The City of Devi: A Novel (27 page)

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?”

I wipe it off, noticing Chitra’s frantic shake of head too late. My action enrages the girl. “How dare you wipe off my blessing? Don’t you know everything from me is holy, is prasad?” She rises from her chair to lunge at me when Chitra and Guddi intervene.

“Forgive her, Devi ma, she didn’t know. Next time, she’ll bring the bonbon biscuits you like.” They force my forehead down to scrape it at the girl’s feet.

“Get her up,” the girl commands, and the two pull me up and hold me between them. For an instant, I think I will be blessed with Devi spit again, but instead, she shakes up the Coke bottle and sprays the froth at me. Seeing me dripping with cola, she bursts out laughing. Then she hurls the bottle at my face. I hear it whiz by my ear and smash on the terrace behind. “What else do you have for me besides biscuits?”

“She’s brought a pomegranate, Devi ma,” Guddi says, and I turn to her sharply. The fruit fell out when I changed out of my wet sari, but I scooped it back up quickly and didn’t think anyone had noticed. “Go on, let Devi ma see how red it is.”

I have no intention of squandering it. “It’s actually for my husband. I’d be happy to offer it to Devi ma, but first she must help me find him.”

The girl flares up instantly. “What do you think, you can bargain with Devi ma? Give it to me, at once, or I’ll have you flung off the terrace.” She shouts for the guards when I don’t move. Guddi starts pleading with me to give it up as two Khakis trot over.

Reluctantly, I hand over the pomegranate. The Devi girl tosses it in a little juggle between her three hands, then presses at it with the nubs of her club to test its ripeness. Before I can stop her, she bites in as if it’s an apple. “It’s bitter!” she exclaims, spitting out seeds and skin and pith and flinging the fruit away. I almost throw myself after it as the pomegranate bounces across the floor and falls off the edge of the terrace. “I’ll have you drowned in the sea for this. I’ll have you trampled under the elephants.”

Both Guddi and Chitra are begging the girl to show me mercy when Jaz intervenes. “Devi ma, wait. That pomegranate wasn’t for you—the actual present my friend brought is with me.” He rummages around in his many pockets, then finds what he’s looking for and extends it to her in outstretched palms. “For days now, my friend has been saying that this is what the Devi ma craves, this is what she will eat.” To my horror, I see he is offering her the Marmite.

The girl looks at the jar suspiciously. “How do I know it’s not poison?” The fingers in her extra hand curl warily, like question marks.

I try to think of some way to stop Jaz, impress upon him the lunacy of expecting the girl to find such a foreign taste appealing. But he has already opened the jar to demonstrate it’s safe by eating some. “Mmm . . . wait till you taste this chutney. It’s so nice and salty.”

Her curiosity aroused, the girl sniffs at the jar, then straightens one of her bent fingers to scoop some out. “It’s so black.” She puts it in her mouth. I wait for her to spit it out, to summon the elephants, but she has a thoughtful expression on her face. “It’s like no chutney I’ve ever had.” She takes another fingerful, then grins shyly, toothily, at Jaz. “It tickles my throat. Devi ma is pleased.”

JAZ INSTANTLY SEEMS
to acquire the status of most favored disciple. The Devi girl allows him to touch not just her feet, but his limb of choice at will (even letting him rub the nubs on her appendage). She undoes her hair and sweeps it playfully over his face, declaring it to be a special blessing she’s invented just for him. She insists he feed her pieces of samosa with his own hand—he ingratiates himself further by dipping each bite in Marmite. They take big swallows from a shared bottle of Coke like pals in a TV commercial, giggling as the bubbles come out their noses. As a special gesture of appreciation, she regurgitates some of the samosa and offers it to him in her palm as prasad—Jaz has no choice but to swallow it with love (delight, even) writ all over his face.

When it’s time for her next show, Devi girl insists Jaz (who she’s christened her horse, her “Gaurav-ghoda”) carry her on his shoulders to the turret. An attendant opens a small gate at the end of the terrace beyond which a walkway runs across the top of the building along the crenulated parapet. Jaz, the merry porter, proceeds down this with his joyful load. At the turret, he personally helps the girl into a saucer-shaped stand of sorts, while a cluster of attendants stand by and watch.

“My, aren’t we the Devi’s pet?” I remark when he returns.

“All to get your husband back,” he reminds me.

The fireworks start—rockets whiz by, fire fountains burst into life all around us. With cascades of sparks tumbling from every ledge, I’m surprised the hotel doesn’t burn down. Large lotuses blossom from the Devi’s extra hands—Chitra has inserted a stem into a cleft in the left. “We’re trying to get her to memorize the words so she can address the crowd in her own voice,” she tells us, as Devi girl lip-synchs to the prerecorded words piped in through the speaker system.

Chitra gives a signal to the man at the control panel, and the saucer holding the Devi girl begins to rotate. “Watch this,” Chitra says as streams of sparks issue from the base of the saucer, which slowly lifts into the air. It occurs to me that this might be the machine from Mehboob Studios that Sequeira said he’d had to give away. I blurt out the obvious question: If Devi ma is real, shouldn’t she be able to levitate on her own? Why does she need such aids?

Guddi, shocked, urges me to renounce these blasphemous thoughts before Devi ma strikes me down, but Chitra holds up her hand. “Why, indeed, would a real devi not show off her flying powers?” She looks at me, then Guddi and the rest of the assembly, as a teacher might at a sluggish class to elicit a forgotten lesson. “The answer, remember, is simple: That’s the wrong question. Rather, ask yourself why anyone might still doubt Devi ma after she’s taken the trouble to grace us in this girl’s avatar. What’s the true test? Healing the countless invalids who seek her help, or performing tricks like a circus animal? Count again the number of arms she has, then tell me what more evidence you could want.”

I stifle the impulse to point out that not all the limbs in question are whole, that their sum doesn’t quite total up to four. The attendants all gaze raptly at the spectacle, now certified authentic, but I cannot tell where Chitra stands herself. Was her speech merely for her minions’ sake, does she truly believe in Devi ma or not?