The City of Devi

by Manil Suri

  I decided to write one final farewell letter to Karun. With the envelope all sealed and stamped, I found I’d misplaced his Karnal address. In desperation, I wrote to his Delhi university to ask if they still might have it in their records. To my surprise, the physics department secretary wrote back. Karun, she informed me, had returned to finish his Ph.D., then moved on to Mumbai. I stared at his neatly typed Colaba address.

  ZARA TELLS US THE ferry comes from Worli, close to where the sea link used to begin. “Sequeira’s offered the service for years, ever since he opened his club. We worked at the call center then, and went dancing late at night after our shift ended—he always had samosas and chutney sandwiches waiting for us. Quite a character, as you’ll see—I’ve actually come to know him quite well. Now that we’re grown up and past our call-center fun, my friends have spread out from Worli all the way to Versova. But luckily, there’s a ferry stop near each one of us, so even with this war and everything, we can still get together at Sequeira’s.”

  “And the Limbus simply let you come and go as you please?”

  Zara laughs. “Sequeira pays everyone off—especially the gangsters who control the waterways—the same ones who control most of Mahim, incidentally. The Limbus can’t afford to antagonize the gangsters, so they keep their distance from the upper beach. They quietly take Sequeira’s money and pretend they don’t see the ferries. This is India, after all—accommodation above everything. Besides, these Limbus don’t have quite the power they’d like you to think. Over the workers and refugees, yes—but not if you have connections or wealth.”

  “Still, a nightclub? Isn’t that exactly what they’re supposed to be against?”

  “Ha! See those floating lights further up the creek? They’re smaller boats, operated by the low-caste Dalits who live along the Mithi river. They’ll take you anywhere across for a fee. You know who they’ll always have as customers? Limbus crossing over secretly. Ever since the ban on alcohol, every Christian in Bandra seems to have opened up a speakeasy across the creek. Go to any of the cheaper ones and you’ll see Limbus pawing at the women and lolling around in their drink.”

  Zara tells Sarita that if she wants to take her burkha off, the boatman will keep it until it’s time to return. “It’s not so difficult a compromise, I suppose. If the Limbus insist I keep myself covered in return for keeping me safe, then fine, I’ll oblige. As a Muslim, I’d be too scared to live anywhere else. Even Bandra, where they supposedly welcome all religions, where some of my younger friends, both Christian and Muslim, fled. They’ll be the first in line when the Hindus decide to expand—there’s little to separate them from Bhim’s men.”

  We pass between two pylons of the sea link that still stand, like pillars of a massive nautical gate, a memorial to the ground zero where destruction began. I look up to see a section of bridge dangling directly overhead, strands of metal cable sprouting from its edges. To think the city had succeeded in this herculean battle with the sea to connect its north and south halves—will it ever be able to replicate this triumph? A light breeze from the open bay beyond ripples the water, which appears surprisingly high for low tide. Does the rise in level stem from global warming, a consequence of the cataclysmic monsoons we’ve been having? Or has the sea sensed the city’s vulnerability, flowing as it does each day around the ruptured link? Is it reconnoitering the shores of its old enemy, building for a secret assault? The final surge that will rise up to conquer Mumbai?

  The night unexpectedly fills with disco music playing from speakers on either end of the ferry. “The captain figures that once we cross under the sea link, we’re out of Mahim,” Zara says. A few of the passengers even begin to dance on the deck. Zara tugs at the burkha Sarita still has on. “When will you take this off?”

  So Sarita works her body out of its purple cocoon. She emerges radiant, like a butterfly. More accurate, a radioactive butterfly: her sari glows a startling red as if steeped in uranium-spiked dye. She looks at herself in horror and amazement, smoothing down the folds, brushing at the electrified pleats with the back of her hand as if she can somehow calm the fabric. “The glowing sari,” she whispers. “This must be what Guddi meant.”

  “That’s so cool!” Zara exclaims. “It reminds me of my friend Rashida. Her wedding headdress had a thousand tiny bulbs flashing on and off during the whole ceremony. But tell me, how does it work?—do you have batteries hidden somewhere in the petticoat?” Zara feels the material, then examines her fingertips as if to check whether the fluorescence has rubbed off. “I promised not to pry, so I won’t even ask why you’re dressed in this particular red.”

  But she can’t quite shake off her curiosity. She keeps alternating her gaze between the two of us, commenting on what a “cosmopolitan” couple we make, how bride-like Sarita appears, in a “temple” sort of way. Finally she blurts it out. “You’re Hindu, aren’t you? And he’s Muslim! That’s why the Limbus were chasing you—they caught you in the middle of your elopement!”

  Sarita starts to dispel this notion, but I smoothly cut her off. “It’s correct, more or less, what you’ve guessed. But promise not to tell anyone—we have to keep it a secret to be safe.”

  Zara actually squeals in delight. “I knew it! And the sari? Don’t tell me you went and actually got married?”

  “We did. Just this morning.” It’s too tempting an opportunity, too wicked a prospect—the Jazter and his lover’s wife, linked together in matrimony. Besides, it seems the perfect way to explain away Sarita’s flamboyant getup, not to mention our presence in Mahim. I proceed to weave such a rousing tale of childhood sweethearts yearning to unite across the religious divide that stars light up Zara’s face, tears tremble at the corners of her eyes. Sarita looks on in consternation as I describe risking life and limb to venture into the Hindu area where she lived. “If the bomb killed us, I wanted to at least die married. Even her mother melted when she saw our resolve—she found a last-minute priest to marry us in the temple downstairs.” My mistake, I said, was to sneak back into Mahim for my father’s blessing. “He was so outraged he set the local Limbus on our tail—we’ve been on the run ever since.” Our only hope now was to make it to Bandra, where Sarita’s brother might take us in.

  “All we have is the clothes on our back. That, a little money, and a love no longer afraid to speak its name.” I take my sweetheart’s startled hand in mine and kiss it.

  Zara wants to call her friends around so I can relate my story to them, but I remind her again about the need for discretion, for safety’s sake. “You’ll have to tell Sequeira, though,” she says. “He’ll be absolutely thrilled. He’s always trying to get different religions together—says it’s the very spirit of Bandra. Just ask him, and I’m sure he’ll personally take you to your brother’s in the morning.”

  Once Zara shimmies away to the dance music, I apologize to Sarita. “I hope that didn’t upset you. It seemed the best way not to get her suspicious about your outfit.”

  “It’s OK,” Sarita says, though the chagrin hasn’t quite cleared her face. “I wouldn’t have thought all those stories were necessary, but what difference does it make? We’ll all be going our separate ways soon enough anyway.”

  The ferry docks beside a floating gangplank. The boatman collects the fares as we exit—a whopping two thousand per person, which includes entry to Sequeira’s. As I count out the money, I mentally give thanks to Auntie Rahim for the financial help.

  Although we can hear the nightclub, feel the pulsing throb of its music through the air, we can’t see it. A man with a flashlight leads us along a path marked out with white rope. Sarita glides along at my side, casting a soft red radiance on the rocks, like a luminescent creature from the deep taking its first magical steps on land.

  The club materializes from the darkness, a large, faceless structure with the looming air of a warehouse. “Sequeira used to have his disco right next to the water,” Zara explains. “But then Mehboob Studios down the road sold him this place. It mi
ght not look like much, but they filmed parts of Superdevi in it.” The cavernous space inside is broken up into a series of recycled movie sets. People sip drinks in the seats of an Air India plane, they climb the sweeping staircase of a palatial mansion, lounge around the gardens of a Mughal palace. In the center, I even see what looks like the surface of the moon. “Remember the famous scene from the movie? When Baby Rinky voyages to the moon to get the magic crystal from the goddess there and attain the powers of a devi?”

  The lunar surface is actually a dance floor—about two hundred people, in their twenties and thirties, gyrate to the tune of a remixed disco version of “I am Superdevi.” As we watch, a woman takes off her top and dances in bra and shorts among a group of shirtless men. “It’s a rebellion against the burkha,” Zara says, as another woman, also down to her bra, joins in. “A few months ago, nobody would have dreamt of something like this. But now people just want to thumb their noses at the Limbus. And Bhim as well. If the younger set doesn’t do it, who will?”

  The Air India bar has a price list—Zara notices me wince at the thousand-rupee beers, the fifteen-hundred-rupee martinis. “Sequeira’s been jacking up the tab every week. He thinks everyone our age must have made so much money in the boom years that he’s doing us a favor by giving us a chance to enjoy it before it gets too late.”

  Just then, Sequeira himself appears in a spotlight on the balcony above the Mughal garden. He’s dressed in vintage Bollywood—silver suit and top hat, white gloves and a bejeweled cane—something Amitabh Bachchan might have worn in one of his potboiler films, circa the seventies. “Welcome to the end of the world,” Sequeira says, swinging and wheeling jauntily, like old people do to show they’re still spry. He raises his cane to acknowledge the catcalls and cheers that rise from the dance floor. “You’re the brave ones, the ones who haven’t abandoned Bombay despite the rumors, despite all the efforts to tear us apart. This evening, Sequeira’s is going to be your reward. Whether or not the bomb falls, the most important thing tonight, like every night this week, is to dance as if tomorrow will never dawn!”

  The crowd roars, the spotlight goes off, and Sarita gets even brighter at my side as the club is plunged into darkness. A siren starts up and a rocket-shaped missile descends from the ceiling. Inscribed along the sides are the words ATOM BOMB, blinking red lights outline its tail and fins. As it touches down, the darkness erupts with blinding flashes and thunderous explosions. “Superdevi” starts up again, and a horde of onlookers swarm to the dance floor. Zara insists we accompany her. “Your duty as newlyweds. Plus you need to burn up the floor in that sexy sari!” She goes on without us only after extracting a promise that we’ll join in for a future song.

  The dancing makes me morose, bringing up memories of the one time I managed to drag Karun to a Gay Bombay disco. It took a good deal of further cajoling to actually lure him onto the floor, where he remained stilted and self-conscious. And yet, I found the awkward little twists I was able to coax out, the unsure waggles and bobs, completely endearing. I never did fulfill my new year’s pledge that winter to teach him the moves.

  Sarita seems lost in nostalgia as well—could she have had better luck? At teaching Karun something more staid, like the waltz or foxtrot? I imagine them swirling down a polished ballroom floor, smoldering in each other’s arms. A burst of jealousy lances me at the thought.

  She glances up at me, suddenly alert to my presence. Does she suspect something amiss, now that she’s had a chance to slow down and cogitate? I brace myself for more questions about the newlywed charade I pulled on the ferry, but she’s honed in on a more perilous slip. “When Rahim asked you about his uncle and auntie—I thought you mentioned your father died early?”

  So she did catch Rahim’s inconvenient little revelation back at the hotel. “You misunderstood. He was asking about my father’s sister and her husband, not my parents. They’re auntie and uncle to both of us—my poor cousin, stuck in that hotel, doesn’t get to see them as much.”

  She narrows her eyes and knits her brow, but lapses into silence. Just when I think I might slide by with my response, she springs the question I’ve anticipated all along. “Were you and Rahim—together?”

  Normally, the Jazter is militantly up-front in such matters, but this is hardly the shrewdest moment to promote gay visibility, to wave the rainbow flag in her face. “It happened a long time ago. Kids try out all sorts of things, you know.”

  I think that should do the trick, convince her to drop it, but I’m wrong. “And now? Is that what—? Has that become your—preference?” She has trouble enunciating the word.

  “You mean men? You’re asking if I sleep with men? Not that it’s any of your business, but no.” Twenty questions is the last game I want to play, so I vent the words with all the offended self-righteousness I can muster.

  She colors immediately. “I’m sorry. It’s just what Rahim was saying about a boy you followed—”

  “Forget what Rahim says—he looks at everything through a lavender lens. That was just a colleague who brought me to Delhi for a job, not even a friend. The fact is, I’m not like Rahim—never have been.” The Jazter deserves to rot in hell for uttering such self-denying blasphemy. All in the interest of regaining his true love, he swears silently, to Allah or Jesus or Krishna or anyone else up there listening.

  We go back to gazing at the crowd, Sarita’s forehead furrowed again. Perhaps I should ask her to dance—throw her off by flaunting my newly proclaimed hetero state. An ancient ABBA song comes on, the perfect opportunity, since it’s a tune even she must surely be familiar with. But she interrupts me as I try to summon up the right amount of swagger to make my bid. “Delhi’s such an interesting city. When did you live there?”

  Her matter-of-factness makes me instantly vigilant—is she trying to figure whether Karun and I overlapped? Fortunately, Zara rescues me from having to respond, by bringing over Sequeira for an introduction. He looks even older up close than he did on the balcony, his face a palimpsest of deep-set wrinkles under powdery makeup. “My goodness,” he exclaims. “When Zara said you were a glowing bride, I didn’t think she meant it literally.”

  “I told Uncle about your elopement. He said he’d help you find your brother in the morning.”

  “Of course I will. But the morning’s a long way away. The night, as they say, is young—we have a lot to celebrate.”

  The champagne a waiter brings over is nice and chilled, and most importantly, free. Though the Jazter can’t help feel a twinge if this is to be his last taste, and it hails from Nasik, not Reims. Sequeira makes several expansive toasts to us, barely sipping from his glass, but generous with the refills each time I knock back mine. “See, we must have known you were coming. Not only do we have disco lights instead of candles tonight, in honor of your wedding, but—you must have felt it already—air-conditioning!”

  “Blowing your entire stock of generator fuel already?” Zara laughs. “Not to mention the champagne reserves. What if they don’t drop the bomb after all?”

  “Actually, my dear, it’s all thanks to our intrepid merchant class—the Gujus, the Banias, the Marwaris, the whole lot. They’re so crazed by the idea of showing a loss in case their warehouses blow up that these last few days they’ve been coming door to door and practically giving away their stocks. In fact, have you looked in the cave? It’s the first time in months I’ve had the power to hook it all up.”

  “Not the cave!” Zara grabs Sarita’s hand in excitement. “It’s amazing—you won’t believe it!” She leads us all past the dance floor, through a door in the backdrop of the mansion set. We find ourselves in a large chamber whose blue walls give way to the emptiness of the warehouse above. In the center two women zap and dart and fly through the air as they engage in a laser fight.

  It takes a moment to spot the machinery whirring above, the wires holding them up, the straps and harnesses and levitating foot stands. The “lasers” consist of tubes that emit a green fluorescence—showe
rs of sparks fly each time they touch a surface.

  “The fights in Superdevi,” Sequeira says. “This is what they used. It’s quite a neat mechanism, actually. There’s a control lever they each have which raises and lowers them through the air, but the rest depends on how they thrust their bodies.”

  “But where have you hidden the other machine, the one with the flying platform?” Zara asks. “That’s what I want to ride—it’s my favorite.”

  “Ah, don’t remind me. It’s all too sad—I had to give it away. I’m not allowed to tell anyone what they’re using it for now—let’s just say it’s the price one pays. Even here in Bandra, to remain open, to remain safe.”

  Zara tries to pry out more information about the missing machine’s whereabouts, which she says gives the illusion of floating in the air without wires or harnesses, but Sequeira remains secretive. Instead, he leads us to the head of a line of people waiting to take the place of the battling devis. “You’re newlyweds, so you get to jump the queue. Uncle Sequeira’s wedding present: the first fight of your marriage, for good luck’s sake.”

  The idea is so absurd that I laugh. Zara chimes in that it’s a lot of fun and we have to try it, that it will look especially spectacular with Sarita already dressed in her devi sari. I am startled when Sarita nods yes. “Unless, that is, my darling husband is too scared.” She looks at me defiantly and I’m forced to take up the challenge.

  “For the movie, they hid the harness under Baby Rinky’s clothes,” Sequeira explains as he straps us in. “That’s why you couldn’t see it. And the foot pedestals, being blue like the background screens, are invisible.” He shows us how to operate the motion lever and puts a laser in each of our hands. “May the best superhero win.”