The City of Devi: A Novel (21 page)

“Sequeira’s?”

“It’s the End-of-the-World Party tonight, haven’t you heard? They’ve even promised us electricity!”

Like the other two women, she carries a burkha folded loosely over her arm instead of being robed in it. She accepts a cigarette from one of her male companions—its end burns bright orange as she takes a drag. “Aren’t you afraid they’ll spot you smoking?” Sarita asks, staring.

“Who, the Limbus?” The woman laughs. “Don’t worry, they never bother us here.” She takes another drag of the cigarette. “Are you hiding from them?—is that why you ask?”

Sarita begins to stammer a denial, but the woman interrupts her with another laugh. “I’m just teasing. And it’s OK even if you are. We won’t tell—no Limbus among us.” She offers Sarita the cigarette. “Here, would you like a puff?”

Sequeira’s turns out to be a nightclub on the Bandra side. “How strange you haven’t heard of it. I thought for sure that’s where you were headed when I saw the jeans and the sneakers. That’s what all the men wear—it’s practically a uniform. Not that I mean to pry into your destination, but you might as well have a look if you’re trying to get across.”

Just then, a bell chimes softly behind us. A dark shape has materialized from the sea—as we watch, a small boat detaches itself from the ferry and approaches through the ripples. An ark borne by fairies through the heavens couldn’t warm the Jazter cockles more, I think to myself, as our means of escape from Mahim draws up.

“This is the part I hate,” the woman, whose name is Zara, says, taking off her shoes. “You have to wade into the water to get to the boat. Which means that afterwards, on the dance floor, your feet remain sticky all night with salt.”

THE INCIDENT WITH
Harjeet occurred when Karun came back for a short visit before they took his mother’s new tumors out. The convalescence period would last well into the winter, so he wanted to get his sweaters and coat. He had purchased a medical garter his mother would need after the operation and was just opening the metal gate downstairs when the motorcycles pulled up. “Home, Sweetie?” Harjeet called out, and his three friends laughed and whistled.

We’d agreed Karun should simply not react when taunted, so leaving the gate open, he hurried up the path towards the house. The motorcycles vroomed in behind, right through the gate. “A present for your hubby?” Harjeet said, and still astride his bike, yanked the box out from Karun’s hands.

He couldn’t help but reply, he told me, even though he probably shouldn’t have. “Give that back.”

Harjeet pulled the garter out of the box and held it up, dangling by a strap. “Look! It’s some sort of women’s underwear. Does Sweetie get to wear it, or does Hubby?” He took a deep sniff of the material. “Mmmmm—smells good—must be Sweetie.”

“It’s for my mother.”

“Look, everyone—not just a sweetie, but a motherfucker too! And Hubby must join in—who does he fuck first—the sweetie or the mother?” Harjeet wrapped the garter over his head and, getting off his bike, started prancing and singing, “I’m a gandu and a ma-ka-chod too.”

Karun managed to get into the house, but Harjeet and his friends followed and cornered him in the stairwell. Harjeet started snapping the garter at his crotch—one of the shots hit home, making him double up in pain. “Perhaps the sweetie would like a taste of uncut Sikh instead of the same old hubby-mian every day?”

They began to grab at his clothes, but he broke free and ran up the steps. For a while, they banged on the door, even ramming it a few times, but the bolts held. I found him huddled in bed, his shirt torn, scratches on his arms and face. “We have to go to the police,” I said, unsure, even as I made the suggestion, as to what reception we could expect.

“I can’t. I have to return tonight. The operation is tomorrow.”

I kissed his face and held him close. “Don’t worry. I’ll think of something while you’re away.”

“The things he said about my mother. I don’t think I want to stay here any longer.”

We had sex before he left. It was more comforting than passionate, and I held him in my arms afterwards as long as I could. “I love you,” I said, and he whispered the words back to me. I imagined the two of us living in a new flat somewhere, perhaps even back in Bombay. His mother, Harjeet, my indiscretions, left floating behind in a different universe far away. “I love you,” I said again, and not knowing it then, kissed him for the final time in the home we’d built. Then I took him to the station to catch his train.

SATURDAY MORNING
, I knocked on Harjeet’s door. No other option remained but to talk to him, since Mrs. Singh wouldn’t help and I didn’t have any evidence to file a police report. (I could have threatened him with physical violence, but the thirty kilos he had on me gave me pause.)

He answered the door in his undershirt, with a handkerchief over his knot of hair. “What do you want?” He looked more surprised to see me than irked.

“I want your harassment to stop. What you did to my friend last evening—stop bothering us. Just stop.”

He stretched lazily. “Or else you’ll do what?”

“I’ll go to the police.”

“And you think they’ll listen to a gandu like you?” He laughed. “To you and your sweetie friend? Where is he anyway? We must have really scared him if he didn’t even have the courage to come down.”

“His mother has cancer, so he’s in Karnal for a few months.”

Something shifted in Harjeet’s eyes, but it wasn’t the remorse I hoped to elicit. “Well, tell Sweetie we’re very, very sorry. We’ll all be waiting on the steps to greet him when he returns.” He slammed the door in my face.

That evening, the motorcycle friends burst into one of their sessions even before getting fully drunk. They sang all sorts of Bollywood numbers about separation and longing. They even performed “My sweetie lies over Karnal, my sweetie lies over the sea”—given their deep Punjabi vernacular, I hadn’t expected them to be conversant with English ditties. They finally stopped when neighbors from the adjoining house threatened to call the police.

At two a.m., someone knocked loudly on the door. For an instant, I had the irrational thought it might be Karun—I’d been trying to reach him all day to ask about the second operation they’d performed on his mother. Instead, I found Harjeet, so drunk that he held on to the doorjamb for support. “I just thought—” he said, and stumbled into the room.

For the next few minutes, he stared at the walls, trying to condense a coherent thought. “I sleep right beneath you now, in my mother’s room,” he finally said. “I can hear you go to the toilet.”

He planted himself on a chair, then slid off over the side. He mumbled vague apologies (or perhaps they were threats?) while sprawled out on the floor. At one point, he caught my leg and tried to pull me down next to him. It took me the better part of an hour to drag him out the door. I left him on the landing softly singing one of his homo songs to himself.

The Jazter had sometimes wondered about the reason behind Harjeet’s belligerence—the ensuing week left no doubt. It was like watching a fairy-tale battle, a personal jihad—the entire gamut of reactions compressed and played out. One day he tried to push me aside on the steps, the next, he stared lasciviously as he let me pass; in the evenings he sang insulting songs with his friends, then staggered up to my door drunk. Most bizarrely, he resumed his exercises on my landing, wearing a thong (and matching head knot) so electric yellow it made even the Jazter blush.

At first, I simply ignored him—when he knocked, I kept my door shut. Then—purely in an abstract sense—I started wondering how he would be to fuck. I peeped through my window as he strained at his barbells—the muscles on his chest bulged and popped. In body type, he would have to get an A-minus in terms of what the Jazter usually looked for. There was the added bonus of doing it for the first time with a Sikh—another species of prey checked off. The bottom-line question: What would be the harm? After all, the Jazter had already cheated so many times in the park.

So I decided I’d forge ahead. Give the Sikh my very own seekh kebab. With home delivery an option, why go foraging in the park? I slipped a note in his mailbox. Lose your friends for an evening and come up as soon as it gets dark.

He was very nervous, so I made him go back downstairs and get some rum. We didn’t talk much as we sat on the sofa and passed the bottle between us. I took the liquor away to the kitchen before he got too drunk. The bed I shared with Karun seemed too much of a betrayal, so I spread a mat on the floor. “Why don’t you take your clothes off?”

His body looked even bigger naked. The way he arranged himself on the mat with a pillow under his stomach made it clear what he’d come for. So dispensing with the niceties I put on a condom. All this economy pleased me, made me feel back in the park.

He cursed in Punjabi as he contorted and bucked under me. It felt like riding a whale, like harpooning a sea monster. He wanted it again after we’d rested, so I summoned up the energy to lift his massive legs and do him faceup. When he asked for a third helping, I passed.

At the door, he hugged me awkwardly, but we didn’t kiss. The next evening, we dispensed with the embrace as well. He began coming up regularly, with an extra afternoon visit on the weekend. He still got boisterous when his motorcycle buddies were around, but the homo songs had long ceased to offend.

For a while, I felt quite happy with the arrangement—Harjeet’s body nicely fit the bill, plus it was so readily available. Then I realized the problem I’d created for myself. How would I extricate myself once I tired of Harjeet, or even more pressingly, once Karun came back? I racked my brain, but couldn’t come up with a solution, other than moving out. Hadn’t Karun said he didn’t want to live in the same building as Harjeet when he returned? Should I be looking for another landlord who would rent to us?

I needn’t have worried. The door opened one evening as I fucked Harjeet on the mat. With Harjeet’s usual noisiness, neither of us heard, and I continued all the way to climax. As I slumped forward, my gaze alit on Karun’s figure, standing with a bag still in his hand. Even in my fuzzy state, his shock came through clearly, I felt his horrified stare. “My mother died last night. I cremated her this morning,” he said.

10

KARUN RETURNED AFTER I LEFT FOR WORK THE NEXT DAY AND
moved his belongings out. I tried calling him on his cell phone, but he didn’t answer—the number got disconnected soon. I sat down to write him a letter of apology but quickly found myself bogged down—my behavior with Harjeet looked even more outrageous on paper, especially when juxtaposed against the loss of his mother. Besides, I didn’t have his mailing address in Karnal even though I’d been in person to the flat. One day, I took the train there, but a padlocked door greeted me. The shopkeeper downstairs who gave me the street number told me nobody had stayed in the flat since the death. I even tried Karun’s university, but they had no idea of his whereabouts.

His leaving proved unlucky for me. When I told Harjeet I couldn’t imagine having sex with him again, he flew into a rage and punched me in the face, then kicked me several times as I writhed on the ground. It took six stitches to sew up my lip and several visits to the dentist to have a knocked-out tooth fixed. Just as the pain in my ribs subsided, I found my office locked when I arrived at work—the company had gone belly-up. I couldn’t find another job—the market dried up overnight due to the sudden economic downturn. My pocket got picked and someone (Harjeet, I suspect) broke into my apartment and stole my computer and television.

I moved back in with my parents in Bombay. I missed Karun intensely, feeling so depressed I couldn’t get up some days. Now that I had squandered my relationship, I wanted nothing more than to recapture it. Despite almost seven years together, something profoundly unfulfilled remained between us—as if I was on the cusp of absorbing a deep and personal message Karun had been trying to convey. I sent several letters to the Karnal flat, but received no reply. The prospect of frequenting my old haunts looking for release again felt sordid, pathetic. I didn’t quite understand this—hadn’t I been cruising the Delhi parks quite breezily just some weeks back? Karun’s memory rose like a pillar of light, emitting a radiant integrity I felt compelled to emulate.

I forced myself to go to gay events to find someone else. I met Sonal at a Gay Bombay disco night—he had his own tiny place at Andheri. For the four months we dated, I kept comparing him to Karun and coming up short. His body felt all wrong, his aroma didn’t intoxicate. He had no ambition beyond being a sales clerk, and talked incessantly about Bollywood films. Within a week, I felt I knew everything I needed to know about him—no reserve remaining to intrigue me, like the smile I gradually learned to tease out on Karun’s lips. I went out with other people as well, but none of them lasted as long.

After almost a year of unemployment, a financial advisory firm in Hyderabad offered me a position. I took it, determined to use the new surroundings to pull me out of my malaise. Indeed, the huge central lake soon set my dormant shikari radar abuzz again. I spent several agreeable evenings there, strolling the periphery to ferret out the activity spots, observing the intriguing new species of local prey. The vivid mix of the North and the South in their features, the Muslim and the Hindu, the fair and the dark—all packaged with a small-town innocence, an old-fashioned politeness, which I found particularly restorative. I never knew what language they’d lapse into when fucked—Urdu or Telugu or a mix of both (only the techies came in English). It occurred to me that such local delicacies, such
spécialités
du terroir
,
must exist in every state. Perhaps I needed to go on a therapeutic national pilgrimage (my very own Haj, my personal rath yatra) to sample them all in their natural locales. What better way to feel the pulse of the nation, to connect with the poor and the rich, to track all the shining progress new India had made?

But the only trips I took were to Bombay and Delhi for business, and these invariably plunged me into a melancholic state. I felt strangled by the nostalgia, by the memories of my days with Karun. I tried not to look up while walking the streets of the capital so as not to catch glimpse of a barsati. In Bombay, I took various detours to avoid the Oval, the university library, the Regal, all the landmarks across which our history had played. Each time I returned home, it seemed to take weeks before the hangover of my past life lifted. I threw away the photos I had of Karun and ceased my letter-writing campaign.

Work provided a welcome distraction. Recent political reforms had injected considerable excitement into the China-related investments I tracked (along with a majority of analysts at the office). The newly sanctioned Youth Democratic League, initially dismissed as a propaganda tool to voice aggressive, ultranationalist positions unofficially, had tapped into a country-wide generational vein that made its popularity surge well beyond the Chinese government’s control. Its rabid calls to pull the plug on the U.S. debt, teach Europe a lesson for censuring China over human rights in the UN, invade not only Taiwan but also Korea and Japan, had resulted in wild swings in the yuan, especially once the League demonstrated its clout by calling a successful one-day nationwide shutdown to protest their country’s kowtowing to the West. To my fascination, Indian stocks didn’t tank along with their Chinese counterparts as they historically had (along with much of the developing market). Rather, they went up: investors took shelter in India’s relative stability with each new alarming power gambit by the League. I also started noticing the converse: a bump in the Shanghai exchange each time a terrorist attack caused a drop in the Sensex, as if India and China had been locked into a zero-sum game. (Had I been a professor like my parents, perhaps I could have written a paper to christen this coupling the Jazter Phenomenon.)

By the end of my fourth year in Hyderabad, despite the bombings now seemingly endemic to major cities, the balance had still tilted dramatically in India’s favor. The Sensex almost doubled in that period, while Shanghai and Hong Kong showed respective losses of twenty-five and forty-five percent. The unsuccessful efforts of the old-guard loyalists to rein in the increasingly brazen initiatives by League hotheads made it difficult to say who really controlled China anymore—our office trade reports all forecast further upheavals as the country flailed its way towards a new political order. Before we could take much comfort in the future, though, the Mumbai bridge explosion came along to upend all the pundits’ predictions.

Much worse than the series of jolts to the market were the shockwaves that seemed to physically rip through the country. Hyderabad, in particular, dove eagerly into mayhem—perhaps due to historical grievances, or a population comparably split between Hindu and Muslim, or perhaps even because the Telangana separatists had found it beneficial to fan the flames. I stood in my balcony and tracked the plumes of smoke advancing every day—first the Old City in the distance, then the enormous emporiums along Raj Bhavan Road, and then the restaurants and bars around the lake. The city remained shut for six days, then several more when explosive-laden trucks demolished both the Birla temple and Mecca Mosque over the same weekend.

As Bhim’s forces embarked on their nationwide crusade, things started looking particularly grim for Muslims. My father announced he’d accepted a position in Geneva, and we were all moving to Europe. I quit my job (most financial companies like mine were on the verge of folding anyway) and flew back to Bombay for my visa interview, wondering how I’d fare living among the Swiss again (would they succumb to my new shikari skills?). As our plans progressed, we faced the question of what to do with the flat. The HRM had already begun clamoring for Hindu areas to be cleared of Muslims as a precaution against sabotage and ambushes. With the Siddhi Vinayak temple so nearby, our building had little chance of escaping inclusion in such a Hindu enclave. Some Muslim families set up exchanges with Hindus who owned flats in predominantly Muslim localities, but my father didn’t think it worth the trouble with us emigrating.

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.