Song of the Cuckoo Bird
Page 41
LM: Still, it is a shame that no one did anything to help Kokila. She was just a child, what did she know? Do you think Ramanandam did not encourage her to go with her husband because he liked her?
AM: No, I don’t think he had designs on her from then. I hope not; that would be even more disgusting. I think he truly believed that children needed to do what they wanted to do without interference from elders.
LM: That girl needed some elders in her life, people who would have told her that staying at Tella Meda was going to ruin her life.
AM: Okay, I have a specific question. Some women writers, especially from South Asia, are accused of always portraying men in a bad light. Were all the men in my book bad?
LM: No, no, not at all. You had Shankar, who was a very good man. Narayan Garu who lives at Tella Meda, he is also a good man. But Ramanandam was not a good man, and that professor . . . Manjunath, he was somewhere in between. And you also had women who were not very nice. There are good people and bad people; it is not specific to being a man or a woman. And then there was that American man, Mark. Do you think he was interested in Charvi?
AM: No, I don’t think so. I think he was interested, even fascinated about this side of India, but he was not really interested in Charvi. He had a crush on her, but that was about it.
LM: He seems not to believe in her, so why did he come to Tella Meda?
AM: He came looking for something new, but he didn’t come back. And he respected Charvi, I think. He thought she was a smart single woman making the best of the hand she was dealt.
LM: When Mark asks her why she takes money and gifts from people, Charvi says that if they want to give something, who is she to say no. Which is really nonsense! Still, it must not have been easy for Charvi to accept that money and those gifts when she was in doubt of her godliness.
AM: But don’t you think she felt she deserved the money and the attention because she was making so many sacrifices by being a goddess?
LM: I don’t like Charvi much. But then again I have to like her as well because she helped so many people by giving them a roof over their heads.
AM: I agree. Tella Meda is part ashram, part women’s shelter, part orphanage, and part home for the elderly.
LM: But she also never helped anyone get out of there. She never encouraged Kokila or Chetana to have better lives, to leave Tella Meda and become productive members of society. And they didn’t make much of an effort either.
AM: People get used to something and then they are afraid of making changes. Chetana and Kokila were used to living in Tella Meda and they were afraid of going out and facing the real world.
LM: It is like a goat that is tied up; it gets used to eating the grass around it and does not want to wander away from the pasture where it is tied up. Who knows what is there beyond the pasture? Here it gets food and it is safe, god only knows what the goat will find outside. I feel that is why they stay.
AM: That is a fine way of putting it.
LM: And also, they are a family at Tella Meda. They are not related by blood but there is a sister figure, there are sort of children, a father figure, a surrogate mother . . . all in all, with all these broken pieces, these broken people, they get together and become a family in Tella Meda. And there is security with family!
AM: Yes, there is. They fought over things and didn’t get along all the time, but all through they remain a family.
LM: What was your favorite part of the book?
AM: Several things, but my favorite chapter was the one where Tella Meda gets a television. I had to send a lot of e-mails to Daddy to find out how much televisions cost in 1984, how many televisions a small company would make . . . it was a good chapter to write. I had fun writing it.
LM: I like the last pages the best. After Charvi dies, you write about how Kokila looks at the house and feels that after having tried for so many years to leave Tella Meda she and Chetana would live in apartments built over the same land. I thought it was very fitting. It was a good ending.
AM: The ending used to be different. I wrote the Prologue and Epilogue from the point of view of the house first, but my smart editor, Allison Dickens, told me that it took away from the book, and she was right. But it means a lot to me that you liked the book. So . . . do you think it’ll be a bestseller?
LM: Of course, the book is very good; I liked it very much, but . . .
AM: Did you like the book because I wrote it or would you have liked it off the rack at a bookstore?
LM: I think I would always like this book because it is so real to me. And that is why I worry, that maybe people who read it will say, “Oh that doesn’t sound real.” These situations are real; I have seen things like this happen all my life, and I don’t want people to think that this is completely made up. These things happen, have happened several times, will continue to happen . . .
AM: I think with this interview we will convince them that the book is as close to reality as it can get without being nonfiction.
LM: I hope so.
AM: Thanks, Mama.
LM: I hope I asked all the right questions. If I didn’t, just change it to something better, okay?
AM: I don’t think I will need to. (And I didn’t!)
Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion
Perhaps the most pivotal moment of this novel occurs at the beginning when Kokila decides to leave her marriage and stay at Tella Meda. Did you agree with her decision? Would you have made the same choice at her age in her situation? Would you make the same choice knowing how her life turned out?
Do you think Kokila was satisfied with her life and, at the end of the novel, felt she had lived a productive and worthwhile life? Do you feel she lived a productive and worthwhile life?
In Song of the Cuckoo Bird, the women of Tella Meda frequently discuss their need for a husband and children, and the placement those things will guarantee them in society. How important is marriage and having a family to a woman’s identity today where you live? How much is it a part of your own identity?
Which of the women at Tella Meda did you identify with the most closely? Did you have trouble connecting to any of the women and if so, why do you think you found her difficult to understand?
Both in the novel and in the conversation between Amulya Malladi and her mother in this reader’s guide, there is much discussion of whether Charvi is a good person, particularly in terms of her acceptance of money. Did you feel she was a good person? What inconsistencies of character did you spot in Charvi? Can a person be both good and bad?
Are there any purely good or purely evil characters in Song of the Cuckoo Bird?
How did you feel the men in the novel were portrayed? Fairly or unfairly? Realistically or unrealistically?
Did you find the news headlines at the start of each chapter helpful or were they unimportant to your understanding of the characters and setting?
Would Tella Meda be a good place to grow up, whether it was located in your hometown or in India, or during different time periods?
What do you think happened to Vidura?
AMULYA MALLADI lives in Copenhagen in Denmark with her husband and two sons. You can contact her at www.amulyamalladi.com.
Song of the Cuckoo Bird is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Original
Copyright © 2006 by Amulya Malladi
Reading group guide copyright © 2006 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. READER’S CIRCLE and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CA
TALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Malladi, Amulya.
Song of the cuckoo bird : a novel / Amulya Malladi.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-0-307-41670-4
1. India—Fiction. 2. Ashrams—Fiction. 3. Spiritual life—Fiction.
4. Women—India—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.A45S66 2006
813’.6—dc22 2005048099
www.thereaderscircle.com
www.randomhouse.com
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