Song of the Cuckoo Bird: A Novel (55 page)

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

1. 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?
   
2. 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?
   
3. 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?
   
4. 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?
   
5. 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?
   
6. Are there any purely good or purely evil characters in
   Song of the
   Cuckoo Bird
   ?
   
7. How did you feel the men in the novel were portrayed? Fairly or unfairly? Realistically or unrealistically?
   
8. 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?
   
9. 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?
   
10. 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 CATALOGING-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

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