The City of Devi: A Novel (3 page)

My parents’ next-door neighbors moved out right away, announcing an indefinite stay at their Lonavla cottage. But for the most part, despite their incendiary contents, the communiqués didn’t cause the expected alarm. Pakistan’s strenuous assertion of the documents being fakes had little to do with this, since nobody believed the claim. (Their foreign minister furnished a similar web folio detailing a purported mirror attack on Pakistan, which both
The Times of India
and
The Indian Express
dismissed as an obvious fabrication.) What kept the waters calm was the certainty that the West would simply not allow things to proceed so far. Uma even heard a rumor that the U.S. had intervened to shore up the Pakistanis after China’s departure, that the pilots and planes and unmanned drones bombing us were now American. “They’re supposed to be doing this for our own good, to even out the two sides and prevent things from getting
too
nuclear
.”

Then, on this year’s September
11
anniversary, the unthinkable happened. Dirty bombs exploded in Zurich, followed by five other cities, including London and New York. Computer viruses began their voracious conquest of the world: blackouts stretching from Los Angeles to Moscow, thirty-seven airliners sent crashing into the Atlantic in a single hour, nuclear plant meltdowns from Texas to Canada to France. Soon, the entire West appeared to shudder and yaw—Uma texted me furiously about sieges in Turkey and Denmark, a brazen attempt to invade Spain through Morocco, retaliatory massacres all over North America and Europe. Except who could tell which reports were true, whether any of these events had really occurred? The cyber attacks had also been relentlessly knocking out news and communication sources—one afternoon, as I listened, even the BBC blinked off. Overrun by hackers and unchecked by any verification of its truthfulness, the internet went gleefully rogue (“American president assassinated,” “Half of Europe perishes in nuclear attacks,” “UN orders extermination of all Muslims”). Even these hoaxes started to fade, though, as power failures strangled off computers around the globe.

The only certainty to emerge was that we couldn’t count on the West, so embroiled in its own cataclysms now, to protect us any longer. So when a new Pakistani communiqué surfaced the day after Karun left, settling definitively on a nuclear strike as a deterrent against defeat, the panic that had remained at bay so far started escalating. The proposal went into great detail about the order and logistics of the missile launches, picking the date based on how long the country’s weaponry reserves could stave off collapse in the current conventional war.

By the next day, the message had mysteriously blanketed the web—all I could pull up on my computer screen was an image of the communiqué and nothing else. My watchman was also abuzz about it—a recorded version in Hindi had gone viral over phone networks. The same phantom voice called over and over again, inflaming the computerless (but mobile-equipped) masses with the inevitability of an October
19
attack.

Uma arranged for us all to flee in my father’s car almost immediately after that. “The further south, the safer—the missiles will have a harder time reaching us in Kerala or Madras.” She begged me to accompany them, as did both my parents—but without Karun, how could I leave? I waited on the balcony for him every night, wondering if he had got stuck somewhere, trying to return to me. Could he breathe the same air, see the same stars, which ever since the blackout shone so exuberantly?

Perhaps the others who’ve stayed have similar reasons. Or perhaps they just believe themselves invincible, having survived the terrorists and enemy planes so far. They say only ten percent of us remain (how they arrived at this statistic, I have no idea)—the city looks emptier by the day. Even with phones and the internet dead from lack of electricity, the nineteenth still fires Mumbai’s synapses, powers its rumor mills. The date gives order to our lives through the chaos and confusion, blinks dependably through the haze. Europe and America could exist on a different planet: we’re too mesmerized by our approaching doomsday to care about theirs.

My khaki friend articulates the question that throbs in all our brains. “It’s not like the Pakistanis can be trusted—who knows when they really intend to launch? Why not finish them off first—why are we taking such a chance?”

OF COURSE, NO MATTER
how terrifying the threat, one can’t stay high on it for too long. We’ve learnt to distract ourselves, to flick through magazines while waiting for the bomb. I watch as people form clusters around the room, as the curds of a social order begin to thicken and clump. A group of businessmen stakes out the center by spreading a red blanket on the ground and surrounding it by a border of footwear. They sit on the blanket with their backs to the rest of the room, talking animatedly in Gujarati and massaging their bare feet. The Maharashtrians gravitate towards the right, forming a solid block next to the area cordoned off for the medical staff, while a south Indian language (Tamil? Malayalam?) emanates from the other side of the room. A circle of saffron-clad women hovers patiently near a man with high-caste marks on his forehead, as if waiting to see whom he will select as his bride. Even the far side of the room, which resembles an abandoned chemistry laboratory with its shelves of dusty flasks and beakers, gets colonized. I make out knots of people squatting in the dark between the stacks: servants, ayahs, laborers in shorts and torn white undershirts.

Should I try to be included in a group? I could ask about getting to Bandra, to Karun—perhaps someone might help. The congregation closest to me looks particularly affluent—men in safari suits and women in silk saris lounge like cocktail party guests. All that’s missing are drinks in their hands. One of the women throws back her head and laughs splendidly from deep within her throat. I notice the heavy gold bangles she wears, the two necklaces, the earrings. Is this her idea of how to dress for war? Then I see the rip in her sari, the pleats spattered with mud, and feel guilty. Maybe she is fleeing from a bombed-out house, carrying all the valuables she can. Our eyes meet, and I nod at her in sympathy. She seems to reciprocate in a half-smile, as if a full one would be too reckless, would commit her too much. Encouraged, I get up from the floor, discreetly dust myself off, and go up to stand next to her.

“The bloody rascals,” the man in the tan safari suit says. “Three years we gave them work, and they walked out, the whole lot of them, the day after the war started. Nobody’s interested in service anymore.” With his short hair and starched mustache, he looks like a colonel.

“Least of all cooks and gangas. And don’t even mention drivers,” a woman who might be his wife adds. Her sari is bright red with gold paisleys embossed on the border. Could she have been interrupted on her way to a wedding?

Another man, also in a safari suit, shakes his head in despair. “I thought at least our generation was safe, that it would be the next generation, our sons and daughters, who’d have to deal with this kind of disloyalty. But even if there was a smidgen of reliability left, this war will have killed it. God knows what we can look forward to—how much these bounders will ask for once they return.”

“What about you? Have all your servants fled as well?” the woman with the jewelry asks. She is still only half-smiling, still erring on the side of caution.

“Oh, there’s only two of us, so we’ve never really needed a servant.” As soon as I blurt this out, I realize my blunder. The colonel coughs, the woman’s expression turns to one of frightful regret. “Though the ganga who cleans the dishes did stop coming last week.”

But it’s too late, I’ve failed the test. A pall falls over the group, and the women dab themselves with their handkerchiefs. Their gold flashes at me in reproach for setting my sights too high. I throw out my question about the train to Bandra anyway, but am greeted with silence. “We don’t have much occasion to go to the suburbs,” one of them finally responds. “Certainly not by train.” Conversation only normalizes after I meekly edge away.

I exile myself to the far side of the room—I will enjoy the unassuming company of the beakers and flasks. A man in sneakers and jeans sidles up. I ignore his throat-clearing, his fidgeting, the flurry of movements to attract my attention. In the midst of this air raid, could he possibly be trying to pick me up? “Hello,” he says, in an accent that might be an attempt to affect a film star. Despite myself, I look up.

My fears are immediately confirmed. He is handsome, with lady-killer eyes and a very flattering haircut. His body, though compact, looks like it may have gone through hours at a gym to attain such definition. He probably sees me as fair game, now that my mangalsutra is gone. I give him a short and cauterizing glare, then turn away at once.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bother you. I was just wondering where you—”

I walk away mid-sentence. With all the problems I’m already juggling, a proposition is the last thing I need. I find a spot to sit on the floor, making sure a moat of ayahs surrounds me, to discourage my potential Romeo.

The woman closest to me sits cross-legged with a boy in her lap. She wears a coarse cotton sari with a red and green border, looped between the legs in the style followed by washerwomen. Perhaps I should befriend her for added insurance against my would-be suitor. How worthy I would feel for crossing the class barrier—a welcome distancing from the rich socialites’ nastiness. The woman’s son is clad in pants frayed to the calves, and a T-shirt so dirty that the picture on it is barely visible. I peer at his chest and make out a crudely done likeness of Donald Duck.

“Why are you staring at him like an owl?” the woman asks me in Marathi. She squirts a stream of betel juice out on the ground. Flecks of betel nut stain her lips orange—I notice a quarrelsome tilt to her jaw.

Would it be terribly elitist not to acquaint myself with this woman after all? As I try to negotiate this ethical conundrum, a loud banging at the door silences the room. The orderlies look nervously at each other, their menace evaporated. They proceed up the steps where one of them fumbles with the keys. Some of the khaki-clad men pick up chairs, ready to defend us against the Pakistani threat, apparently advanced to our very door.

The lock is turned, to reveal an ebullient group of doctors and nurses. They’ve risen to the call of duty, they proudly announce, by sticking with an operation even after the siren sounded in the middle. I look for a stretcher bearing the patient, but they’ve left him upstairs in his room. His appendix is out, so he won’t succumb to it, but whether or not he weathers a bomb attack isn’t in their purview.

The drama successfully concluded, the orderlies return to their scowling and the khaki-clad men to their strategies of defending the motherland. I can sense the woman still staring at me—I try not to look at her, but find my gaze pulled in. Her expression is no longer hostile but a mixture of amusement and craft. “Raju, say hello to Auntie,” she says, not taking her eyes off me. “Auntie wants to know who that is on your shirt.”

“Bimal Batak.” Bimal the duck. I remember the new coalition government’s edict to mollify their loony right fringe: all cartoon characters must now have traditional Hindu names. Bugs Bunny has become “Khatmal Khargosh.” Superman was first dubbed “Maha Manush,” but with
Superdevi
’s success, gets by as “Supermanush.” Archie and his gang have been banned altogether for being too culturally subversive.

The boy starts complaining he is hungry, and his mother’s gaze falls to my lap. Too late, I realize the reason for her sudden friendliness—she has spied the pomegranate. I quickly cover it with my dupatta. “I’m hungry, too,” I tell the boy, and it’s true. These days I am always hungry, we all are. For now, though, I have given up on fish. Suddenly, it’s Marmite I crave.

THE MORNING OF THE PICNIC,
I saw my mother rummage in the fridge for things to add to the chicken. We had eaten the bird the night before in a curry—just the skeleton really, since my mother had stripped the bones clean for the sandwiches. Not quite satisfied with her pile of shredded meat, she found some leftover coriander chutney to mix in, half an onion, chopped cabbage to pass off as lettuce, and the secret ingredient without which the taste would be incomplete: a generous dollop from the jar of Marmite in the corner of the vegetable bin.

Uma and I were raised on Marmite, we craved its saltiness, its aroma, its pungency, more than chocolate or ice cream. Even a trace mixed in stimulated us to eat foods we normally abhorred. Marmite could make us overlook the blandness of cauliflower, forgive the mealiness in chickpeas. My mother always dirtied two separate spoons while adding it to a dish, so that Uma and I didn’t fight afterwards over who got to lick the tar-like residue clean. I remember the day after my ninth birthday, when we found the Marmite lying open on the dining table. We took turns spooning it into our mouths, in such voluptuous quantities that we were able to actually bite into each gob. Our mother found us lolling light-headed on the ground that evening, our faces all black and sticky and smeared, the jar between us licked clean. After that, she used elaborate hiding places to store her jars (including a half-full one she forgot about in the blanket chest, which Uma only found, and polished off, several years later). She continued to hide the Marmite in the vegetable bin out of force of habit, even after we grew up.

The first bite that day on the beach was perfection—the dark yeastiness of the Marmite rose into my nostrils and swirled into my mouth. Uma appeared entranced as well, taking small nibbles of her sandwich and rolling them around slowly with her tongue. Then I looked at Karun’s face and saw his dismayed expression, noticed the way he tried to gulp down his bites without chewing. In the effort to impress him, my mother had added too much.

“Everyone loves these,” my mother said, taking a bite of her own sandwich and nodding in agreement with herself. “It’s the secret ingredient I add. Though I can’t reveal it, since then it would no longer be secret.” She tittered girlishly. Karun smiled at her, then bravely swallowed.