The City of Devi

by Manil Suri

  JAZ

  6

  AS I WATCH THE WAR-POCKED LANDSCAPE GO PAST, I WONDER again what my life would have been like had I never met Karun. Calmer, probably. Longer, too. To think that a single chance encounter has led to this wood and metal coffin in which I brace for my doom. Sweet, innocent Karun, as alluring as a blossom of the deadly datura and about as harmless. Samson had his Delilah, Adam his Eve, and the Jazter had you.

  Already, I can see my epitaph. “Here lies Jaz, lover of his fellow men, done in royally by one of them.” With a warning for others of my ilk (hunters—shikaris—I like to call them) inscribed on my tombstone. A list of cautionary signs to watch out for—the most flagrant being that even now, risking life and limb and that one other most imperiled appendage, all I do is search this benighted city for Karun.

  I look at the scratches on my arms, smell the sulfur in my hair. Has the Jazter really been reduced to this? The mud on my designer high-tops, the stains on my Diesel denims—what possessed me to subject my kickiest threads to such risk? Then I remember—Karun, whom I must find, whom I need to dazzle, whose rectitude I hope to penetrate.

  Perhaps I’m too easy with the blame. With the impending bomb, the Jazter goose, not to mention his jeans and sneakers, are scheduled to be cooked anyway. I’ve rarely planned ahead, so no sense lamenting lost opportunities for escape. It might have been nice watching all this action from afar—say on the giant screen in Times Square. Except most of New York, for all I know, has been burnt to a crisp.

  Since the future’s so iffy, I’ll turn my attention to the past. The underfoot clickety-clack marking out my remaining minutes begs to be drowned out with nostalgia anyway. I tune in to the sounds from twelve years ago. Children laugh and shout on the swings. Mango trees around me rustle in the wind. I sit in the park near Cooperage, waiting for the hunt to begin.

  IT WAS DUSK when I first saw Karun. He looked much younger than all the parents milling around with their kids, which made him instantly suspect. He sat on a bench between the slides and the swings, an unopened book in his lap. He was trying very hard to be inconspicuous, I could tell.

  I’d walked over after college to the park, to check out the evening’s prospects. A teenager showing off his shiny new Reeboks. A bearded young Bohri promenading his burkha-clad bride. Day laborers out for a smoke, their arms dusted white with gypsum. I leered at them all with scrupulous impartiality. The couples, as usual, were clueless. The shikaris would know I was one of them.

  My gaze kept returning to Karun. Such a fawn, he might even be younger than myself. His chin as smooth as his cheeks, his hair cut so short that his ears stuck out, his lips announcing a hint of succulence. Did he have enough meat on his bones, though, to warrant a shikari’s interest?

  He opened the book in his lap. His absorption in the pages seemed so immediate, it had to be faked. Was he performing for someone’s sake? As I decided he’d do for this evening’s prey, he looked up and engaged my gaze. He held it as long as he could, as if forcing himself to be brave.

  Then the courage drained from his face. He arose abruptly and began to walk to the gate. By the time I made it through the turnstile, he had crossed the sidewalk onto the curb. Wait up, I felt like shouting. Don’t you know the rules of the game? He was almost at the opposite shore of the road when I immersed myself into the river of traffic after him.

  He started looking unflatteringly lanky on the other side, his ears protruding absurdly from his head. Had I really found him attractive, was he even in on the hunting game? But by now, all my carnivorous instincts had been aroused—I had to keep giving chase.

  He unexpectedly veered right, through the entrance to the Oval grounds. Ahead, in the dying light, groups of boys wound down their soccer games. The path stretched out emptily, nobody using it to cross the field today. We soon discovered why—just before the road on the other side stood a locked metal gate. The way we had entered offered the only escape.

  He stopped. Two boys in orange and black stockings ran between us, scrimmaging. One of them knocked chests with the other to get control of the ball. They engaged in the briefest of contact at their waists, then, laughing, sprinted away.

  He took the opportunity to slip off the path. I followed the outline of his shoulders as he wafted into the dark. More soccer boys ran by, bare-chested this time, their shirts dangling out from behind their shorts. The sweat on their muscles glistened in the light from distant streetlamps.

  Night seemed to be descending unusually fast. The center of the field was already a pool of black. Other denizens had begun to roam around in the playfield, seeking more nocturnal games. I heard the familiar signaling coughs I had heeded so often, caught a glimpse of a torso or head.

  Tonight, I already had my quarry marked. I followed him all the way to the peripheral ring of palms. The lights of the city twinkled beyond the tree trunks, tall metal bars rose in between to cut us off. He wavered as he spotted them, then came to a stop. Had he really expected a way out?

  It was time to move in for the kill. Time to prepare for the feel of skin against skin. Clumps of bushes rose chest high between some of the palms. Would he struggle very strenuously if I tried to drag him in? How loudly would he groan as I initiated him?

  But he was new to the hunt, I reminded myself. Unversed as yet in the versatility of spit. I had to ply him with words first: what cricketers did he like, had he seen any films?

  He turned around as I began my approach. Even in this light, I could make out the fear on his face. “Hello,” I said soothingly. He stood frozen for an instant, then took off on a sprint.

  I looked on dumbfounded. This wasn’t literally a hunt—I’d never heard of anyone actually bolting like this. Then the adrenaline pumped motion into my limbs. He raced through the darkness, staying close to the border, and I ran after him. We could have been the last two soccer players on the field, still chasing each other after the end of the game.

  It happened as he closed in on the entrance, as it occurred to me he might get away. He tripped over a tree root—his velocity so great that it launched him into the air. He flew through the night, like a daredevil player defying gravity to execute a flamboyant save. By the time I came up, he was lying on his back, grimacing in pain.

  In nature documentaries, the predator, its work done, would sink its teeth about now into its injured prey. I felt the same stimulus from my own quarry’s helplessness, but resisted the urge to pounce and have my way with him. “Are you OK?” I asked, but he didn’t reply. Tears glistened in his eyes as he rocked on the ground, holding his left forearm at the wrist.

  The need to touch him was overwhelming, so I took his wrist and examined it. He winced as my fingers brushed against the tender bone ridge. I held on longer than necessary to the unbruised part, fascinated by the soft hairs over the supple skin. Would offering to inspect the rest of his body as well seem too amiss?

  “Why did you run?”

  “Why were you following me?”

  “Why do you think?” Immediately, I realized it was the wrong thing to say. “I just wanted to talk, that’s all,” I slipped in quickly, but my dare had silenced him.

  His vulnerability—the dirt on his shirt, the rip in his jeans, the sneaker that had rolled off, made him achingly desirable. But the notorious Jazter carnality had been corrupted by guilt. “Here, let me dust you off,” I said, feeling the full weight of responsibility for his fallen state.

  He didn’t protest as I brushed my hands across his shirt, then more liberally over his jeans. He winced when I eased his foot back into its sneaker. “Does it hurt?” I asked, but he shook his head.

  When I stood him up, however, he winced again. “It’s nothing, I’ll just go home,” he insisted when I suggested a doctor. Then he took a step and yelped.

  Here was the opportunity to redeem myself, to rise like Mother Teresa above my lasciviousness. I bundled him, still protesting, into a taxi and took him to Bombay Hospital. The X-ray clearly showed the frac
ture—a thin dark line cutting into the outer metatarsal. “I really must go, I’ll come back tomorrow,” he started saying when the doctor ordered a cast. Red-faced, he whispered to me that he didn’t have enough money on him.

  It felt strange offering him a loan, but the ghost of Mother Teresa cheered me on from the wings. As expected, he refused, so I went and paid directly at the hospital desk. The cast was white and bulky—his toes peeped out like small caged pets. I felt myself succumbing again to his helplessness. Who knew the sight of hobbling prey could be such an aphrodisiac?

  He did not want to disclose his address. “Just drop me off at Mumbai Central Station.” But he was too wobbly on his crutches, so I accompanied him to his hostel, then up three floors to the room he shared. “My roommate’s asleep, so I’ll just say goodbye here. I’ll have the money for you tomorrow at six.”

  I took the same cab home. My mother was waiting with dinner, but I had to go to the bathroom first, I said. The image of my fawn limping around in torn jeans swirled in my head. The Jazter had been stimulated a little too much—before he ate, he had to take care of himself.

  BY THE TIME I knocked on Karun’s door the following evening, I had fantasized so much that I felt ready to burst in, rip open his shirt, and throw him on the bed. Or perhaps on the floor, the reimbursement money from yesterday flying into the air as I plunged in to satisfy myself. Maybe Karun would be in the same state of ferment and join in the ripping and throwing as well. Though not in the plunging, an activity the Jazter refuses to permit on himself.

  I didn’t get a chance. Karun opened the door a crack, just enough to hand me an envelope. “Thanks for helping me last night. I’ve added in the taxi fare as well.” The crack began to close, and he waved as if from a receding train.

  I stood in front of the door, dumbfounded. Then I started hammering. “Who is it?” a different voice called out—its annoyance pleased me.

  “Just a friend. I’ll get it.” The door opened, and Karun slid out. “Are you crazy?”

  “Why are you whispering?” I demanded loudly.

  He shut the door behind him. “My roommate’s inside. What do you want?”

  “I want to know what you were doing yesterday in the park.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, I just want to talk.”

  He began to say something, then decided against it. “Wait here.” He went in and emerged a moment later with his crutches. “There’s a Barista café around the corner—we can go there.”

  The crutches were useless on the stairs. He hopped awkwardly down the first flight, then gave in and took the arm I offered. Within seconds, the predator centers in my brain shot into high alert. I instinctively scanned the stairwell for cubbyholes suitable for a quick drag-and-plunge.

  Relinquishing him to his crutches downstairs came with an unexpected consolation. Each time he bore down on the handles, his body tensed to reveal the location of underlying muscles. They were modest but endearing—a 6.8 on the Jazter scale. His buttocks arced through the air as he swiveled, inviting me to follow them. I felt a primeval satisfaction knowing he couldn’t make a run for it.

  “Ijaz,” I said at the café. “That’s my name, though everyone calls me Jaz. I thought I’d tell you since I saw yours at the hospital sign-in. Do you go to college?”

  He nodded, then became studiously absorbed in his coffee when I asked him where. To put him at ease, I talked about my bachelor’s in commerce at HR College. As I prattled on about the Sensex’s stupendous rise on the Mumbai stock exchange, he stopped me. “What exactly do you want?”

  “To get into international finance, I guess. To really understand how the world works.”

  “No, I mean what do you want from me? Why did you bring me here?” His eyes darted as he spoke, an agitated smile stretched over his lips.

  That’s where I muffed it. The Jazter code of conduct is quite explicit in such situations: Be direct. Don’t risk being misunderstood with subtlety—bring out, so to speak, the ol’ battering ram. Except my lust had been adulterated by an unaccustomed sense of responsibility, perhaps even tenderness. “I just thought we could be friends,” I responded, aghast at my own sappiness.

  His expression didn’t relax. My usual fallbacks of cricket and the movies also fell flat. “Would you like to return?” I finally asked, and he said yes.

  I followed him back to the building, my taste buds bitter with defeat. This time, his buttocks swung away not in invitation, but in declaration of their unavailability. The fact that I had failed to connect, that I wouldn’t be able to have him, left me even more charged with desire. As he pitifully poked along, the tender thoughts grew stronger too, into an overwhelming feeling of protectiveness. I wanted to mother him as well as molest him.

  Just as I prepared to wish him a final goodbye at his hostel, he turned around. “Jai Hind,” he declared.

  “What?” I had been given the brush-off before, but never with a patriotic slogan.

  “Jai Hind College—didn’t you want to know where I study? I’m free Friday evening—we could meet near there.”

  WE COME TO A HALT. The scenery outside remains desolate. What has happened to the people? Where has the war hidden them? It’s good the Jazter has renounced his pastime of shikar, since park pickings must be exceedingly slim these days.

  Then again, it’s hard to tell. The population has taken to ebbing and flowing in waves. Perhaps it’s the moon that drives them, exerting mass gravitational pulls on their brains. More plausibly, they’re motivated by safety in numbers, given the unpredictability of each day. I feel the stares of wary eyes from distant buildings, imagine bodies carefully concealed behind drapes. Any moment now, they will realize their collective power and surge down upon us in an invincible spate. I’ve seen this firsthand through my days of surveillance—human tides pouring through neighborhoods, their abrupt rise, their unpredictable wane.

  I hear people outside—only a few rather than a flood, but I draw back just the same. I cannot make out the argument they seem involved in. Have we arrived close enough to my prey? Is it time to stealthily slip away? I peep through the window, but do not see that one recognizable face. Which tells me we’re not there yet, I need to hunker down again.

  Footsteps near, doors slam shut, and we start to move once more. I check my watch—it’s five p.m.—the day will start fading soon. There’s nothing to do but brace for the return of the annoying clickety-clack. And lose myself in memories of my checkered courtship of Karun again.

  ALL WEEK, I WAITED for Friday. Only one desire, surely, could have prompted Karun’s suggestion of another meeting. I half expected him to chicken out, but he didn’t. We had tea in the outdoor patio of Gaylord’s—a venue I suspected was a tad expensive for him.

  He came across as very different from our last meeting—so forthcoming he practically drowned me with information. How he loved science as a kid, how his widowed mother lived a few hours from Delhi, in Karnal, how his hostel roommate from the tiny state of Tripura had an unusual hobby (embroidery, I think). “It was difficult leaving my mother to come and study in Bombay, but we both agreed I needed to spread my wings a bit.” He’d visited all the museums in town and attended two concerts of carnatic vocal music (“the wailing,” as I called it—I tried not to grimace). He still practiced yoga every morning despite his cast, though he’d have to wait until it came off before he could go swimming again.

  At first, he almost fooled me. I despaired he had taken me at my word about just wanting to be friends. Then I began to detect the cracks in his cover-up. The nervousness behind his chattering, the energy channeled into avoiding the one question he knew I would raise again. Why had he gone to the park? A question whose answer he must be intimately familiar with, no matter how hard he tried to suppress it. Had he come today hoping I would pry the issue free despite his fear of facing it?

  Ordinarily, I would have lost no time obliging. But he worked his subterfuge so earnestly, it felt boorish n
ot to play along. Besides, why not let him stew a bit—didn’t even the most unyielding meat tenderize that way? So I talked about my parents—how they met at a Muslim student mixer in the U.S. “My father was in comparative religion, my mother in Asian studies—not only did they get married, but they even worked together. They returned to India some years later to have me, but when I was six, they went back to America.” I told him I was a globalization victim, an international mutt, having grown up in so many different countries. “Singapore, Indonesia, Germany, in one year alone, followed by fourteen months in Switzerland.” I showed off my French and my German: “Tu as un beau cul,” “Und ich hoffe, Sie erlauben mir es zu erforschen,” after making sure he didn’t understand either language (I refused to translate). Although our backgrounds differed so much, we were both only children—at twenty, we were even the same age! By the time we emptied our cups, it seemed plausible we could be friends.

  About to deliver my coup—the question he both dreaded and craved—I saw I had a problem. Say I persuaded Karun into revisiting our unconsummated shikar—where, exactly, did I propose to take him? One needed two feet, both in good working order, to negotiate the bushes in the park or the lonelier stretches of Chowpatty beach. Karun’s hostel came with a roommate infestation, our flat suffered similarly from a live-in servant. Would we have to wait until Karun walked before I could carnally inaugurate him?

  So I didn’t bring up the park—since I couldn’t act on it, why scare him off? Instead I paid for tea, and when he protested, said we had to have a next time so he could reciprocate. That’s how the Jazter (blushing even now at the smudge on his hard-boiled reputation) embarked on the unfamiliar custom of dating. We started meeting Tuesdays and Fridays, then Mondays as well, when classes ended early for both of us. Usually at a cheap place like Samrat, though sometimes for an ice cream splurge at the nearby Baskin-Robbins. (Watching the pink of his tongue shyly scoop up a taste of my Rocky Road made me hunger to share more than just dairy products with him.) Afterwards, I took a cab home so I could drop him off—a gesture he appreciated, since he had such difficulty battling the bus crowds on his crutches.