Free Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel by Amulya Malladi

to do.
    Finally, they settled on the cleaning and maintenance of the puja room, where all the musical instruments were also assembled. Renuka could play the harmonium and for the evening bhajan she would play in tune with Charvi’s singing and playing of the veena.
    Not having known Charvi since she was a girl, Renuka didn’t have the same blind devotion for her as Subhadra did. She saw the things others didn’t want to or couldn’t see. She believed in tradition and was old-fashioned. After her husband’s death she shaved her hair off and now wore only a thin white sari to cover her body. Chetana and Kokila spent a lot of time in the beginning peeking at her limp breasts hanging under the sari, as she wore no blouse. She stayed in a small room in a corner, wanting the smallest and least desirable room, and ate simple (and special) food without spices.
    It was customary for widows to eat plain food and live simply. Even though Ramanandam told Renuka that in Charvi’s ashram she could let her hair grow and wear colored saris, Renuka wasn’t going to change the course of her life. It didn’t take her long to start disliking the easygoing way of Tella Meda. It seemed wrong and sinful that those 17–18-year-old girls, Chetana and Kokila, would just prance around and talk to men of all ages. And one of them was a prostitute’s daughter? Oh, Shiva, Shiva, what had the world come to!
    But her biggest problem was what she saw happening between the white man and the guru of the ashram. She watched them like a hawk. For morning puja she made sure she was there along with Subhadra to ensure that nothing foul went on between the two. Charvi was a good Brahmin girl and a guru. Associating with these immoral white men was wrong in so many ways. Renuka decided that once she had been there awhile she would take some control of Tella Meda and not allow men like this to come and stay. No matter how much money they left behind, it was not right to have a white-skinned man stay in the ashram where so many young girls lived.
    Charvi barely noticed the arrival of Renuka. She was so consumed by her discussions and walks with Mark Talbot that everything else whittled into nothing. After the first few days, even the guilt she felt at her attraction for him passed and now there was a glow on her face. There was a change in the pace of her heart and a freedom she felt for the first time. This must be love, she thought. This must be the love that they talk about in the books: incandescent, self-illuminating, fulfilling, and almost painful.
    “During the great battle, The Mahabharata, cousins were at war. The hundred Kaurava brothers were fighting against the five Pandava brothers. Armies had been amassed and the war was to begin. Arjuna, a Pandava, was torn. His charioteer was Lord Krishna, who saw the pain his friend and disciple was going through. They had been preparing for battle for days, weeks, years now, yet at the time of reckoning, Arjuna couldn’t imagine lifting his bow and shooting arrows at his own cousins, at his teacher, at people he grew up with, at his friends and family.
    “It was then that Lord Krishna took his godly form and rose . . . See that picture there, Mark?” Charvi pointed to a painting in the music room.
    It was a beautiful re-creation of the battle described in the great epic, The Mahabharata. Armies were scattered on either side of an empty strip of land where Arjuna kneeled in front of a large Krishna who took his original form and showed the world and Arjuna that he was indeed a reincarnation of Lord Vishnu.
    “That is Arjuna, he who is kneeling, and Lord Krishna . . . well, he doesn’t need to be described. He is God, eternal, all-encompassing,” Charvi said with a small smile. “This is where Lord Krishna imparts the Bhagavad-Gita to Arjuna. Bhagavad-Gita literally means ‘the divine song’ and it is here he tells Arjuna that you have to put your personal feelings aside and fight the good