The City of Devi: A Novel (29 page)

But perhaps I needn’t go down my list. Perhaps Bhim’s Khakis can lead me to him. They’re sprinkled rather sparsely throughout the hotel, with the exception of the restaurant coffee bar, where they swarm around the food like insects. Like
ants
, more precisely, I think—why not track them to get to their anthill?

A little reconnaissance reveals a good number of them peeling off towards the annex. So I take Guddi past the garden for a little stroll in that direction as well. The building is drab, almost ascetically plain, as if to atone for the Indica’s over-the-top excesses. Dark windows with stingy panes of glass more befitting an office complex stare out from between concrete strips. Even the side facing the sea has no balconies. The project, announced in the first few flush days of the hotel opening, looks like it stalled even before the war started. Spikes of metal pierce through the unfinished top—after all this time, only three and a half floors stand completed. Belying Chitra’s claims of tottering construction, these floors look quite sturdy, well-fortified.

The entrance actually lies on the other side of the wall enclosing the pool and garden courtyard, which further perks my interest. The barrier means that annex occupants can be kept quarantined, away from hotel residents. The locked metal grille built into this wall is unguarded—a swipe with Chitra’s card opens it. Ahead, though, two Khakis slouch against the building doorway, engaged in casual conversation. As we near, they briskly pick up their rifles. “Where are you going?” they demand in unison, clearly annoyed we have caught them chatting.

Neither my “open sesame” card nor my Devi-level security clearance impresses them. “You need special authorization to enter this building.” When I ask them from whom, they simply glare, as if this will clarify what they’ve said.

Guddi steps in with such a spirited try that I feel ashamed at underestimating her. “If you think Devi ma is going to forgive you two pups for disobeying her command, you have another thought coming. Just yesterday, she had an attendant’s ears cut off—he didn’t hear her order, that’s all.” She snips at a guard with scissor-like fingers, so close to his ear, he backs away.

“I’m sorry, sister. What to do? Nobody is allowed in without permission—the order comes from Bhim kaka himself.”

“So if Devi ma herself came, you wouldn’t let her in either? What if I fetch her now and see what your Bhim kaka says?”

The guards look down sheepishly. Although they hold their ground, Bhim’s name confirms this is his den. “Devi ma would burn you to ashes if we reported you for this,” Guddi calls out as I pull her away.

GUDDI WANTS TO GO
complain to Devi ma and return with reinforcements, but I nix this idea, since it would alert Sarita about my lead. “Devi ma’s already been so generous, let’s not trouble her anymore. Let’s try to get in ourselves.”

So instead of returning through the metal gate, we duck behind a hedge and circle back to the annex. The entire ground floor is wrapped in concrete, with the occasional window, sealed and brooding, embedded as an afterthought. I’m struck by the bunker-like look of the building—hardly a design to appeal to tourists. A recessed side entryway leads to a door which, in addition to a card reader, bears a sturdy, old-fashioned padlock. We discover two more doors in the rear, similarly secured.

I’m wondering how we can create a diversion and slip in past the guards when I realize there has to be another entrance: the doors we’ve seen are all much too narrow to get beds and other large furniture through. Could there be another level beneath us? I draw Guddi back to the rear of the building and pull myself up chin-high to peer over the wall that runs past. Sure enough, we’re at an elevation—a driveway down below cuts toward us through a small compound. Unfortunately, I don’t see any steps—jumping seems the only way down.

What to do about Guddi? Certainly, I don’t want her by my side when I find Karun. But leaving her behind presents its own danger, since she might go back and report my whereabouts. The wall decides for us: raised on a diet of village parathas since birth, Guddi is unable to hoist her four-foot-ten body to the top. “Stay here until I return,” I tell her, hoping she’ll obey for at least an hour. I jack myself up all the way on my arms, then swing a leg over to straddle the wall.

“Gaurav bhaiyya,” Guddi yells, just as I lower myself on the other side and hang by my fingertips. “Gaurav bhaiyya, Gaurav bhaiyya, we should have brought Shyamu along. Then he could have lifted me up in his trunk and sat me on the wall.” She pauses for a second. “Would you mind if I go check how he’s doing? I promise to return by two.”

What an excellent idea to keep her out of trouble! I assure her there’s no need to hurry back, she can spend as much time with Shyamu as she wants. “In fact, why don’t you try to sneak him out to the beach again?—I’m sure he’d like that.” As Guddi squeals in appreciation, I yell goodbye and release my grip on the wall.

14

I ONCE READ A BOOK CONSISTING SOLELY OF A CHARACTER
’
S
thoughts as he fell from a cliff. Apparently, in the time it takes to hit the ground, an entire lifetime can be relived. Being airborne reminds me of my own unlaunched memoir—what a perfect interlude to dissect my childhood this would have been! I could lay bare the vulnerability of the Jazter soul, recap my great and poignant love for Karun. The last primarily for my own benefit—to remember again why I’m so witlessly hurtling down to my doom.

So here I am, moonstruck lover turned action hero—Superman plunging through the air, Jaz Bond dropping into the villain’s lair. (Perhaps I could write my Jazternama as a comic strip, ensure the first bestseller after the apocalypse.) For a moment, I lie stunned on the ground. Not from the fall, but from the sight of the two vans parked in a bay under the wall. The first has its back door open—a stack of boxes lies beside it on a pallet. It’s the second one, though, that leaves me agape: white and compact, a blue stripe runs across its side, as sharp as a laser ray.

Ever since Colaba, I’ve had to keep my doubts tightly bottled, accept the notion of finding Karun as an article of faith. I allow myself a moment of jubilation at this evidence I’m closing in. More good fortune: wooden crates prop open the large metal doors of the loading bay. I slip inside—almost immediately, another door blocks my way. This one isn’t padlocked, it just bears the familiar electronic locking mechanism. Will the Devi’s powers work so far from her domain?

I swipe the card through the slot. Not much happens. The lock makes an anemic whirring noise, which quickly fades.

I try again, with a silent prayer to my Laddoo Queen, showering her with all the sweets in the world. This time, the lock whirs more enthusiastically and opens with a click.

A bare bulb illuminates the passage. Boxes of supplies line the walls—I tear a few open, and find bottles of water, tins of baked beans, tomato soup, fruit cocktail. There’s no can opener, so I take some deep swigs of water to try to cure my sudden hunger pangs. (All I’ve been offered since morning is the glass of “nectar” I turned down.) A large chamber ahead houses even more boxes, containing not only foodstuff, but also such essentials as blankets and medical kits. I count at least a dozen small doors, all identical, built into the walls—metal-forged and tightly sealed, they resemble the hatches in a ship. The one I try opens when I pull down and twist the lever handle, which is fortunate, since just then, the sound of someone wheeling a cart comes from the corridor ahead. I barely have enough time to scoot through the door and squeeze it shut.

Groping around the wall, I find a light switch, which turns another naked bulb on. The room around me, little more than an alcove, is crammed with so many boxes that I almost don’t notice the steps leading down. The level below turns out to be much more rugged, like a cave shoveled out of the ground. Chunks of rock protrude right through the roughly slapped-on plaster in spots. A central opening leads to a multitude of peripheral pods, ones in which any attempt at finish or décor has been abandoned, and a burrowing animal might feel quite at home. Most contain cots, complete with mattresses and pillows, a few the odd table or chair. In one, I even spot a television set sitting unplugged on the ground.

Could this be a post-apocalyptic colony, for survivors to wait out the nuclear winter? A fine crush of dirt drizzles down on me as I walk around. I try not to make too much noise, lest I bring the whole place (and with it mankind’s future) crumbling down.

I retreat to the safety of the upper alcove. There’s no way to tell if the person I heard still lurks outside the heavy steel door. I turn the lever, count to three, and cautiously poke my head out. The chamber is deserted. I hop out, then continue along the passageway, until it ends a short way down at the double doors of an elevator. I blow on my card and rub it between my palms, hoping the Devi’s magic hasn’t been all used up. I’m in luck—a single swipe, and the doors part, as if the elevator has been waiting patiently for me on this floor all along.

Judging by the buttons numbered all the way up to twenty, the construction has an ambitious way to go. The “G” level surely swarms with Khakis, so the choice is between the numbered floors. I decide to start at the top and push four (will the elevator pop out of its sleeve since the building ends at three and a half floors?). The doors close and we begin to rise—how ironic that I was
falling
into danger just a few minutes ago. I try to channel the steeliness of Superman, the
sangfroid
of Bond. If only I’d made some excuse to stop by Guddi’s room and retrieve my gun.

The doors open without warning on “
1
.” To reveal not a battery of leering trigger-happy Khakis, but a waiter manning the entrance to a banquet hall. The strums of a sitar invite me out, lulling away any notions of danger lurking around. After the concrete and bare earth in the basement, I’m surprised by the feel of carpet under my feet, the sight of green and gold birds (peacocks, I think) taking flight on tapestries. The lushly planted garden visible through the large picture window seems particularly incongruous, given the building’s fortress-like exterior. It takes me a moment to realize I’m gazing at a blown-up photograph.

“You’re just in time, sahib,” the waiter says with a bow. His turban tilts towards me, as flamboyantly plumed as a cockatoo’s comb. “We were wondering if anyone else would make it for lunch.” He unhooks a metal-detecting wand from the wall. “I hope you don’t mind, but we have to check anyone new.” He scans my body—I guess I wouldn’t have gotten away with the gun after all.

Inside, more peacocks adorn the walls. I half expect a posse of Khakis to leap out from behind them and surround me with weapons drawn. Instead, I notice some of the diners are women—even a few children run around. However, I can’t spot Karun—at least not in my quick visual sweep of the room. “This way, sir,” the waiter says, and ushers me to an empty place at a round table. “They’ve already cleared the buffet, but I can bring your food here if you tell me what you’d prefer.”

“Dosas,” the man seated next to me recommends, pointing at the remnants on his plate. “The chutney’s fresh and spicy today—Devi ma must have decided to donate some of the coconuts she gets.” I nod to the waiter, who closes his eyes to convey the astuteness of my choice, then gracefully withdraws.

“You’re new here,” my neighbor remarks. “I didn’t realize the van was still bringing people in.” He introduces himself as Professor Das, from the microbiology department at Kalina. “I’ve been here almost since the beginning, so I can answer any questions you might have. For instance, in case you’re wondering, the food here is great, as you’ll discover in a minute.”

The dosa
is
very good, the potatoes redolent with tamarind and curry leaf, the wrapping crisp enough to shatter into pieces as I dig in. So good, in fact, that I wonder if this could all be a meticulously arranged setup—the Khakis masquerading as diners, the potatoes drugged to knock me out. Will I wake up in Bhim’s lair, my body stretched on a rack, my digits clamped in thumbscrews? There’s little recourse if that’s to be my fate, except to eat up.

Professor Das introduces the others. “That’s Dr. Jayant from Lohan Chemicals beside you, and next to him, Dr. Sethi, one of Mumbai University’s premier mathematicians.” I realize, as he goes around the table, that I’ve hit the Noah’s Ark of techies—surely this has to be where Karun is housed. Behind Dr. Deepender, the mechanical engineer from IIT whose hand I reach out to shake, are the rows of banquet tables. Is Karun at one of them, his back towards me, his face obscured?

The thought fills me with an urgency to scan the room more thoroughly for him. I interrupt Das mid-sentence, saying I need to make a quick trip to the bathroom. Even though he clearly points it out, I wind through all the tables on the way there, as if confused about the location. But my search disappoints—I don’t find Karun.

“You must try this lassi, Dr. Pradhan,” Das says upon my return, and pours me a glass from a jug. More drugs? I wonder, but it’s so refreshingly cold that I take several gulps. “So tell me, did they pick you up, or did you heed the call?” I’m not sure what I should answer, so I reply I was picked up. Das nods understandingly. “Just like most of us. Some complain about it, but I tell them to see it as an honor, that we’ve been chosen as the cream of the crop.” He looks pointedly around as he says this, as if aiming his words at the table at large. “Safe and well-fed in the middle of a war—what more could one want?” As if on cue, the waiter delicately lays another dosa in front of me with a pair of tongs.

So far, the other diners have stared down impassively at their plates, but now Dr. Sethi breaks their silence by asking what I do. Obviously, I must be a scientist if picked up by the van, but with so many fields represented at the table, I have to answer carefully, to avoid being exposed. I finally settle on geologist, giving my institution as the University of Lucknow, which I hope will be obscure enough. “I didn’t think they even had a geology department,” Sethi says, frowning at me. Das quickly interjects to say he’s heard they just started one. I nod in vigorous agreement—who knew?

The large monitor suspended above the buffet table blinks on before Sethi can pepper me with more questions. “It’s Bhim,” Das whispers. “He likes to address us whenever he comes to the hotel.” The face that fills the screen looks nothing like the blood-spattered visage I remember from the grainy video of the Haji Ali massacre, or the one spouting rabid exhortations to violence on the nationwide rath yatra. Rather, it is calm and clean-cut, the eyebrows neatly trimmed, the hair carefully coiffed. Could he be tripping on his Emperor Ashoka persona again?

“My friends, I hope you’re having a nice afternoon.” His manner is congenial, his voice so soothing, it’s almost mellifluous. He announces that the refurbished gym has opened on the second floor, that more laptops will arrive shortly, though the internet remains down. “Don’t forget the roof garden—there’s no better way to start your morning than a walk there. And afterwards, you can come have a dosa—we’ll start serving them for breakfast as well since you like them so much.”

He continues in this hotel-manager vein for a while, as if explaining the guest facilities at a resort. Just when I’m expecting him to announce the Jacuzzi and shuffleboard hours, he starts describing the finishing touches being put on the “paradise” at the subterranean level. “Your own television, your own private bedroom, not to mention pantries bursting with delicious food and drink. We’ll finally open it up tomorrow, so you’ll be able to see for yourself.”

Surely he couldn’t be referring to the crumbling bunkers I stumbled upon in the basement? Apparently so, because he quickly mentions a “trial run” on the nineteenth, “just in case there’s any problem.” “It’s more for your own peace of mind—all these empty threats and rumors floating around. You’re the most brilliant intellects in all of Mumbai—my responsibility is to keep you happy and sound.”

He pledges to reunite the assembled diners with their loved ones. “Some we’ve already brought together, others will have to wait a bit. We’ve found many of your spouses, your children—gathered them up in special units. Be assured they’re getting five-star treatment—I promise we’ll keep them safe.”

Bhim concludes with a burst of declarations, claiming that he only believes in freedom, that he only asks for a commitment to the country, that despite what people may have heard, he doesn’t insist on any particular religion or philosophy. “One day this war will end, my friends, and we will begin to rebuild. Let’s all look together towards that day and in a united voice shout Jai Hind.”

“Jai Hind,” the crowd replies, and I can’t help sensing something forced in the response, even though it is accompanied by a ripple of applause.

Bhim’s soft-spoken manner leaves me a tad disoriented. Would it have been too much to expect at least a little fanaticism, a bit of anti-Muslim rhetoric? Perhaps my image of a betel-chewing heavy was over-the-top, but surely Bhim’s résumé of exploits warrants someone more flamboyantly unhinged?

“A true visionary,” Das declares. People nod in agreement around the table, and again, I get that Stepford Wife impression—perhaps they
do
drug the dosas after all. “Tell me, are you married, Dr. Pradhan? Do you have a family? If so, you can rest assured Bhim will do his best to arrange a reunification.”

Sethi snorts. “Perhaps Dr. Pradhan should look around and count the number of women and children he sees.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Sethi—are you trying to ask our new guest something?”

“Yes, I’m asking him to count the number of reunited families. It’s more a threat, isn’t it, this promise of reunification? To let us know he has them in his clutches, just like he has us.”

Das looks taken aback. “Dr. Sethi, what are you saying? You know Bhim is doing the best anyone could. Would you like to try yourself, find someone without his help?”

“That would hardly be possible, would it? I’m stuck here, like the rest of us, whether I like it or not. Whatever happens tomorrow or the day after, whether or not the bomb falls.”

“You know that’s not true. We all stay voluntarily.” Das turns to me. “Everyone here is free to leave. Bhim just requests you let him know in advance.”

“Yes, in advance. Like Moorthy, like Sinha. Is that what happened to them? They were complaining so much, so Bhim stamped their passports and set them free?”

“Surely you’re not suggesting that Bhim—?”

“What if I am? Will I be next? Is that what you’re going to threaten me with? Another knock in the middle of the night, and nobody will see me again?” Sethi gets up so abruptly that his chair topples over backwards. “Well I don’t care anymore. I’ve had it with this.” A waiter hastens to set the chair back upright as Sethi flings down his napkin and strides off.

The other scientists seem to freeze in their seats. Das smiles at me reassuringly. “Don’t mind our banter. Some of our colleagues haven’t been well lately, so they’re staying in their rooms. Like the ones Dr. Sethi mentioned. Others just come for the earlier shift, so we miss them. It’s really nothing. Now about your family members—are they still in Lucknow?”