Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

husband’s house at this time and made a family with him. Subhadra didn’t go into any details about the sexual aspects of marriage and said only that Kokila was a woman now and would have to start acting like one.
    The night before the puja that would symbolize to one and all that Kokila had reached puberty, she couldn’t sleep. She lay on the coconut straw bed and tossed and turned. The cotton cloth pad between her legs was getting heavier and she knew she had to go to the bathroom and make a new one with the strips of white cotton cloth Subhadra left for her. But the idea of washing out the old one and looking at the blood nauseated her, so she lay quietly, in fear, alone.
    Chetana sneaked into the menses room late at night, bringing with her chakli and boondi ladoo.
    “Tomorrow will be fun for you,” she said. “Lots of gifts from everyone and your husband’s parents will bring gifts too.”
    “They’ll be here?” Kokila asked, fear surging despite Ramanandam Sastri’s promise.
    “They will,” Chetana said. “Sastri Garu telephoned them from Dr. Vishnu Mohan’s house to let them know.”
    The betrayal struck Kokila hard and the boondi ladoo turned from sweet to bitter inside her mouth.
    “You’ll start your own family now. You’ll have to have intercourse now,” Chetana said with a glint in her eye. “Vidura and I will come and see you sometime, okay?”
    Kokila’s resentment and fear grew. Already that bitch’s daughter was laying claim to Vidura. Kokila knew that as soon as she was gone, Vidura would forget her—Chetana would make sure of it.
    “Sastri Garu promised that if I didn’t want to go, I didn’t have to,” Kokila said with false courage.
    “You have to go, Kokila,” Chetana warned, suddenly serious. “Here you will have no life. There you can have a husband, children. You will have your own home.”
    “But I don’t want to go.”
    Chetana only shook her head. “If I had the chance you have, I would never stay here.”
    Oh, if only, Kokila would think many years later, when her hair had turned gray and her smooth skin had become wrinkled. If only she had listened to Chetana. If only she had left. But she was fourteen—what did she know? How could she have known that leaving would have meant a real life?
    As Chetana promised, the celebration proclaiming her womanhood was a lot of fun. Subhadra put Kokila in Chetana’s silk skirt and terricot blouse. The skirt was dark brown with a gold border, while the blouse was yellow and had a thin gold border sewed around the edges of the puffed sleeves. Chetana had worn the same outfit for her puja and didn’t begrudge Kokila wearing it now. After all, when Chetana wore it, it had been brand-new.
    Subhadra washed Kokila’s hair with squeezed rita pulp and made her feet yellow with turmeric paste. Chetana put henna on Kokila’s hands and feet; she made a design of grapes hanging on their vines on her hands and an intricate seashell design on her feet. It was like Kokila’s wedding day all over again.
    Narayan Garu, an old friend of Ramanandam Sastri who also lived in the ashram, gave Kokila a pair of silver anklets that had small bells on them. They had belonged to his wife, who had died several years ago. He had saved her jewelry for his son’s wives but after they swindled him out of his own house, relegating him to Tella Meda, he had kept the anklets and a few other pieces of jewelry. Everyone in the ashram knew about the expensive trinkets that Narayan Garu kept safely locked in his room and it was a special honor, Kokila knew, to receive one of them as a gift.
    “You be good to your husband, little bird,” Narayan Garu told her. In those early days he used to call her “little bird” instead of Kokila, which meant “cuckoo bird” in Telugu.
    The silver anklets that were shining on her ankles were a going-away present. And it was the first of many such gifts. Charvi gave her a thin gold chain with an om -shaped locket on it.