The City of Devi

by Manil Suri

  Once the petals are all scattered and the large canvas bags hanging from Shyamu’s neck filled with booty, Guddi guides him towards the Indica. The ride seems to get less bumpy as soon as the beach gives way to pavement (though Guddi insists Shyamu much prefers walking on the sand). We bob past armies of Khaki guards holding back the throngs of devotees, to the main entry, situated around the corner. Shyamu curls back his trunk and trumpets—on cue, the heavy metal gates swing open. Could Karun’s van have passed through this same portal?

  Inside, the driveway winds up towards the majestic arch of the entrance, with its golden Mughal domes and alternating baby gopurams. Lights blaze everywhere, profligately so, perhaps to underscore the contrast with the power-starved city outside. The compound is still lush with thickets of Hawaiian shrubs and bushes, though the elephants seem to have chomped off several of their tops. Three of the animals stand in line, like unwieldy planes on a runway, waiting to take off. “The left ramp is too steep—some of them go halfway and get stuck,” Guddi explains. “Even with this longer ramp, they can only go up one by one.” She starts cooing into Shyamu’s ear upon getting the signal to launch. He takes his first tentative steps up the incline, but slows noticeably two-thirds of the way up. By the time we near the top, Shyamu is trumpeting anxiously, pausing between each doddering step. “Come on, you can do it—keep going, don’t stop.” But Shyamu refuses to go any further. All of a sudden, Guddi jabs her elbows sharply into the sides of his neck. With a startled bellow, Shyamu staggers up the remaining distance and barrels through the entrance.

  The lobby still retains a hint of tuberose fragrance, barely discernible under the cloying earthiness of dung. The Anish Kapoor chairs lie jumbled with the front desk in a corner, cleared away to make a path for the elephants. Even the metal detector’s two halves have been separated to pachyderm breadth—the machine beeps resentfully as we sail through, indicating it’s still plugged in for some reason. The Khakis have been busy redecorating—splashing religious slogans over the panels showing the history of zero, imprinting the Hussain mural with crude likenesses of Hindu gods. A Mumbadevi amazon deployed at a focal point of the central atrium looks curiously stunted by the elephants lumbering past.

  Shyamu barges into the Sensex bar, where quotes for long-defunct stocks still whirl around the walls. A huge round metal trough stands on the floor—with a shock I recognize it as the polished torus sculpture that hung over the lobby. Three elephants root through the vegetation mounded in its center, searching with their trunks for rotting cabbages. Guddi tries to steer Shyamu away, but it is the dung-clearing attendants, following us since we entered, who finally coax him back with their brooms and scoops. As we pass through the atrium, he tries to hook onto the plants spiraling down from the cascade of balcony levels above. But their ends are all out of reach—other elephants have already pulled or bitten them off.

  Hundreds of people crowd the rear of the atrium, where it widens into the “Stomach of India” restaurant. Some sit listlessly at tables, like diners despairing of ever catching the attention of a waiter, others doze on the floor, curled up under cream-colored tablecloths. “The whole world has come for a glimpse of Devi ma,” Guddi says, and I notice the dosa grill converted into a check-in counter of sorts. Apparently, the sight of an elephant tromping through the dining room no longer engages—even the children are too inured to look up.

  We ride directly into the garden, through a large opening of dismantled panels in the rear glass wall. The lateral wing of the hotel stretches along our left—somewhere from the third floor, a bridal suite beckons for me to investigate. Except who is to say I might not spot Karun simply walking around? Strolling the hibiscus-planted terrace, ambling by the outdoor Soma Bar, watching a game at the badminton court? I peer at the people we pass, but do not find the face I seek. Cleaning crews, rifle-toting guards, waiters bearing trays—where have all the guests gone?

  The floodlit pool offers a smattering of swimmers who do not look like staff. I feel a sharp stab of nostalgia for the morning after our wedding when Karun and I came down here. Our first married dip—could everyone tell this was my husband I swam with? The kiss underwater when I almost lost my nerve, and barely touched his lips.

  Shyamu interrupts my reverie, by swinging so sharply that he clips one of the pillars lining the path. “No, Shyamu, no, you can’t go in there—the stable’s up ahead,” Guddi shouts, and I see he is aimed directly for the pool. None of her ear-pulling and elbow-jabbing tricks work, nor do her screams for him to stop. Lounge chairs buckle and pop underfoot as swimmers scramble towards the edges. Nodding his head sagely and curling his trunk up as if to prevent it from getting wet, Shyamu descends a few of the ghat-like steps, then loses his balance and launches us all into the drink.

  “I’m still learning how to handle him,” Guddi says apologetically afterwards, as we stand dripping at the edge of the pool. Behind us, Shyamu wallows about happily, using his trunk to squirt water over his back and at the attendants trying to coax him out. “Come, Didi, you won’t believe where Anupam and I live now. Afterwards, we can dry off.”

  She takes us up some stairs and through one of the carpeted hotel corridors. I look at each door we pass, wishing I had X-ray vision to check if Karun is behind any of them. “Namaste, Bhaiyya,” Guddi says to a gun-toting Khaki outside her room, then throws open the door. “Isn’t this amazing? So big—like a whole house, just for the two of us.”

  Guddi scampers around inside, bouncing on the bed, sliding open the closet door, showing me her comb and her kohl and the five discarded cell phones she’s accumulated (six with the new one), all stored in a corner of the nightstand drawer. “Just look at the size of this television, Didi—our own private cinema once we learn how to turn it on.” She bows reverentially to the Buddha over the bed, then pulls me into the bathroom. “See this? It looks like a chair, but it’s the toilet, believe it or not!” She sits on it to demonstrate, then flushes it excitedly. “All that water—I think it automatically washes your bottom, but I haven’t figured out how.” She inhales deeply. “Just smell, so clean. Like roses, like chameli. Close your eyes—would you ever guess we’re in a latrine?”

  Jaz stays behind to use the bathroom while Guddi takes me out on the balcony. “This is where Gaurav bhaiyya can live—that way, we won’t have to share the room at night, and he’ll have enough space to stretch out. It’ll be nice to snuggle with you, Didi—the bed is so huge that last night, Anupam and I felt lost.”

  I look down at the gardens and pool, at the attendants trying to cajole out Shyamu, who still cavorts in the water. Unlike the bridal suite, where Karun and I could gaze out at the beach, we now face the interior. I think of all the occupants in the hotel, of the hundreds of windows and balconies overlooking the same courtyard—a few lights even illuminate the small buildings by the pool. The odds of locating Karun may have improved tremendously, but it’s still going to require a lot of luck.

  “Listen, Guddi, I’m trying to find my husband. He came with three friends some days back in a van. They’re all scientists—sent for personally by Devi ma. Think, now—have you heard anything of such a group staying in the hotel?”

  Guddi scrunches up her forehead in concentration. “What’s a scientist, Didi?” she finally asks. I try explaining it to her, but she gets more and more confused, especially after Jaz returns from his inordinately long time in the bathroom and joins the interrogation. “I’ve only been here since last night,” she says, her voice quivering, her chin slumping, her eyes tearing up. Then she brightens. “I know who you can ask. Although we’ll have to check with Chitra didi first.”

  “Chitra didi?”

  “She’s the supervisor. I’m sure she’ll allow you to come along upstairs after we dry off.”

  “What’s upstairs?”

  Guddi gives me a startled look. “Why, Devi ma, of course. She knows everything—without her knowledge, not even a leaf can drop.”

  WITH THE WHISTLE around he
r neck and white sneakers on her feet, Chitra, the Devi’s most senior assistant, looks like an angry coach. “Didn’t I say you had an audience with Devi ma this evening?” she scolds Guddi, paying little attention to Jaz or me. “How could you have gotten yourself all wet? As it is we’ve lost all the Ooper-devi saris in the train wreck—do you know how difficult they were to get?”

  “It’s not my fault, Didi. Shyamu jumped into the swimming pool.”

  “And who gave you permission to go outside on him? I told you to practice in the garden, didn’t I? Did you think you could just walk off with him on your first day?”

  “But in the village I used to—”

  “Yes, I’m sure you have a thousand tales from your village—for all I know, the elephants there rocked you to sleep every night. Now take off that sari so we can try to iron it dry. As it is, the first thing Anupam did in the kitchen was splatter herself—her sari looks dyed in a vat of potato curry. So it’s going to be just you, which means Devi ma will be furious. We promised to have all of you glowing and ready like Ooper-devi’s maidens to accompany her next appearance.”

  “Why don’t we take along Sarita didi? She’s wearing the same thing.”

  Chitra examines my sari. “So you decided to jump in for a dip as well—what is this, an epidemic? Well, don’t just stare at me—take it off—we haven’t got much time.”

  While the saris are drying, Chitra supervises our sprucing up—repainting the bridal dots on Guddi’s face, but declaring they would be lost on mine. She’s surprisingly agreeable to Guddi’s suggestion we take “Gaurav bhaiyya” along—Devi ma, apparently, has a preference for male attendants. Jaz, though, balks at trading in his wet garb for the beige and white uniform. Perhaps he fears disrobing will expose him as a Muslim, though I suspect it’s his sense of fashion the uniform offends. His one concession, upon Chitra’s insistence that nobody bareheaded can be allowed an audience with Devi ma, is the bright red cloth wrapped around his head like a turban. “You look very handsome, Gaurav bhaiyya,” Guddi blushingly tells him, as he preens in front of a mirror, adjusting the turban this way and that. I’m beginning to realize there’s more than just a trace of peacock in him.

  Chitra doesn’t recall a van, blue-striped or otherwise, coming to the hotel. “All I’ve seen on the driveway are elephants, for the past fortnight at least.” She’s dubious about the whole notion of the scientists being bused in. “People flock here in droves—it’s not like Devi ma needs to summon anybody. But you should ask her. All the hundreds of devotees she blesses—only she can keep track, with her supernatural powers.”

  In the elevator, Chitra swipes a card through an electronic slot to get us moving. “Do you know, we don’t have a single generator in the entire hotel? Devi ma is mighty enough to ensure us all the electricity we want—ever since she came, we haven’t lost power for a second.”

  As we approach the third floor, I wonder if by some fantastic coincidence we will be led to my wedding night room. Where Devi ma will be holding court, and Karun assessing the proceedings with a scientific eye, jotting observations in a notebook. But the elevator keeps rising, to the fourth and top floor. Devi ma has taken up quarters in the presidential suite.

  Dozens of hopeful faces peer out from behind the Khakis standing guard at the door to the emergency staircase. Some supplicants seem to have escaped into the corridor—they mill around, blocking our way. Chitra blows her whistle and stamps her foot, as she might to make mice scurry away. “See what I mean about the droves? You have no idea how lucky you are to get an audience.” Two separate sets of guards search us—I hold my breath as they pat Jaz down, but neither group finds his gun (he whispers to me that he’s hidden it in Guddi’s bathroom, behind the flush). The ultimate barrier is a gauntlet of credential-checking clerks, who squint up balefully from their ledgers as we approach. I expect Chitra will help us breeze past, but even she has to grind through the bureaucratic questions they ask.

  With all the crowds clamoring hysterically for an audience, my expectations for the Devi have steadily risen. Will she spark and corkscrew in her suite like she did on the beach? Or will she appear in one of those calendar-art renditions, perhaps Laxmi emerging from a lotus with garlands flowing from her arms? Guddi has been rhapsodizing incessantly about enchanted forests and kingdoms of gold, all of which she seems to expect behind the door. She appears nonplussed when Chitra ushers us into a room, enormous and impeccably appointed, but in an ultra-modern, Western style. After the carnival of Mughals and Mauryas and Rajputs and Cholas exploding through the lower floors, the effect is shocking. (Could this represent the pinnacle of Indian culture, its ultimate aspiration?) The only desi embellishment, among the pastel walls and corporate furniture, the abstract paintings so bland that the Khakis haven’t even bothered to deface them, is an empty throne—the glitz-painted kind rented out at Hindu weddings to seat the bride and groom. Guddi rushes over to genuflect at it.

  “This way,” Chitra calls, and leads us out onto the terrace, fortunately redeemed by the return of the Buddhas canopied by Mughal domes, even a gopuram rising above the emergency stairwell. A small plantation of potted palms flanks an infinity pool that seems to flow directly into the Arabian Sea. Attendants scurry around with plates and bottles and pillows, electricians tinker with wiring and panels of audio equipment, a group of devotees in a corner bulges against its cordon of guards. Amidst all this activity, though, the Devi is nowhere to be seen. A second throne, as ornate as the one inside, flanks the pool. But it too is empty.

  “Devi ma doesn’t like sitting in it, finds it too hard,” Chitra explains. She gestures towards a beach chair facing away from us. “Well don’t just stand there, touch her feet.”

  At first, I’m confused by the chair’s ordinariness, its utilitarian plastic slats and dull aluminum frame. Then I notice the feet, gleaming with the sheen of real gold, resting on a brocaded red pillow like sacraments presented for worship in a shrine. Guddi immediately throws herself upon them, kissing them with almost fetishistic fervor.

  For a moment, I can only stare on. I’ve always assumed there is some sort of fraudulence to the Devi, but what if she’s real, if this is the shimmer of divinity? When I look into her face, though, the illusion lifts—the gold, I realize, comes from a glaze of paint. Tiny creases around her brow and chin give the game away—the pigment is a mask, through which the whites of her eyes float up luminously. Coddled in the chair by a cloud of puffy pillows, her body looks even tinier than it appeared on the turret. How strange that they’ve used a midget to fill the role, I think. Then she bids us welcome, and I realize she’s simply a girl of eight or nine.

  “I’m so gratified you’ve come to see me. Do you know the one cure for all the unhappiness in this world?” The words sound the same as those spoken from the turret, though the voice is different, the delivery clumsy. “For all the fear and danger. For all the fear and danger and… the fear and danger and…”

  “Strife,” Chitra whispers, and the Devi girl repeats the word, then the entire sentence a few times.

  Guddi finally tears herself away from the Devi’s feet, and I bend down for my go at them. Splayed for convenience, raised to be within easy reach of the devotees, they remain perfectly still when I touch them. They are chubby like the rest of her body, even the soles look fleshy. “I am your protector, your savior,” the girl says, then again forgets what comes next. She stumbles through a few unsuccessful attempts to continue, then reaches out for a bottle of Coca-Cola on the plastic beach table next to her.

  That’s when I notice her extra pair of arms. The two appendages emerge from her shoulders, the right longer than the left, but both stunted and elbow-less. At first I think they are prosthetic devices glued on for effect. But then I see the nubbed club of flesh at the end of the left arm, which suggests a birth defect. “Once your feet have touched these sands, I will forever keep you safe under my shield,” she suddenly spouts, her memory refreshed by the caffeine.

 
The perfectly formed hand at the end of her right appendage mesmerizes me. The digits move and bend unconsciously, spider-like, as she concentrates on delivering more of her lines. The arm itself is too short to reach out to grab the Coke bottle, but once she’s ready for another sip, the extra fingers adeptly lift the straw out from the neck to her mouth. I want to touch them, squeeze them, trace the bones under the flesh to make sure they’re real.

  “What are you staring at like that?” she says, stopping mid-sip.

  “I’m sorry, Devi ma—I was just lost—lost in your words.”

  She glares at me, then turns to Chitra. “Where are my maidens? You promised they’d dance on the terrace below me in glowing saris.”

  “Forgive me, Devi ma, there’s been a delay—the enemy attacked our train and stole the saris. Only these two maidens made it out—let me have the lights turned off, so you can at least see what the saris look like.”

  The demonstration flops. Perhaps the light levels aren’t low enough, or the dunking has permanently washed away the fluorescence, but the saris refuse to perform. Guddi’s still manages a few weak flashes near the arms and across the chest, but mine hangs as lifelessly around me as a shroud. After screaming for the head of whoever’s responsible for the derailment, the Devi turns to me. “Show me what you’ve brought.”

  Fortunately, Chitra has warned me of the need to bear a gift, so I take out my last packet of orange biscuits (unharmed within their watertight wrapper) and lay it on the pillow, between the girl’s feet. She rips it open—I try not to gawk as her extra hand rustles around in the packet and brings a biscuit to her mouth. She chews on it, then spits the mush out at my face. “This is horrible. Are you trying to poison me?”