The City of Devi

by Manil Suri

  “This one cheated you too,” Yusuf says. “I could have got it for fifteen.”

  Both the quality and variety of wares being hawked from the pavements amaze me. The pomegranates, like the glistening apples and pears and oranges, nestle in individual foam compartments—packing usually reserved for only the choicest imported fruits. Tins of meat and fish, practically never spotted outside of tony South Bombay boutiques, lie stacked in bountiful, artistically spiraling pyramids. One vendor sells nothing but five different kinds of toothpaste—upon closer examination, the brands are all unfamiliar (“Denticon,” “Protect,” “Kingcol”) with writing in English and Arabic, even Chinese! Where does all this come from? I ask Yusuf. The question stumps him initially, but then he brightens. “We must manufacture it all here in Mahim,” he proudly declares.

  We haggle over how much he will charge to lead us to the Hotel Rahim. His first bid is a new pair of Adidas, being sold by one of the hawkers for three thousand rupees, but he soon capitulates when I hold fast to my offer of another twenty. “That’s the way to the one restaurant still open,” he says, pointing down a narrow lane as we pass a row of old buildings. “People claim they’ve started chopping up dogs to use in their kebabs, but my mother says that’s just the way tinned meat tastes. And if you go further, you’ll come to the main road with the mosque—you can join the line if you want to eat for free.”

  Yusuf tells us his father died when he was three, that in addition to his sister, he has a sixteen-year-old brother who’s with the Limbus. “Not by choice—they came to our door one day, and my mother didn’t have anything to pay them off. When my brother resisted, they caught me by the hair and started beating me with a whip.” He points at the scabs on his face. “Luckily, I’d seen them do it before in the market, so I had enough sense to cover my eyes with my fists.”

  Sarita is so distressed that she hugs him to herself and kisses the scars that extend to his forehead. He looks up craftily at her face. “Why don’t you get me the Adidas? That way, I can outrun them if they try to catch me again.”

  Just past a shuttered post office, the crowd peters out and the buildings give way to a large swathe of blackened ruins. Except for the odd intact wall or doorway, everything for a few blocks seems to have been consumed in some terrible conflagration. “Did the Pakistanis bomb the area?” I ask, as we pick our way through the rubble and charred timbers.

  “The Pakistanis? No, they never bother us. They just fly past above. Though once I saw a big fight in the air, with rockets and everything. One of the planes exploded—I’m not sure whose it was. The whole city shook when it landed. You could see the smoke from everywhere, just like when the bridge blew up. We tried to find it on our bikes, but it was too far away—we rode all the way to the devi standing on her head before turning back.”

  “So this wasn’t caused by another plane crash?”

  “A plane crash?” Yusuf laughs. “No, it’s the Limbus who did this. See that arch still standing there? That was the entrance to the new Ad Labs Cineplex. The Limbus said movies are against the Koran, so they set the theater on fire. But the flames spread and all the buildings around burned down with it. Including their own headquarters.” He chuckles, then gets wistful. “I used to love watching movies there. The seats were so good you could see every part of the screen. Now the Limbus will beat you if you even hum a film song.” He starts singing softly—a snatch from the theme of Superdevi, then looks around to make sure nobody is listening.

  The ruins give rise to an area of town that shimmers through the dusk with a familiar yet unexpected luminosity. I realize it is the light from electric bulbs. “Most people here have their own generators,” Yusuf explains. “It’s where the rich live.” He points to a building with tastefully lit awnings over each window. “That’s the Hotel Rahim—I’ve never been inside. They say Shahrukh Khan himself once stayed in it.”

  As we part, he high-fives me. “That’s the way they do it in America—I’ve seen it on TV.” He starts running down the lane, then turns around. “If you need help, just ask for Yusuf—everyone in Mahim knows me.”

  THE MONSOONS ARRIVED, putting a serious crimp in our sex life. The beaches turned stormy, the library balcony wet and sludgy—so many pigeons sheltered in its eaves that droppings fell as profusely as rain. Even the Regal, perversely, got packed, showing hit after sold-out hit. One evening, we snuck into the deserted racecourse at Mahalaxmi but couldn’t get into the covered stands—we ended up so drenched and muddy trekking across the turf that no taxi would take us back.

  June went by, and then July, each week getting wetter (but more parched in terms of sex). The fact that I spent so much of my leisure time within striking distance of Karun made this forced abstinence even harder to bear. “It’s the eternal tragedy of being gay in Bombay,” I lamented. “Never a place to yourself.” With city rents so high, most sons (the Jazter included) lived with their parents until marriage (the Jazter excluded)—and usually well after as well.

  Rahim escaped this fate. His widower father passed away just as my cousin turned of legal age, leaving him the sprawling turn-of-the-century flat near Chowpatty where the two of them lived. I’d barely seen him since returning from the States, so I was surprised to get the invitation from him in the mail.

  “He says it’s a wedding celebration. All men, lasting all night. Knowing Rahim, it’s probably going to get quite wild.” I slid Karun the card across the tea things on the table. “But we don’t have to worry about anyone—the important thing is we can do what we want, spend the night together.”

  “You mean there’ll be other people around?”

  “Who cares? We’ll wrap ourselves in a blanket and hide in a nook so that nobody can even see us.”

  “I’m not ready for such openness.”

  I’d been through this before with Karun—his extreme trepidation at the slightest hint of exposure. He’d used the same reason to veto disco nights organized sporadically at different clubs around the city by the local Gay Bombay group. “Don’t you think it’s time to loosen up a bit? Or are you still waiting for your report card from the experiments to come exonerate you in the mail?”

  “It’s hardly like that. I just don’t want to blare out such a private matter to strangers at a party.”

  “What you really don’t want to do is admit you’re just like them.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Which part? That your report card is stamped H for Homo or that it’s a label you just can’t accept?”

  “If you feel that way, maybe you should go to Rahim’s yourself. I’m sure you’ll find someone more to your standards amongst all those other men.”

  I stalked out of the tea shop, incredulous Karun would pass up such an opportunity in the middle of a drought. What was he, a camel, that he had used his hump to store up the sex we’d had? Why couldn’t he have a normal libido, be a slave to unseemly urges like everyone else? The Jazter jewels had turned so blue that they’d be a pair of twisted ice bonbons soon. I needed massive quantities of immediate action to restore them to their natural state.

  Walking to the bus stop, I realized I’d become too fixated on Karun in the past few months. Release was release, with whomever one found it—that’s what the Jazter had always said. Hadn’t another wise man, the Buddha himself, warned about the evils of attachment?

  So I spent the next few days frequenting old haunts again—the alleys near the Gateway, the facilities at Bandra, even the Oval in the rain. I rode the “gandu car,” the notorious last compartment named after all the backdoor action it saw, on late-night suburban trains. I got lucky with a cashier wearing a McDonald’s uniform in the sparkling tiled toilet of a newly opened shopping mall. But as I entered him, as my body heaved and strained, I found myself conjuring up Karun’s face. Guilt flooded in—as if I’d been unfaithful, as if I’d strayed.

  It became an aversion therapy program, the way this guilt tainted every encounter. My favorite pastime lost it
s luster—the chase no longer thrilling, the prey too coarse, too anonymous, too un-Karun-like. How could this have happened? I felt like railing. Such crippling fallout from just a few innocent months of dating?

  “You look completely lovelorn,” Rahim declared at his party, after admonishing me for not having kept in better touch. “Will I have to torture it out of you or will you tell me who he is?” He had developed a sashay to his walk—more matronly than nubile, and discovered mascara to somewhat alarming results. “Mum’s the word, I see—but that’s OK since I have a number of people here who’ll make my little Jazmine forget him.”

  The “wedding” involved Rahim’s friend Akbar, who appeared in ceremonial drag—a red sari complete with ankle bracelets adorned with tiny bells. “She believes in married life, just to a different husband each month,” Rahim explained. “She’s tired of repeating the nikah, so tonight we’re going Hindu for a change.” Sure enough, the bride and groom (wearing the traditional headgear of jasmine buds) did their seven circles around a floor lamp representing the fire, after which Akbar swirled a platter with flowers and a lit oil lamp in ritual circles in front of his betrothed’s face. “Now kneel down and repeat them around the part that really counts,” Rahim instructed, and to hoots and claps, Akbar obeyed.

  Afterwards, the crowd gave a collective yank on Akbar’s sari, unwinding it in a long swirl of fabric that sent him spinning across the room like a top. Watching Akbar prance around in his bikini briefs, I felt glad I hadn’t brought Karun—who by now would have probably stalked out. The game of musical laps that followed took forever to play because of all the poking it prompted, after which Rahim herded us into the study he had converted into a pitch-black back room. “This is the way to fight back the respectability drowning our poor deluded sisters in the West. Long live masti, long live mischievousness.”

  Wisps of sunlight seeping around the papering on the windows woke me in the morning. I extricated myself from under the arm across my chest and got up from the floor—it took me a half hour to find my clothes. By the time I reached home, my mind pounded with the thought of Karun. I had not talked to him for days—what if I had let him slip away? I longed to coax out his smile again, yearned for his steadfastness—even his scientific prattle seemed so charming in retrospect. I had to see him despite the absence of fleshly prospects. Would I have to finally yield ground to his pontifications about life being more than sex?

  Gathering up my courage, I dialed his number. “Where have you been? I’ve missed you,” he said.

  BY SEPTEMBER, WITH THE RAIN still keeping us chaste, I wondered if the monsoons would ever end. Just as I prepared to splurge on a hotel room in desperation, my luck turned. My parents announced their departure for a week-long conference in Jakarta. I declined their invitation to come along, which puzzled them. “I suppose it should be OK with Nazir here to look after you.” I had to pay him the entire five hundred saved up for the hotel room to coax him into taking a vacation of his own.

  I got down to the first order of business with Karun right away. I fucked him in every room of the flat, in my parents’ bed and on the kitchen floor. When he tired, I revived him with a bubble bath, then fucked him some more. He locked himself in the toilet, not emerging until I promised to stop. I made a good-faith effort to keep my hands (and other parts) off, but lasted only an hour. By the third day, though, even I was too sore.

  Fortunately, we had college to attend. I came back at five, worried he might not return, wishing I hadn’t wielded my wicket to such excess. At six, the bell rang. Karun must have recovered as well, because when I herded him through my bedroom door, he didn’t protest.

  Eventually, there arose the pesky problem of food. Nazir had demanded too much money for biryani this time, and we’d already devoured the refrigerator scraps down to the stalks of coriander. “I used to cook while my mother worked evenings,” Karun said, so we went shopping in the nearby outdoor market.

  Except neither of us knew how to haggle. Vegetable hawkers saw us treading carefully through the monsoon muck in our sneakers and raised their prices two- and threefold. “I know your mother,” a fisherwoman purred. “She always buys pomfret here because she knows I never cheat.” Chicken sellers, egg grocers, even a samosa-vending tout, all smiled widely in welcome with the glint of rupee coins in their eyes.

  “They can smell our inexperience. We need a strategy,” Karun said. “How about if I act willing to buy, and you pretend to pull me away because the price isn’t right?”

  So I tried to channel my inner diva to play the shrewish wife. I accused the cauliflower seller of eating the good parts and trying to palm off the leaves, ordered Karun to return a bag of plums because they’d be all pit inside. I overplayed my role with the fish, voicing so many suspicions about its freshness that I provoked the fisherwoman into a fight. We fled to the chicken shop, trailed by a hail of curses in Marathi.

  Unfortunately, the hen we bought remained tough even after three hours of cooking. Karun made various attempts to tenderize it—adding vinegar and yoghurt and pungent powders he found in the cabinets, even stabbing at the pieces in frustration with a knife. At midnight, I suggested we just dip bread into the gravy. Karun’s eyes widened as he tasted it. “I think I added too many chilies.”

  “It’s nice,” I told him, trying not to choke. I discreetly got up and brought us some water. By the end of the meal, we were using chunks of raw cauliflower to buffer each bite.

  “I can wash off the chilies and try again tomorrow,” Karun said. “I guess it’s been a while since I cooked.”

  He looked so dejected that I pulled him to myself, nestling him between my thighs. I buried my nose into his hair to identify the different curry spices, like one might the bouquet components of a fine wine. His fingers smelled mostly of garlic and ginger—kissing them, I noticed the tips stained yellow with turmeric. “It’s fine. I enjoyed our little chemistry experiment. Plus it was fun going shopping.” I put my arms around his chest and rocked him from side to side.

  Sitting there, with Karun in my lap, I caught a glimpse of a future I could never have imagined. Karun and the Jazter, snug and domesticated like this, rocking gently through life. I almost burst out laughing, but then stopped. Was the picture so corny, so absurd, so completely removed from the realm of possibility? What future did the Jazter see for himself, exactly? Would his days of shikar continue indefinitely, or did he dare look beyond the beaches and the train stations and the alleys? Could he, in some part buried deep within, secretly crave conventionality? (Or was that too much of a heresy?)

  I kissed Karun’s neck. The future, as always, felt too abstract to worry about, too nebulous, too otherworldly. What mattered was the here and now. The feel of Karun’s body as he reclined against me, the spices perfuming his hair and resting in their jars in the kitchen, the defiant chicken on the counter waiting to be subdued some more in the morning. I felt grateful for each magical moment we’d spent playing house together, grateful for the four days we still had left.

  9

  AS YUSUF SLIPS INTO THE DARKNESS OF MAHIM, I TRY TO PREPARE Sarita for meeting my cousin. “He owned an enormous flat at Chowpatty which he sold to buy this hotel. You might find him a bit—um—unusual.”

  Rahim opens the door himself, and shrieks upon recognizing me. “My sweetie. My little Jazmine. What a surprise. After all this time, you’ve finally remembered your Auntie Rahim.” I’m unprepared for how rotund he’s become in the decade or so since I last laid eyes on him. His cheeks have acquired an unworldly ruddiness, his lips an ethereal gloss; his mascara addiction, so startling at the party at his house all those years ago, seems decidedly out of control. Could this have really been my first heartthrob, the one who presided over the Jazter’s mizuage ceremony, plucked the virginity diamond from his nose? Although thinking back, it really was more the other way round.

  “Well don’t just stand there, come to me.” He wears so much attar that fumes rise from my shirt after we hug. I
finesse my lips out of the way as he tries to kiss me. “Oh, you’re shy because we’re not alone.”

  Sarita watches transfixed—somewhat worrisome, since this is hardly the place to pick up her sorely needed makeup tips. “And what gorgeous creature do we have here? All dressed up as a bride for the Pandvas, no less.” Rahim theatrically undrapes the sari edge from her head and sharply intakes his breath. “Naughty, naughty! The leopard’s a bit full-grown, isn’t he, to be changing from spots to stripes? Or should I say from meat to fish?” He cackles noisily.

  “This is my friend Rehana.” I try to muster my most formal tone. I can sense Sarita abuzz with questions about Rahim and me, but I avoid looking at her. “Her husband is sick in Bandra so we’re going there to bring him back to Mahim. The Hindu getup is a disguise, to get her past Bhim’s goons.”

  “Ah, a damsel in distress. You’re reuniting her with her true love and all that. Our little Jazmine has grown up to become a humanitarian. Forgive your Auntie Rahim her dirty mind if she wonders where your interest lies in all of this.” He notices the tablecloth Sarita clutches to her chest. “Don’t tell me that’s supposed to be her burkha.”

  “It’s the best we could do on such short notice—we bought it on the street off an urchin.”

  “Oooh—it’s ghastly. Auntie can’t bear to look at it. Wait here.” He disappears up the stairs and returns a moment later carrying a purple number with a delicately embroidered face flap. “Sometimes Auntie likes to dress up as a real auntie,” he says to Sarita. “I just love your sari—remind Auntie to tell you when she was a bride herself.”