The City of Devi

by Manil Suri

  Despite his attempt at wryness, Das is visibly relieved once we are dressed. He glares at the guards to arrest their smirking comments, then gets very chatty, trying to smooth over the situation, perhaps. “We’d been expecting your friend,” he tells Karun, as if talking about an extra dinner guest. “The guards at the front entrance alerted us, and we saw him looking around through the garden cameras as well.” He turns to me and inquires whether the journey to the dining room went smoothly enough. “We had to figure out your intentions, find out whom you came to see, where you went. Sorry to barge in like that, but the microphone in the room wasn’t working very well.”

  He leads us to Bhim’s suite on the third floor with a profusion of “This way’s” and “Mind your step’s,” his manner so collegial that he might be accompanying us to a university colloquium. “You’re lucky Bhim’s here today—he has so many other centers to tend.” The outer room is set up as an office, complete with computers and file cabinets—a secretary informs us we’ll have to wait awhile, Bhim is busy with someone else. “Always a problem when you come to see him,” Das laments.

  So we sit there, like in a doctor’s waiting room—one sorely lacking in magazines, but with guards at the ready to ensure we keep our appointment. Das gabs on, about the weather, the city, even the physics Karun researches—interspersed with his babble, I notice crafty attempts to tease out information of more consequence. He’s very interested in our relationship—whether we know each other in a professional, or only the biblical sense. He tries to ferret out who the maiden accompanying me to the annex was, where she might be now, how I got into the hotel. He asks such keen questions about my purported geological expertise that I’m forced to confess my true field is finance. “Why didn’t you say so?” he exclaims. “I could have introduced you to our economists sitting at the very next table. We have other fields here too—Bhim’s been collecting the brightest and best in all of them.”

  We wait almost forty minutes. I keep glancing at Karun, wanting to sit closer, to hold him in my arms for comfort, for reassurance. The Jazter has paid no heed to danger all this time, but now that he’s found his love, fear has also found him. With it, an emerging wistfulness about the future, a seeping dread that we may not make it. Karun’s face displays neither the anxiety nor the yearning I feel—I can tell he is meditating to quiet himself.

  The door to the inner chamber bursts open, and a pair of Khakis emerge, propping up a man between them. Blood trickles down his brow and around both sides of his nose from a cut on his forehead. “That’s Sarahan, Bhim’s chief commander,” Das whispers. “He looks after practically everything, so much so that I’ve been lending him a hand. I wonder if—” He calls out as the guards go past. “What happened, Sarahan kaka? Are you all right?”

  The inquiry revives the bleeding man, who pulls himself free and lunges for the door. But the guards tackle him almost at once. They punch him till he’s quiet, then drag him across the doorstep into the corridor outside.

  A buzzer goes off on the secretary’s table. She presses a red button and the sound stops. “Bhim kaka will see you now,” she announces.

  BHIM STANDS AT A DESK with his back towards us—the great leader himself, absorbed in the contemplation of his own greatness. Despite myself, I feel a slight frisson—a bit like catching a glimpse of a film star or president. Except one who looks less imposing in person, shorter than expected. Could this be worthy enough a villain for a Jaz Bond script? The room around him is disappointingly bereft of props—no tigers a-growling or skinned on the floor, no map on the wall charting world control. A few more guards, yes, but where are the thumbscrews, the torture rack, the electrodes? “Come in,” he says, and turns around. I look into his eyes: They seem to reveal only affability as windows to his soul.

  Then I notice the red on his cuff, the blood on the floor, the baton on the table splintered in two. Das takes it all in as well, and his curiosity spills out. “We saw Sarahan leaving. Did something happen with him?”

  Bhim ignores the question. “So you’re the gentlemen they spied snooping around. I suppose I should be honored—people normally try to leave, not get in. Were you hoping to assassinate me? Is that how I can be of assistance?” He turns to Das. “Have you found who sent them? I thought there was only one, not two of them.”

  “There is only one, the one on the left. Apparently, he came by himself. Not for you but Dr. Anand, next to him.”

  “He came to kill one of our scientists?”

  “No, not kill. Just to be with him.” Das shifts uncomfortably. “They seem to be together. Like boyfriend-girlfriend.”

  It’s the perfect opportunity for Bhim to display his mettle as a villain. He could laugh derisively, he could rage and froth, he could ham his way through a flamboyant bigotry pageant. Instead, he lapses deep into thought (so cinematically listless), as if sifting through his memory banks for a past frame of reference. “No, I don’t believe it,” he says at last, shaking his head. “It’s too preposterous, they’re up to something else. You surprised them, and this is the first story they could think of to dupe you with.”

  “We, uh, found them naked. Both Dr. Anand and his friend. Gaurav Pradhan, that’s what he calls himself, even though he’s really Muslim.”

  Bhim’s frown deepens, but eases the next second—a smile begins to play thinly at his lips. “I suppose it could be true, then. The vice of the Pathans—not to mention the Turks, the Arabs and the rest of their tangled sects. Though I have to say I’m startled. Startled and disappointed. You, Dr. Anand—a Hindu, a scientist no less. Do you know how much we’ve spent bringing you here, feeding you, keeping you safe? Is this how you repay our investment?”

  “Your investment?” Karun bursts out. “You call kidnapping someone an investment?”

  Before he can proceed with his rant, I smoothly cut in. “He’s not to blame. I’m the one after him, forcing myself time and again. He didn’t even notice me, all the days I followed him. He couldn’t have had the slightest inkling I was coming.”

  Bhim waves my words away. “It doesn’t matter—all will become clear once we investigate. Das, make preparations for these two gentlemen. They’re probably telling the truth, but we’ll need to make sure, the usual way. I know, I know—I’m doing it to another one of your scientists, you’re sure to protest again.”

  I can guess what comes next, Bhim’s instruction doesn’t bode well. Karun shouts at him, but words will hardly help. The Jazter is to blame for this predicament, it’s up to him to get his beloved out of this mess. Otherwise, lavender love the world over must hang its head in shame.

  So I fling down the get-out-of-jail-free card I’ve been holding so tight to my chest. “Let him go. He’s married. You want me, not him.”

  My revelation doesn’t quite have the desired bombshell effect. Bhim seems to find it amusing more than anything else. “Is that true, Dr. Anand? Do you really go both ways?” He signals to the guards as Karun angrily responds it’s nobody’s business. “Please, show the way to the good doctor and his companion.”

  Which leaves a final disclosure that might help, one extremely painful to make. Something that’s been turning inside me, charring slowly, like on a rotisserie within. I look at Karun longingly, aware his eyes will forever fill with contempt upon hearing what I am about to say. “There’s something else you should know, before you lead him anywhere. His wife is the one who brought me here—she’s in the main hotel, waiting for him.”

  Karun looks stunned. “What? Sarita’s here? And you didn’t tell me? Are you crazy? Is she OK?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, unable to raise my head to his stare. “She’s the one I tailed, not you—she’s fine, don’t worry. I knew you’d want to rush to her, so I couldn’t bring myself to tell you right away.”

  “Where is she, Jaz?—my God, I can’t believe it. How low can you sink, trying to hide something like this? Each time I think I’ve seen your last betrayal, you find a way to do it again. What sto
ry did you feed her?—all your old lying tricks.”

  As I stammer to explain myself, to assure Karun I haven’t revealed anything, to deflect the rancor emanating from him, Bhim laughs grandly, theatrically, in the manner finally befitting a villain. “A lovers’ spat. Well, well. Perhaps we will have to separate you two after all. Das, it looks like we’ll only need a single spot, to host our Muslim friend. Though we should check out the story first, make sure Dr. Anand’s wife really is in the hotel. Why don’t you take him over and see if you can get them happily together again? We’ll present them at breakfast tomorrow as one of the success stories of our family reunification program.”

  Perhaps it dawns on Karun what fate Bhim might have in store for me, because the anger drains from his face. He begins to appeal on my behalf, plead that I be allowed to accompany him back to the hotel. I am buoyed by the desperation in his voice, cheered by the knowledge he still cares. “Why not let him go when you know he’s completely harmless? It’s not like you have to kill everyone from the wrong religion.”

  Bhim’s smile disappears. He stares at Karun, then replies in a quiet voice. “Is that what you take me as, a murderer, a bigot? Do you really think that’s my goal, to clear the country of every Muslim?” Even Das gapes, momentarily confounded by the question.

  “I merely meant—”

  “Yes, I know what you meant, what you call me, you and everyone else. Bhim the butcher, Bhim the fanatic, Bhim, who’s so bloodthirsty that he slaughters innocent women and children. But does anyone ever bother to ask why? Does anyone understand the dharma I must fulfill? Look at the world around us, torn to bits. Do people realize I’m the only one balancing our fate?”

  Bhim starts holding forth about how the country has to “stem the tide” as he puts it, how the Hindus are the only remaining hope, the sole standing bulwark, against the terrorist religion (not mentioned by name, but with a meaningful look at me) sweeping the entire planet. He claims to have the backing of not only the CIA, but also Russia, Israel, and the “Asian Secret Service.” He invokes his favorite king Ashoka, but in an unexpected nod, the Muslim emperor Akbar as well (what a lovely gift my parents’ opus would make for him), pointing out that both rulers had to go through similar crusades of violence before achieving enough stability to renounce bloodshed. “People look at my campaigns and tell me I’m too cruel, too merciless. But the enemy rears up every time I lower my guard, spreads its mayhem at the slightest show of lenience. Then the same people go around complaining Bhim has softened too much, that he can no longer muster the required ruthlessness.”

  I’m about to give his performance a B-plus in terms of Bond-worthiness, when he adds just the right touch of looniness to take it over the top. Still chafing, apparently, from the charge of annihilating Muslims, he defends himself by underscoring how many Hindus he kills. “Just yesterday, I had to give the order to wipe out a whole gathering of them at Chowpatty,” he says with a sad and remorseful pride, and I wonder if he’s talking of the beach carnage I witnessed while following Sarita. “Do people ever take that into account in their calculations?”

  After that, Bhim launches into a litany of wrongs—how quickly people assume the worst of him, how slow they are to show appreciation. “They still believe I’m the one who spread the Pakistani bomb rumors—just because no other leader could be that computer-savvy, they say. Then they turn around and blame me for just the opposite: cutting off their web and phone service. Forgetting that without TwitterSpeak, I can no longer summon the multitudes that used to be just a message away.” He seems particularly chagrined about his elite guests, who clamor “like spoiled and greedy children” for laptops and internet access, while taking for granted such luxuries as the uninterrupted electric supply. “Do you know how difficult it was to seize the grid? I had to lead the charge on the Khopoli power station myself.” He’s tired of questions about the nuclear shelter delays, exhausted by the ambitions of his subordinates, whom he must keep constantly in check, fed up with catering to Devi ma’s antics, who’s much more of a handful than he anticipated. “All the backers I have to juggle on top of this, all the contacts I have to maintain. Nobody can conceive what a thankless job I have.”

  I’m wondering whether he’s angling for our sympathy, and more bizarrely, why I actually feel a smidgen of it, when his tone shifts. “But there I go again. You must be thinking, look at Bhim with all his complaints—a sure lack of will, a sure sign of weakness. Forgetting what I read somewhere—that all great leaders experience such internal conflict.”

  Karun seizes upon his words to renew his rescue attempt, complimenting Bhim on his wisdom, reassuring him about his image, suggesting that to free me would be a sign of strength, not weakness. But Bhim sadly shakes his head. “I have to do what Ashoka might in such a situation, there’s very little choice I have. When it came to what’s best for his kingdom, he never hesitated, never took a chance.” He glances at me for support, as if his logic is so implacable that I will happily sacrifice myself.

  When Karun persists, Bhim flares up. “Haven’t you been listening to anything I said? Here I am trying to save the world, and all you can do is prattle on about this one degenerate.” He reaches for his baton, picking up the bloody halves and trying to fit them together. “Perhaps I was wrong about you—perhaps I need to knock some sense into your head and send you along with your Muslim friend.”

  It’s time for the Jazter to step in for another save. “There’s no need for that. His wife is waiting at the hotel. I’m ready to be taken away.”

  “It really is for the best,” Bhim says, calm and smiling again. Karun lunges at Bhim, but a guard seizes him. “Don’t worry, I promise—I won’t lay a hand on your friend.” Karum struggles to free himself, his cries getting increasingly desperate as I’m led away. Bhim gives me a little bow, then folds his hands in namaste, like a very karmic diner acknowledging the selflessness of a steak.

  IT LOOKS LIKE THE worst has transpired, even if it’s a tad clichéd. The Jazter seems set to follow a long list of ancestors who’ve willingly laid down their lives in stories and films. The homosexual who must swallow the big enchilada in the finale to pay for his sins.

  But has the Jazter really sinned? He’s enjoyed himself, to be sure, even been a bit of a cad as far as Karun and Sarita go (though don’t they excuse this in love and war?). No matter, this gesture should more than suffice to compensate. The Jazter nobly offering himself up so they can live out the rest of their hetero fairy tale. Somehow, the picture leaves me less than fulfilled. The joys of martyrdom are definitely overrated.

  The guards bring me down to the basement. Clearly, I lack Guddi’s talent at instilling fear, since they ignore my demands to notify Devi ma, and actually titter when I threaten to sic her on them. To add to this insult, they find my Open Sesame card and confiscate it. They leave me locked in a nuclear survival pod, where I contemplate my future, soon to be abbreviated. The past also engages: I count all the crossroads in my life at which I could have averted my coming fate.

  I’m up to juncture nine or ten at least when I hear a rustle from the shadows behind. “I see they’ve sent me some company,” a voice says. I make out a figure seated on a cot in the anterior of the space. “I’m Sarahan. Bhim’s deputy. Until this afternoon, that is.”

  I begin to introduce myself as Gaurav, then pause. It hardly matters now, does it? “I’m Jaz,” I tell him. “Ijaz Hassan, that’s the full name.”

  “A Muslim!” Sarahan exclaims, and peers at me, undoubtedly to check out what member of my tribe would be stupid enough to blunder into this place. Love-struck, not stupid, I feel like correcting him. Although I guess the two are one and the same.

  I examine him as well, especially the wound on his forehead, which by now is dry and caked. He appears recovered enough—in fact, my presence in the pod seems to energize him. He’s dying to know how I ended up in Bhim’s lair, so I say I came to save a friend, reveal some select highlights from the meeting upstairs. “
Too bad you didn’t have a gun,” he tells me. “How fitting were Bhim to be killed by a Muslim!”

  Sarahan relates how he used to be an engineer, how he rose through the ranks after the HRM recruited him at one of their rallies. Apparently, the train I hitched a ride on is to blame for his downfall today. “I was bringing in another cache from our depot near Churchgate—all the right palms greased as usual to ensure safe passage. Someone must have tipped off the Limbus about the cargo—I don’t know who, but they ambushed the train in Mahim, ran it right off the rails. Needless to say, we lost everything, which is what got Bhim so enraged.”

  He starts complaining about Bhim ignoring advice, how if they’d cleaned up Mahim as Sarahan had lobbied for weeks, they’d have never lost the train. “Always the same reasons for holding off—that we need a nearby enemy region to fire up our own ranks, that it’s insurance against any nuclear attack. As if the Pakistanis would care—they’d happily martyr half the Muslims in India and deliver their bombs just the same.”

  I try to focus Sarahan’s attention on our predicament, on suggesting a way out, but he’s on a roll with his gripes against his boss. “Do you know he sabotaged a prayer ceremony yesterday? Just because a rival temple dared organize it? Killed hundreds in the rampage, every one a Hindu we could have recruited. How can he have forgotten what got him this far? Which—and please don’t take this the wrong way—was to massacre a lot of Muslims.”

  No offense taken, I assure him. “Now about this nuclear shelter we’re in, how do we—”

  “Shelter, ha! To save the city’s brains, he claims. He should have just bought everyone a helmet instead, rather than this joke he’s built. Do you know, if the power goes, the ventilation goes with it?” Sarahan kicks the wall and gravel falls from the ceiling like rain.

  I ask if we can dig our way out, but Sarahan says it’s too dangerous, the whole place might collapse and bury us. “As it is, such a miracle that the hotel still stands, that the Pakistanis haven’t destroyed it. There would be bombs falling on us in an instant if our patron friends ever walked away from the protection they’ve promised. And what does Bhim do? He simply ignores them—it’s been weeks since he’s bothered to communicate. All he can do is talk about Ashoka, and now even Akbar—this obsession with how history will judge him. Our men can’t help but notice his distraction—that’s why they’re executing things so shoddily, becoming just as erratic as him.”