Chapter One

Tella Meda, the House with the White Roof

They took strips of coconut leaves and made dolls with them. The supple leaves could be twisted and turned without breaking. They would use red tilakam to make the eyes, nose, and mouth of the dolls. A small swatch of white cloth would sometimes become a sari or a shirt. Then the dolls would be forgotten, left to dry in the sun when the call for lunch or dinner came from downstairs.

Kokila’s earliest memories of living in Tella Meda, the house with the white roof, were of making those dolls with Vidura and Chetana. Closest in age to her, they were her best friends in the ashram, and together they got into a lot of mischief. They tied leftover crackers from deepavali to the tail of the cat, Brahma; they tortured those who sat in meditation by making noises and faces; and they ran around the courtyard, squealing and screeching in the afternoon after lunch, while everyone was trying to take a nap.

Those were the happy times, Kokila would think later on when she looked back. Those were, alas, only happy memories.

Kokila came to Tella Meda an orphan, a month after her marriage. She had just turned eleven.

In those days girls were married before they reached puberty, but they couldn’t go to their husband’s home until after they menstruated. For Kokila the three years before she menstruated were spent at Tella Meda, the home of her late father’s friend Ramanandam Sastri.

Built right by the Bay of Bengal in the small coastal town of Bheemunipatnam in southern India, the house with the white roof was not a conventional home. Tella Meda was a ho