Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel by Amulya Malladi

Tella Meda.”
    Charvi laughed softly then. “You have always said that I was a fraud.”
    “Don’t you think you are a fraud?”
    Charvi shook her head. “By whose definition? I only have to worry about the woman I see in the mirror every morning and that woman is clear of blame, deceit, or any fraud. Do you look at yourself and see the woman others make you out to be or do you see yourself as you truly are?”
    Vineetha smiled, pleasantly surprised by the woman Charvi had become. “If I cared about what people think I wouldn’t be working alongside Homi Bhabha at the atomic power center; I would be married and a mother.”
    “And if I worried about what people thought I would have to wear orange clothes all the time and chant as if I were possessed,” Charvi said with some amusement. “The other day a couple came to me because they are childless. I told them I will pray for them but there was nothing else I could do. They asked me if I could chant a few words and sway my head and give them some holy ash. Holy ash from a goddess, the husband had been told, would cure his wife of her barrenness.”
    Vineetha drank some water and wondered if she had misjudged Charvi all these years.
    “What did you tell them?”
    Charvi shrugged. “I gave them some holy ash and told them that I was not a goddess and that they would be better off seeing a doctor.”
    “But they still come flocking to you, despite your being so candid,” Vineetha pointed out.
    “I can’t control the movements of others. I can’t define their motives,” Charvi said as she rose from the table. “You will have to excuse me now; it is time for my meditation.”
    Vineetha continued to sit at the table and watched Chetana braid Kokila’s hair. They were so young, so bright and radiant, their eyes full of excitement and yearning to learn about the world.
    When she was that young she also had had the light of hunger burning brightly inside her. She had wanted so much and now she had it all, yet there was a stunning loneliness because of the knowledge that after her nothing about her would remain. She believed in the soul not as a spirit but as a memory that resided in others. Children and grandchildren carried their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents forward in their minds, and so a part of those who had died stayed behind in the world.
    She didn’t believe in the reincarnation nonsense, as she knew that humans were carbon-based life-forms and once they died they disintegrated like all other carbon-based life—there was no difference. A tree died and nothing living was left behind; similarly when a human died, life went away. It was as simple as that.
    “Do you wear pants all the time?” Chetana asked. She was the daring one, Vineetha thought, the beautiful one. The one whose mother was a prostitute. The other girl, the one who didn’t want to go to her husband’s home, she was shy, quiet. Ramanandam had told her about all the residents of Tella Meda, given her the reasons for their living in the ashram.
    “Most of the time I wear pants,” Vineetha replied.
    “Do you pee like a man, then?” Chetana asked, and was shushed by Kokila.
    “No,” Vineetha said, amused.
    “Then why do you wear pants? Isn’t it easier to lift a skirt and squat rather than have the pants hanging around your ankles?” Chetana wanted to know. Kokila was getting very agitated and tried to drag Chetana away before she asked any more embarrassing questions.
    “Just because it’s easy for you doesn’t mean it’s easy for me,” Vineetha said patiently. “And I like pants. I can sit how I like and not worry about anyone seeing my underwear.”
    “But you don’t look pretty in them,” Chetana said. “Don’t you want to look pretty?”
    Vineetha pondered the question for a long moment. “I don’t know,” she said honestly, because she really didn’t know if she would give up comfort for pretty clothes.
    “Come on, Chetana, Subhadra wants us in