The City of Devi

by Manil Suri

  “A function of opportunity,” I hear my father say. He always maintained that the difference between the tolerant and the extremist was not so great. “Looking into the Other, we can always find something of ourselves within.” By which logic I, too, should have the power to reach out to this Limbu: plant a notion, sow a seed, that might influence him. Who knew what native intelligence lay under that scruffy exterior, what sensitive personality, what endearing face? I decide to share the fact that I’m Muslim—this will be the stepping stone towards establishing a connection.

  “Lying dog!” He turns around and spits in my face. “I know you’re one of the Hindus who got away from the train. We’re all around—you’ll never escape.”

  So I try to establish my Islamic credentials by reciting the opening of the Koran, not only in Urdu, but also in Arabic. This only enrages him further. “You’ll rot in hell for passing such holy words through your infidel lips!” He spits at me again, but this time I dodge out of the way.

  Not only does my bridge-building experiment crash, it provokes the Limbu to get louder and more abusive. “Just try crossing the causeway—our guards will cut your pig-fucking bodies to bits.” Sarita pulls back her veil to register her alarm at his ranting—will I have to kill him to ensure we’re not found out? Except I know I can’t—the only gun this Bond has ever discharged is his own. What I do instead, as our captive brazenly starts calling for help, is to step forward and tap him on the back of the head with the butt of the gun. “Ow,” he says, turning around to look at me angrily, so I tap him again, a bit harder. This time, he staggers to the ground. Reluctantly, I tap him a third time, and to my horror, my hand comes up covered in blood.

  We break into a run, clearing the ramparts of the fort, sprinting around a row of sheds whose corrugated roofs reflect the moonlight in strips. Thousands of bamboo poles lie stacked in front, more burst forth from wooden pens, like toothpicks rising from giant holders. Trucks loaded with bamboo stand abandoned all around, parked right on the sand. Looming ahead, I make out a pair of ghostly white cylindrical structures that remind me of the tanks of a petrol refinery. The sea to our left is calm—in the light of the moon, its surface looks oily. The tide is low, but the smell is worse—a blend of putrefying fish and sewage.

  I slow down, then come to a stop. Sarita draws up beside me. The causeway is just visible beyond the cylinders—a shadow shooting off over the water towards the fabled shores of Bandra. From this angle, it seems a lot lower than I imagined, something one could almost leap up to grab and swing across by the rafters. Beyond such acrobatics, though, the only practical alternative seems to be to run the gauntlet of surface guards the Limbu has boasted about. “It’s not going to work, is it?” Sarita says. “We’ll have to find a way by sea like Rahim warned.”

  So we start searching the sands for a boat. But other than some tarpaulin-covered vessels too enormous to move, our quest only yields two upturned scuppers, with visibly rotten wooden bases.

  “I LOVE YOU.” Perhaps I shouldn’t have pushed my luck with those three fateful words. Or perhaps the evil eye from the shikaris at Nehru Park did stick. Although we lived together for three more years, things between Karun and me began unraveling soon after that walk. It started when I accompanied him on a Sunday visit to Karnal to meet his mother.

  All during the train ride, Karun kept rhapsodizing about her sweetness, her empathy, her gracious fortitude through the years of hardship she had endured. With the stories he’d related already, I expected someone with a halo over her head—a combination of Mother India and the holy Mary, who could whip up a killer curry to boot. She did, in fact, look ethereal when I first glimpsed her at the door—sunlight shining off her white sari and sluicing down her cascade of silver hair—a queen mother from a fairy tale.

  Except she turned out to be more witch than fairy. “Karun’s told me so much about you—this spell you’ve cast on him. One day I’ll have to come and see for myself why you’re so special as a roommate.”

  “It’s the flat that’s special, not me—since we’re so close to Karun’s college.”

  “Surely not closer than the campus hostel? But I suppose if he moved you’d have to pay the full rent yourself.”

  She had prepared the garlic mutton Karun always mentioned so reverentially. To me, it tasted quite acrid, with alarming chunks of gristle left in, to stretch the meat, perhaps. “Karun tells me you’re hoping to save money for your wedding. Who’s the lucky girl?”

  “I haven’t found one yet, not exactly.”

  “No girl? Aren’t your parents looking for one?”

  “I’m just not in any hurry.”

  “Why not? You’ve already got a job, so this is the time to settle down. Don’t wait too long—you know how people can talk. I keep telling Karun even he should marry, but perhaps he’s too taken by your example. Who better than a wife to look after him while he’s slaving over his physics? All the time he wastes on shopping and cleaning, not to mention these kitchen experiments with you every night. Besides, I’m fifty-five already—it’s time to give me a grandchild.”

  She asked the obligatory questions about job and parents, being careful to display only polite surprise at my being Muslim. (“I didn’t realize Jaz stood for Ijaz—Karun’s never used your full name.”) Instead, she used her inquiries to peck away at the central riddle of why I was in Delhi, living with her son. “Didn’t your mother try to stop you when you chose to move so far away? Surely there are better jobs for you in Bombay with all the financial centers there?”

  “I needed the change.”

  “That’s the same thing Karun said when he applied for his Bombay scholarship. I’m not sure why everyone wants change so much—each time my life has changed, it’s been for the worse.”

  After lunch, she carefully unfolded two ten-rupee notes from a tiny purse. “Why don’t you go get some jalebis from the sweet monger? It’s three, so they should be really fresh.” I rose to accompany Karun, but she waved me back to the sofa. “Not you, you’re the guest.”

  Unsure what Kali incarnation she planned to metamorphose into once Karun left, I scrambled to turn on the Jazter charm before she could produce a phalanx of extra arms or a garland of severed heads. “He’s very smart, your son. You must be so proud of him.” A bit lame, but I couldn’t muster any other compliment.

  It was enough. The smile frozen on her lips since my arrival finally broke through to her eyes and lit up her face. “He topped his class every year in school right from the eighth standard. Studying so hard every night that I’d have to insist he put away his books and go to bed. I have all his report cards saved in his old attaché case.”

  She told me how they collected one-rupee coins in empty jam jars for him to spend. “Except he always bought books, so one day, I decided to empty all the bottles and get him something fun—a game, perhaps. You should have seen his face when I told him what I’d done—I don’t think I ever saw him so furious.” She laughed. “But he ended up loving my purchase—a small telescope, not much more than a toy really, since that’s all the money I had. He would set it up by that window and study the stars through it every night.” She gazed towards the corner of the room as if Karun still stood there peering through his telescope, and for an instant, I could picture him as well.

  “Did you know his father passed when he was eleven?”

  “Yes, Karun told me how much you’ve done for him ever since.”

  “No more than any other mother would have. But with just the two of us left instead of three, I had to keep every fiber in my body attuned towards his success. I’d always known he was a bit of a dreamer, prone to get lost in thought, unsure of what he wanted for himself. Channeling him into science was easy—his father had already laid the groundwork for that. The books, too, he’d always liked—I taught him to bury all his grief in them. It tore my heart to see him so lonely, but I told myself it would pay off in future happiness. Even that day in the toy store, when I went to buy so
mething purely for fun—the telescope, I couldn’t help thinking, might be more profitable, lead to a possible career interest.”

  “You were just doing what was best for him.”

  “That’s what I thought. Except if I’d encouraged him to make some friends, to go to movies or play cricket, he’d have suffered from his father’s absence less. He’d be less inclined to take the wrong path to cure his aloneness. Less vulnerable to having his head turned, to fall under anyone’s spell.”

  “I don’t think I know what you mean.”

  She fixed me in her stare, the clarity in her eyes breathtaking. “What I’m trying to say is that Karun is my son, the focal point in my life—I understand him better than he understands himself. He’d find it difficult to hide even a sneeze from me—anything going on in his life, I can tell. I know exactly what will make him fulfilled, who will bring him misery and nothing else. I can look into people’s faces and recognize their natures much better than he can—I’m prepared to do anything in my power to keep him safe from harmful influences. His happiness is sacred to me—I’ve worked too long and hard to let him just throw it away like that.”

  Whole minutes seemed to elapse before she released me from her gaze. “I’ll make some teas for the jalebis,” she finally said.

  “I THINK SHE KNOWS about us,” I told Karun on the train back. “I think that’s why she probably doesn’t like me very much.”

  “That’s absurd. If she did know, she’d like you more, not less. I’m thinking of telling her anyway.” Seeing my stunned expression, he retreated. “It’s only a thought.”

  But he did disclose things to her, on a visit some months later. I could tell by his disheveled hair, his wild-eyed look, when he returned. “She didn’t take it as well as I thought. She wants me to marry—she reminded me of everything she’s done and said it’s the only thing she asks in return. She thinks you’re a bad influence, not so much because of your community or religion, but the foreign ideas you’ve brought back from living abroad. Ideas against our culture, she says—she demands I move out at once.”

  That night, Karun didn’t want to have sex, but I insisted. I wanted to remind him why he stayed with me, to head off any notion he might form of leaving. At first, he simply spread his legs and stared into his pillow as I explored him with my tongue. He offered no resistance or reaction when I wrapped him in my arms and began to enter him. As my thrusts increased, he tried to shake loose, but I held him in place. He arched his neck back, crying out and curling his fingers into fists as we simultaneously came.

  Cuddling him to my neck the way he liked afterwards, I asked him if he’d do what his mother wanted. “Don’t worry. I just have to make her understand that this is the way it is.” He said it defiantly, as if affirming it more to himself. “Besides, I’m no longer eligible for the hostel, and it’s not like I can afford my own place.”

  He underestimated her. She developed cancer, the witch. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect—one Sunday, he bravely recited for her the speech he had rehearsed; the next, she calmly countered with her announcement. “She’d gone for a checkup last week. The results came this Thursday. It’s quite bad, since it might have spread to her spine. She says I shouldn’t worry, that she’s resigned to her fate. I know it’s crazy, but I can’t help thinking that if I hadn’t told her—”

  “You’re right, that is completely crazy. You know there’s no connection.”

  “Still, I can’t help but feel responsible. After all she did for me. And now she’s not even asking for anything.”

  Of course she’s not, I felt like saying—was it so difficult to understand her strategy? Didn’t he realize the power of guilt? For all I knew, she might have fabricated the whole three-hankie drama to wean him away from me. Would it be too untoward to ask if I could take a good, hard look at the X-rays myself?

  Then I felt sorry for him—even bad, a little bit, for the witch. “If you ever need to bring your mother to Delhi for tests or treatment, she can stay with us.”

  But she refused to come to Delhi, even though it offered hospitals much better than any in Karnal. She claimed it was too far, though Karun and I both recognized this as a protest against my continuing presence. She began playing the matrimonial market for Karun, soliciting matches and responding to newspaper ads. Each Sunday, he returned with a new packet of notes and photographs. “All she keeps begging me for is a grandchild in the time she has left.”

  As her health declined, Karun spent Saturdays in Karnal, then Fridays as well. More months went by, and he changed his status to part-time, then suspended his university work altogether a year and a half into her illness. He spent two months nursing her through chemotherapy, and when she was better, began returning to Delhi on Sundays. I wanted to go to Karnal to see him, but he stopped me each time, saying he wouldn’t be able to get away from her bedside.

  About a year after Karun’s mother received her diagnosis, an unrelated problem had cropped up. Mrs. Singh fell in love with a Sikh gentleman living in Noida and started spending a lot of her time there. We’d had an inkling something was up ever since encountering her in a bright orange salwaar kameez one evening, trailing clouds of perfume down the steps. With her daughter recently married off, this left Harjeet as the only day-to-day occupant of the flat below.

  At first, we tried to ignore his increased harassment. Instead of just blocking our way on the steps, he now started bumping into us, causing groceries to be knocked out of our hands on more than one occasion. Our mail disappeared from the common receptacle downstairs, forcing us to rent a post office box. The unemployed Sikh youths he hung out with became a permanent fixture downstairs—each night, they got drunk and sang Bollywood songs with crudely altered lyrics (“Homo Shanti Homo,” “Love Mera Shit Shit”). One day, we found a puddle of urine outside our door—another time, a pair of underwear stiff with semen on our balcony.

  Mrs. Singh, when we finally tracked her down, dismissed our complaints—her Harjeet was a good boy incapable of anything like that. If we had a problem, we could always find another place. Except we couldn’t, and we all knew that. In addition to the problem of finding a landlord open to both Hindus and Muslims, rents had shot up dramatically in keeping with the overheated economy.

  Although I learnt to brush off Harjeet’s bullying attempts (swaggering past when he blocked my way, responding in kind when he muttered insults), Karun got more cowed. He peered down before descending the steps to make sure Harjeet wasn’t lying in wait, and came up with only the most anemic rejoinders when verbally taunted. “I hate it,” he said. “Is this what we have to look forward to our whole lives—dealing with people like him?” I sometimes wondered if he spent more time in Karnal just to escape Harjeet.

  WITH KARUN GONE so much of the time, the Jazter’s urges often remained unrelieved—he no longer got regularly milked. The palm, the sock, the fruit, the fowl—their creative use helped, but only in a limited way. For a while he fought the good battle, thinking about the park he’d stumbled upon with Karun, but not venturing near. Riding a bus to the stop one day, but turning back at the gate. Darting in just for a little peek at the flowers after that, but trying not to notice the fauna frolic. Joining them for a quick modeling jaunt down the runway the next time, but the self-control still commendably in place.

  And then it happened. A glance exchanged, a path into the trees, a bed of grass with the familiar blue ceiling. A quick game of cobra and burrow, mongoose and den, and relief came surging in (or out, technically). Shirts tucked, zippers zipped, no need for pleasantries to be exchanged. The bus waiting to take me back—such a convenient one-stop shopping trip.

  I got home congratulating myself on the solution I’d found—why hadn’t I thought of it before? The answer lay in wait—guilt broke upon me in an overwhelming wave as soon as I stepped through the door. The cupboard we shared, the bed we slept in, the table at which we ate—everything reminded me of my betrayal. Hadn’t I professed my devotion
to Karun each time he clung tightly to me during his brief home visits? How could I have done this to him, especially with his mother so sick?

  But logically speaking, what difference did it make? Since I didn’t intend to tell him, the question of hurt didn’t arise. Besides, I always used protection, so I wasn’t exposing him to any risk. In fact, my actions promoted a positive outlook, an upbeat disposition, which helped me be more supportive. Wer rastet, rostet—what rests, rusts.Surely it behooved the Jazter to remain prepared, to keep his parts well-lubricated?

  So I went back to the park. I reacquainted myself with sweat and spit, how different men smelled, how they felt, how they tasted. I explored all the cruisy new internet sites, learnt the mores of shikar in virtual spaces. Each time Karun returned home, I suspended these efforts and concentrated solely on him. He had grown thinner and looked gaunt—in his hair, I even found a few strands of grey. He spent a lot of time lying in bed, with no appetite for sex and little resistance when I initiated it. I wondered if he suspected my transgressions, somehow sensed the other men my body had been intimate with. He spoke very little of his mother except to say she was steadily deteriorating—the doctors had given her a few more months to live. He didn’t mention the matrimonial ads any more. Sometimes he leafed silently through his abandoned Ph.D. thesis.

  I tried to rally my affection for him, to remind myself of the joys of our relationship. But his listlessness was so draining, his gloom so contagious, that I felt relief at the end of each visit. Sighing away the guilt, I continued in the same taxi to the park after dropping him off at the train station.

  WALKING ALONG MAHIM BEACH, still on the lookout for something seaworthy to Bandra, Sarita and I stumble onto a group of people huddling against a shed. At first I start, my hand instinctively dipping into my pocket to close around my gun. But then I notice they’re not Limbus—everyone’s much too clean-cut and well-dressed. “Hello,” one of them calls out, her voice friendly, breezy. She seems in her late twenties, as do the others. “Are you here for Sequeira’s? The ferry should stop by any minute.”