“I remember him. He was a photographer for some foreign magazine,” Kokila said. “Chetana and I had a big crush on him. He was very good-looking. I think he was attracted to you.”
“You do?” Charvi said, and her voice held the excitement of a young girl finding out that the boy she likes wants her too. “I think so too. He had the bluest eyes and he talked to me. He just had to talk to me and I’d melt. Sometimes hearing his voice would make my knees weaken like they were filled with water. And he kissed me once. Just once, on the cheek.”
Her hand drifted to her left cheek and she brushed herself gently. “Like the flutter of a butterfly, Kokila. He kissed me and I can still feel the heat of his breath. Oh, I could’ve married him, had children. Do you think that could have happened?”
“Yes,” Kokila said, and put a hand on Charvi’s forehead, stroking gently, hoping to console her. “It could have happened.”
“It didn’t happen for you either,” Charvi said. “You should’ve gone with that boy you were married to. I tried to get rid of you, tried to send you away, but you were so stubborn.”
Kokila smiled, remembering. “I was young. Who knows? I might’ve had a worse life with him than I did at Tella Meda.”
“I hate you,” Charvi whispered hoarsely, her eyes closed, her body rocking gently. “You took my father away and I hate you.”
Kokila stopped stroking Charvi’s forehead for a moment and then continued. She had always known that Charvi held a grudge about Kokila’s relationship with Ramanandam; it was only a small surprise, to hear it so bluntly.
“He lusted after you. We all knew, we all could see,” Charvi said. “Vidura could also see. He had a fight with him, a big fight, and Nanna beat him. He slapped him and hit him. Vidura said that Nanna kept you in Tella Meda for himself. And he did, didn’t he? The first chance he got, he was spreading your legs.”
Kokila’s throat burned as emotions rode through her. Charvi’s words were ugly. What she was insinuating was deviant and Kokila was sure that Ramanandam had not been the man Charvi was describing. He hadn’t made her stay at Tella Meda and Vidura had run away for reasons that had nothing to do with her. Charvi was old and sick and confused. She was rambling, she was delirious.
“I wanted to stay. No one made me stay,” Kokila said tightly. “I didn’t want to leave Tella Meda.”
“And he let you,” Charvi said, then sighed. “Did you love him the way I love Mark Talbot?”
Kokila didn’t answer.
“No, you couldn’t. I saw you one day, sneaking out of his room, holding your sari to your body. You had slept with him, had sex with him. I hated him then too,” Charvi said. “And Vidura . . . Vidura was so sad that his father had an eye on a girl he liked. On you.”
“No, he didn’t. Ramanandam didn’t notice me that way until many years later,” Kokila said, now certain that this was Charvi’s delirium speaking. Truth or not, Kokila had the rest of her life to live and she wouldn’t live it believing Charvi’s words. How could she trust this woman who had called herself a goddess all her life yet had hated Kokila for so many years because Kokila had been young and gullible enough to sleep with an older man? Charvi felt no sympathy for Kokila, just hatred.
No, Kokila thought, and stared at Charvi’s face as it convulsed with grief. She would not let Charvi taint her past with innuendo and suppositions.
“And Vidura ran away,” Charvi cried out softly. “I never saw him again. Never. I promised my dying mother I’d care for him and I didn’t. I don’t even know if he’s dead or alive.” She started crying then, tears streaming down her face. Kokila wiped the tears off her wrinkled cheeks.
“It wasn’t my fault, was it, Kokila?” Charvi asked. “Did he run away because of me? He hated me, didn’t he? He told you he hated me.”
“No, he loved you,” Kokila said, and it wasn’t a lie. It was so long ago now that she couldn’t remember what Vidura had told her and what he had meant.
“He had a fight with Nanna. I think it was about me,” Charvi said, and started to sob loudly. “And then he ran away. He is the only regret I have. No, that’s not true, there are a hundred others as well. So many regrets that I’m not sure where one starts and one ends. Don’t have regrets, Kokila, they weigh heavily and make you want to live even when life isn’t worth living.”
She mumbled on some more but Kokila couldn’t understand her. She stood by Charvi, one hand on her forehead and the other holding her hand.
“Go to sleep now, Charvi, rest a little,” Kokila whispered, and despite herself she felt a strong affection for this woman who was an indelible part of her life, a woman who had given her a home, a purpose. Charvi was friend, sister, guardian, and nemesis, all wrapped into one.
Charvi fell asleep then. Kokila, Chetana, and Manikyam took turns keeping vigil by her bedside over the next few days. Charvi slept for longer and longer periods.
And the day before the new millennium arrived, Charvi quietly passed away in her sleep.
Charvi’s body was taken back to Tella Meda and it was debated where her samadhi would be built. When saints passed away, they were known to reach a higher plane of existence and they went into samadhi. Their bodies were not cremated but buried and a building, a samadhi, was built there in their honor.
News of Charvi’s death traveled among her devotees and many of them arrived to pay their last respects. Among the devotees were Kedarnath Somayajula and his wife, the legitimate part-owners of Tella Meda. With Charvi dead, they were now ready to sell Tella Meda to the construction company that had wanted to demolish the big, old house with a white roof and build an apartment complex.
It was not a surprise—Kokila had been expecting this—but now she didn’t know where the samadhi should be built. It couldn’t be built in Tella Meda, as Tella Meda would cease to exist in a few months.
The old pujari at the temple suggested that the samadhi be built there, but there wasn’t enough room on the temple grounds. Finally, Subhadra suggested that maybe the samadhi should be built by the bay on the beach. After all, Charvi had gone for a walk there every day and it would be public enough that people would be able to pay their respects to her.
Money was raised from devotees for the building of the samadhi by the roadside on the beach, right in front of Tella Meda. The Municipal Committee of Bheemunipatnam wholeheartedly supported the idea, as they believed that Charvi had been an integral part of life in Bheemunipatnam and therefore a proper monument to her death had to be built.
The samadhi was made quickly and the contractor who made it did it for free.
Being dead is like being within a rainbow, Charvi thought as she lay under splendid colors that shimmered brightly over her. She had transcended her body. She could feel weightlessness race through her. She didn’t have a corporeal form, no face, no eyes, no flesh.
She swam past the people thronged around the verandah and in the temple room, who were waiting to catch a glimpse of her body in the courtyard, covered in white, lying on a straw gurney.
Subhadra was sitting next to Charvi’s body, crying, as she swatted mosquitoes off Charvi’s face with one hand and fanned with the other. Meena and Asif were sitting in a corner, looking bored. Meena had never believed in her, Charvi thought, and smiled because it didn’t matter anymore. All sins had been forgiven, hers and others’. And God knew she had sinned just as others had.
Kokila, as always, was coordinating everything. She was in a heated discussion with a contractor, arranging for the samadhi to be built. Charvi liked the idea of her samadhi being close to the water.
Charvi went up to all those present and felt regret that she had never made up with Manikyam. Lavanya was not there, but Charvi had already said good-bye to her in the hospital.
The walls of Tella Meda seemed alive as she slipped through them and floated around the old house for one last time. She had lived here for over four decades. This was her home and soon it would be gone. It seemed befitting that as she died, Tella
Meda would also die.
She stood outside Tella Meda for a while, watching her samadhi being built on the beach with big electric lights shining around the construction area. The full moon was rising and Charvi smiled as she saw the old house with the white roof shimmer in the brilliant moonlight.
Charvi saw herself standing on the terrace on another moonlit night years ago, looking down to see a man taking her photograph. The image was strong for an instant and then it dissolved, lightening her heart.
The house moved with its own energy, in synchronized rhythm with the waves of the bay and Charvi’s spirit, and then the house enfolded Charvi into its bosom.
In the years to come, the words on the marble remained clear:
Here lies Goddess Charvi. May her light shine over all of us.
But people forgot who she was and once Tella Meda was gone, it was even harder to remember the house, the goddess, the magic. A new era claimed Bheemunipatnam as computers and big airplanes made the world smaller, as the slums shrank in size, and people started to live better.
2000 19 March 2000. Bill Clinton, the president of the United States, arrived to a warm welcome in India. His was the first United States presidential visit in two decades.
7 April 2000. The Delhi police unearthed a multimillion-rupee cricket-betting and match-fixing racket involving five South African cricketers, including the South African cricket team captain, Hansie Cronje.
Tella Meda, the House with the White Roof
The last time Kokila stepped out of Tella Meda was in the beginning of the new millennium.
When she looked back at the house she still saw the most beautiful house she had ever lived in. But now she could see the marks of the years, and she could, she thought, see that the soul of the house was not innocent and untouched anymore. The house had been built in 1955 and now was being broken down in 2000. It was a short life for a house but Kokila thought with a smile that it was not the number of years but the quality of those years that were important.
Tella Meda would be demolished the next day. A big ball of iron would be rammed through its center and then workers with hammers and chisels would come and chip away the rest. And in a few days, they would take all the remains away and there would be nothing left.
The house’s foundation would be dug up and a new foundation would be laid in. A new house would emerge—a house bigger than Tella Meda, a house with more rooms, a house that would stand higher, a house in which more people would live than had ever lived in Tella Meda.
“But some of us will remain,” Kokila whispered to Tella Meda as she stood in its verandah.
It was really Babu who had come up with the idea. He’d found out that since Kokila and Chetana and the others had lived in Tella Meda for over twenty years for no rent, according to the law, the house was actually theirs and they could fight for it in court. Neither Kokila nor Kedarnath wanted that, so a deal was struck. Of the thirty apartments to be built on the plot of land where Tella Meda stood, one each would be given to Kokila and Chetana since they had lived in Tella Meda the longest and had the most right to the house.
When Kokila looked back and remembered the people who had come and gone, there were so many who hadn’t had any impact on her; yet there were those who had broken her heart and there were those who had eased her sorrow.
This house, she thought, has had an interesting life. It had been named by a goddess and had embraced her presence within its walls for four decades. And she had been fortunate as well, Kokila knew, for she had lived with brave women such as Charvi, Chetana, Subhadra, Shanthi, and Renuka. She had watched the birth of the future, Meena, Bhanu, and Karthik, and the death of the past, Ramanandam and Narayan Garu.
Yes, Kokila decided, hers had been an interesting life too, and with her son poised to realize his dreams, she felt her life had been a fruitful one as well.
She walked through the garden, now unkempt since no one had bothered with it after the sale of the house had been announced. When she reached the metal gate and opened it, she felt a pinch in her heart.
This house, this home of hers, would be gone tomorrow.
Next year she would come back here, to live in an apartment that one could see the Bay of Bengal from, but she knew that it would never be the same again. There would be no coconut trees to make dolls with, there would be no courtyard to sit around, no big kitchen to cook in and bicker with the others about chores.
And maybe that was okay too. She sighed and closed the rickety gate as she stepped away from the house. Maybe it was okay that Tella Meda would go, as Charvi had gone. Maybe it was right as well because Tella Meda had been Charvi’s regardless of who the legal owner of the house was.
At least one person was glad the house was being demolished, Kokila thought with a laugh as she walked away from Tella Meda toward Bhanu’s house, where she was going to live with Chetana until the apartments were built. Chetana had clapped her hands when Kokila told her Tella Meda would be torn down. And Chetana thought it was ironic that after all her attempts at trying to get away, she would live the rest of her life in an apartment on the same land where the house with the white roof had stood.
It was dusk and the lilting notes of a cuckoo bird’s song filtered through the air. Kokila looked back at Tella Meda one last time.
She stood and watched the house as the sun set into the shimmering waters of the bay, and when the house became just a silhouette, she turned around and walked away.
Song of the Cuckoo Bird
AMULYA MALLADI
A READER’S GUIDE
A Conversation with Amulya Malladi
Amulya’s mother, Lakshmi Malladi, helped her write Song of the Cuckoo Bird. Not just by saying all the encouraging things mothers say, but by telling her the stories that found their way into this book. Amulya feels that this book is as much her mother’s as it is hers.
Amulya Malladi: So, how did you think the book turned out? I took a lot of the stories you told me to write this book. I made them my own stories, but still . . . they started from your descriptions.
Lakshmi Malladi: You wrote the stories differently, but I felt that they were still real, still very down-to-earth, not contrived at all. I liked the book. I liked the characters very much, maybe because they seemed so real to me.
AM: A friend of mine, Jody Pryor, who always helps me with my books while they are being written, felt that the book was quite an experience for her. She thought everything was new and fresh. I think she might have even felt that parts of the book were unbelievable.
LM: No, no, I was not surprised by any of the stories of the characters. I have seen it all . . . nothing was unrealistic or unbelievable. But tell me, which character did you feel had the unhappiest life in the book? Let’s see if we agree on that.
AM: I think that would be Charvi. She got pushed into a life she never really had a chance to reject and in the end she was all alone. She lived the life that others expected her to live. She was this Guru, this goddess and she never had a husband, a lover, children . . . she was lonely in the end.
LM: I agree that she was the saddest person in the book, but not for the same reason. I think that her life was the most painful because she was never sure if she was a goddess. She doubted herself all the time and probably lived with guilt that she was cheating all these people by taking their money. To not be sure of who you are, especially if you feel you are being dishonest . . . that is probably the hardest way to live. What do you think?
AM: I agree. I never thought about it that way, but you are right. That is a hard way to live. So, who did you think had the fullest life?
LM: That has to be Chetana. I don’t like her as a character, she is self-centered, thankless . . . I just didn’t like her. But she managed to have a full life. She got married, had children who did well, and she was the only one who did whatever she wanted. Her husband died and she wanted to have a boyfriend, so she went and got one. Her daughters took care of her in her old age. She was the luc
kiest of them all.
AM: I think Chetana was the happiest, and she is also my favorite character in the book. She is so spirited and she was a lot of fun to write. She is very selfish and yet, there is something redeemable about her because she is Kokila’s friend and Kokila is the best person in that entire story. She is the one with the big heart and good soul, the one who wants to help others, save others.
LM: Yes, Kokila is the person with the big heart, but her life was so tragic. You know, all the others who lived at Tella Meda were people who had lost something before they came there. Kokila came there and lost her life. She lost her parents, yes, but it was after she came to Tella Meda that she lost the chance for having a life . . . you know, to be a wife and mother.
AM: But she got to become a mother; she adopted Karthik.
LM: Yes, yes, but it isn’t the same thing. She had no man, no husband, and even the men she had been with . . . What good would even the sex have been with that old man, Ramanandam? Why did she go with him?
AM: I think she was in love with him. I think Kokila is the kind of woman who needs to be needed. She loved Ramanandam because he needed her, which is never a good basis for a relationship.
LM: And it was the same with the professor whose daughter committed suicide.
AM: Yes, Manjunath. He was also a sad man who needed someone to hold on to him, so she volunteered.
LM: Manjunath I can understand, he sounded like a good-looking man, but Ramanandam?
AM: Love is blind!
LM: What I can’t understand is why Charvi didn’t do something to stop the relationship. She seems very possessive about her father, so why didn’t she?
AM: First, I think she did try, in her way. She spoke with her father and then she also spoke to Kokila, she—
LM: She didn’t speak to Kokila about it; she just told her that she knew she was sleeping with Ramanandam.
AM: I think that was her way of trying. Charvi, I think, has a strong moral code and she feels she must not interfere in anyone’s life. She would never forcefully try to make anyone do anything. But no one else in the ashram said anything either. Subhadra actually tells Kokila that she thinks it is a good thing that she is having a relationship with Ramanandam and Kokila is furious. She has always thought of Subhadra as a mother but a mother would never be happy about her daughter sleeping with a man twice her age, a man she could not marry or have children with.
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