missing that they want or something that we can’t or won’t give. That’s life,” Chetana said, and wiped Kokila’s face with the pallu of her sari.

  Downstairs in Tella Meda there was festivity brimming. Telugu movie music (much to Charvi’s chagrin) was playing loudly and people were milling around the courtyard and verandah. Relatives and friends who hadn’t seen each other since the last wedding were chatting and catching up, while Sushila and Karuna served tea and snacks.

  Padma was sitting in one corner talking to Manoj while Manoj’s parents and some others stared openly at them, talking about how good the couple looked together.

  Padma sat shyly, slightly turned toward Manoj, who looked much less spectacular in person without the image of his car behind him. He wore a gold chain and a shiny gold bracelet on his wrist. His face had a matching shiny texture and he wore a black T-shirt with faded blue jeans. He smelled of cologne and he talked with a slight American accent.

  He is terrible to look at, no matter his smell and his accent, thought Meena with a slight smile. She had arrived with Asif the day before, just before Karthik’s disappearance.

  “What do you think of Tella Meda?” she asked Asif, who was sitting by her, watching the proceedings with unabashed curiosity. It wasn’t every day he, a Muslim, was invited or allowed to participate so intimately in a Telugu Brahmin wedding.

  When Meena introduced him to everyone at Tella Meda, there was such silence that Meena started to laugh a little out of nervousness. It wasn’t as though Asif had “Muslim” stamped on his forehead. He was a nice-looking boy with fair skin. He was quite tall, almost six feet, and definitely didn’t look like a Telugu boy. And thank God for that, Meena thought. As soon as people heard his name, they became uncomfortable. Chetana had been the least concerned—at least that was the way it appeared to Meena.

  “He’s just a friend, right?” Chetana asked Meena to her face, and Meena lied without compunction.

  “Good,” Chetana said, “Because I won’t tolerate you marrying some Muslim. Do you know that you have to become a Muslim to marry one?”

  “That isn’t how it always works,” Meena had argued. “I don’t really think Asif’s parents are that type of people. They’re not very conservative.”

  “But that isn’t really important to us, now, is it?” Chetana asked slyly. “Since you’re only friends with this Muslim boy, right?”

  “Right,” Meena said, knowing she had been caught.

  Now as she sat beside Asif, watching Padma talk and laugh shyly with her husband-to-be, Meena smiled. Her life, she knew, was much better than Padma’s would ever be. Padma was marrying some stranger off the road. Tomorrow, after the wedding ceremony, she would have to hav
e sex with this man. She would have to take her clothes off and be naked in front of this stranger. She had talked to him on the phone for a few months now but it still seemed extremely rushed, unnatural.

  Meena and Asif had fallen in love before they had taken their clothes off in front of each other. They had been intimate with each other after they had known each other, not before. She had kissed Asif, felt her heart race, months before they had made love. Padma would have to forgo all that excitement and foreplay and just jump in and have sex. And since this Manoj chap was probably a twenty-eight-year-old virgin, Meena could only imagine the disaster that awaited poor Padma the next night. Meena knew that Padma had always woven dreams around the first night and her husband, who would, of course, be handsome.

  Meena felt some satisfaction that she sat next to the good-looking Asif, while Padma was being saddled with Mr. Black-as-Coal. Padma had treated Meena shabbily, unforgivably, because Meena had done well in EAMCET. Padma showed off about going to America, getting married, and Meena could only frown at that. What was the big deal about America? Already people were talking about how the information technology business in the United States was not doing very well and Indians were being laid off and sent back to India.

  And why would an engineer want to go to America when there were so many good jobs available in India now? All the big IT companies were in India now, opening offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad. What was the big show-off element about going to America?

  “Did you tell your mother?” Asif asked Meena as she watched Padma. “And stop staring at the poor girl. You’ll poke a hole into her.”

  Meena made a face. “No, I didn’t tell my mother. I think I’ll wait till I’m not around her to tell her. And I’m staring because that fellow is ugly.”

  “And she’s quite a beauty,” Asif said. He grinned when Meena looked at him angrily. “Just wanted to get your attention. She isn’t better-looking than you.”

  “Do you find her attractive?” Meena asked.

  Asif shrugged. “I think she’s beautiful. She is, Meena, even a blind man can see that. But do I find her attractive? Now, how could I find anyone attractive when I have you with me?”