by Manil Suri
Her memory turns out to be off by a block. “I’ve only come here once before—Karun says they use it mainly for conferences.” The two-story structure sits squatly next to the bombed remains of a formerly elegant apartment house. Perhaps the guesthouse’s government-bureau ugliness (complete with dingy, pigeon-splattered “Indian Institute for Nuclear Physics” sign) has spared it the fate of its neighbor. A folding metal grate, the type found on old-style elevators, is drawn across the entrance. The locking mechanism looks punctured, as if by a gunshot—a length of stiff wire, twisted tightly into a loop, serves as the jerry-rigged replacement.
Sarita rattles at the bars, then undoes the wire, and slides the grate open. We ease past the splintered remains of the front door, still hanging on by a single hinge. The lobby is dark and gloomy. An ancient framed poster that shows a welter of electrons swarming around a hive-like nucleus announces a particle physics congress held in April 1999. A sofa and two folding chairs sit next to an unmanned desk, but otherwise, the room is empty.
“Hello,” Sarita calls out, but nobody answers. “I wonder if they have a ledger.” I try not to look too interested as she rummages around in the drawers of the desk, even though I have a sudden, desperate desire to find Karun’s signature before she can. But the search doesn’t turn up anything. “All the guestrooms are upstairs, if I remember.”
Halfway up the steps, I start feeling very anxious. I’m totally unprepared for the coming confrontation, I need more time. If I could only steal a few minutes alone with Karun, perhaps things might work out fine. Sarita knocks on the first door, then turns the knob. What if Karun awaits inside?
But the room doesn’t seem to have been occupied for a while. The next two rooms look the same—curtains drawn, a thin towel folded tidily at the base of each bed. The fourth, though, has books and socks strewn around—the cupboard door hangs open, and a half-filled suitcase rests by it on the floor. “It’s not his,” Sarita declares, without stepping in for a closer examination.
About to follow her deeper down the corridor, I stop. It can’t be, I think, as faint notes of the raga waft in from somewhere. Karun would play this very same composition over and over again while we lived in Delhi—a few times, I actually had to request he turn it off. Sarita recognizes it too, because she spins around. “Do you hear that? It’s the Chandranandan. It seems to be coming from the other side.”
She dashes back towards the stairwell, continuing through the hall to the far rooms. She puts her ear against one of the doors, then another, stopping in front of the third. I come up as she runs a hand over her hair and arranges the edge of the sari over it. She takes a deep breath, then knocks. “Karun?” she says, as I try to position myself in the most visible spot behind her. Nobody answers, so she repeats her knocking more forcefully.
This time, the music cuts off. Metal scrapes against concrete as if someone’s risen from a bed. I hear a rustling, like that of curtains being drawn, followed by the sound of nearing footsteps. Panic seizes me—I don’t know how I look, I haven’t even shaved, while before me, Sarita is blossoming with an incipient glow again. I try to put on a confident face, try to conjure up the magic words that will make Karun mine. But it’s too late. The latch turns, the door begins its inward swing, and it’s showtime.
SARITA
11
GAURAV. IJAZ. JAZ. JAZMINE. WITHOUT HIM, I CERTAINLY WOULDN’T have made it this far. And yet, how to trust someone when even his name is so hard to pin down?
I know he’s hiding something, but what? This much I’ve decided, he’s not on his way to Jogeshwari to see his mother. Even before the suspicious “uncle and auntie” bit, I found it difficult to swallow all the misfortunes he wove around her. And whatever went on between him and Rahim—when I asked him his preference, why didn’t he come clean? Did he need to deny his Delhi love interest so vehemently?
Most revealing of all were his fabrications on the ferry. His declaration that we’d just wed, his stories of our romantic travails. Why spin such reckless tales, what did he hope to gain? Perhaps it just comes to him naturally—the shifty wavelengths at which he operates.
Could he be a terrorist? Does that explain his slippery identity, the weapon he carries? Now that we’ve left the Muslim area, does he plan to infiltrate the Hindus by forcing Karun and me along as cover? Except I’ve seen his inexperience, his visible discomfort at even holding a gun. Surely the Pakistanis must train their agents better, select jihadis made of sterner stuff.
Since the ferry, I’ve wondered if he might harbor a more personal motive. Could our paths have crossed in the past, could something unbeknownst to me link us? The possibility sets my mind abuzz, but never for long. The random nature of our hospital encounter always brings my calculations to a halt.
Swooping through the air at Sequeira’s, I almost saw the pieces coalesce. The way we met, the reason he followed me, what he wanted, who he was. A flash of awareness so quick, so elusive, it vanished before I could hold on. All that remained was the realization I had trusted him too much. That his protectiveness didn’t flow from the pure goodness of his heart. I should have concealed this new insight, not succumbed to the angry laser thrusts that might have tipped him off.
Lying by his side in the Air India seats afterwards, I closed my eyes to shut out his presence. But I kept sensing a seeping curiosity on his part. Not amorous as I may have once feared, but still eerily physical. As if he was appraising me, gauging me, like an outfit hanging on a rack, before trying it on. Or perhaps, given Rahim’s revelation, an outfit meant for someone else. At one point, I could have sworn he leaned over to take a deep breath from my neck.
I squeezed together my eyelids even tighter to think of Karun instead. To imagine the two of us flying in our first-class seats to some exotic island in a faraway corner of the world. Except when I awoke, I knew I had dreamt about Jaz. That the plane had launched us on a journey together into a long and complicated future.
Standing in the hotel corridor now, I feel a sense of unease. What inauspicious presence have I brought to Karun’s door? Why didn’t I try harder this morning to shake Jaz off? I suppose the excitement of nearing the end of my search made me less cautious. The thought that I would soon see Karun, that after we reunited, none of this would matter.
A wave of this same anticipation rises within me as I stand in the dark. “Karun?” I say, and knock harder this time. I hear the stirring inside almost at once. My excitement mixes with nervousness—I still don’t know why Karun left, why he didn’t return, what could be going on between us. The door will open in an instant. Which of my hundred questions will I ask first?
THE MAN PEEPING OUT looks nothing like Karun. His skin is blotchy, his hair graying, and the cloth looping under his chin and around his face is knotted at the top like a cartoon character suffering from a toothache. “What do you want?” he asks.
“I’m sorry. I thought this is where . . . I’m looking for Karun. Karun Anand.”
“Who?” he says, even though a startled look comes to his eyes. “There’s nobody here.”
He begins to shut the door, but I thrust myself forward to block him. “The music you were just playing. Where did you get it?”
“What music? I didn’t hear anything.”
“And that shirt you’re wearing—it’s not yours.” I push into the room. “That CD player, there—I recognize it. This is his room, isn’t it? I’m his wife.”
The man’s sullenness clears. He hastens to explain he’s the manager, alone at the hotel, in Karun’s room merely to check up on things. “I thought I’d try out the shirt for fun. Just to compare the size. And the CDs—have to make sure the batteries don’t get spoiled in this humidity. All your husband seems to have is ragas. I put one on, even though I don’t really like classical music.” He looks down guiltily at his shoes. Then realizing they also belong to Karun, he scrambles to take them off.
“Where’s my husband?”
“Oh, Dr. Anand? Begging your
pardon, but he’s gone. He left, along with our other three guests. It’s been a week at least, perhaps more. I haven’t been too well, so it’s hard to keep track.” He coughs noisily, then makes slurping noises in his mouth, as if conserving any phlegm he might have hawked up. “Would you happen to have a toffee or something? I’m very hungry.”
“He’s been gone for a week?”
“He’d have left even earlier if he could. All of them would have. They tried to get to Colaba but the trains stopped running. Once they footed it to the bridge at Mahim, but the Muslims sent them packing. This time, though, they weren’t trying to get home. This time, the summons came straight from the Devi.”
“The Devi?”
“Well I don’t know which one exactly, what she calls herself—Mumbadevi or Kali or maybe even Ooper-devi. But surely you’ve heard she’s supposed to be appearing at Juhu? Right on the beach, twice an evening—showtimes as regular as a movie. What I need is for her to materialize here and conjure up some food for me. That rascal cook disappeared right after the scientists, so there’s been nothing to eat.” He forces out a pitiful cough, then tightens the knot around his head, as if performing an austerity measure. “Forgive me for rambling—I’m trying to remember the rest about your husband, but the hunger has blanked out my mind.”
I stare at him. This has to be the same Devi ma Madhu and Guddi and Anupam were heading to see, the one for whom they dressed and decorated me. But what interest could she possibly have in scientists? How has she wandered into Karun’s story?
Jaz opens one of the packets of orange biscuits we stocked up on at Sequeira’s and hands over two of them. The manager’s fingers tremble as he stuffs them into his mouth. He masticates noisily, ravenously, then closes his eyes. “A van—the Devi sent a white van with a blue stripe—very luxurious, might even have been air-conditioned, I think. Eight days ago, on the eighth—I can see it now—the day before the bombs reduced the streets to rubble. Except they refused to go, can you believe it? ‘We have to stamp out superstition, not sell out to this Devi character.’ That troublemaker Moorthy, always appointing himself in charge—you know the crusading Madrasi type. He complained from the minute he arrived—sheets not clean enough, too much milk in the tea.”
The manager lapses into silence. Jaz feeds him more biscuits, directly into his mouth one by one, as if inserting coins into a jukebox. “I tried warning them this wasn’t an invitation to some tea party, that the last thing they wanted to do was annoy the Devi, but they paid me no heed. Moorthy sent the driver back quite grandly, to tell her they would come only if she agreed to a public debate. ‘One where we would have an opportunity to unmask any trickery. For the people’s sake, because we’re scientists.’ As if the masses are clamoring to hear what scientists think.”
“So they didn’t go, then?”
“Not until that night, when the van returned with a bunch of Devi devotees. Except these devotees had not incense, but guns in their hands. They shot out the gate, rounded up all the scientists, and drove them away. Looking back, I curse my stupidity for not trying to slip in with them. If nothing else, I’m sure the Devi must be feeding them well.”
I walk around the room. Karun’s clothes are strewn on the bed and across the floor—it appears the manager has tried them all out, indulged in quite a fashion show. Even the sock and underwear drawers, usually such a point of order for Karun, appear ransacked. I search the desk for a note or a letter, but the only writing is in a journal full of scientific scribbling.
About to leave the room, I notice Jaz smoothing out the T-shirts in the dresser. When I ask him if he’s discovered something, he turns around with a strange expression. “No. I was just looking.”
“Your husband,” the manager says in the corridor, then breaks into another coughing fit, followed by the same bizarre slurping and swallowing. “Such a good man. So kind, so calm, I liked him best of all. The other scientists—some of them I wouldn’t even spit on. I’ll pray that you find him.” He looks at me with great empathy and compassion, but his gaze can’t help straying to the packet, almost empty, in Jaz’s hand. We give it to him and leave.
THE ONLY LEAD for Karun’s whereabouts points towards Juhu. Jaz says walking along the water is safest, so we follow the shoreline. The fissures get even more prominent—the sea’s fingers reaching across our path, trying to extend their claim to the buildings on the far side of the road. “I read it’s due to rising ocean levels. Something about the drainage ducts laid while reclaiming the land no longer being able to handle the flow.” Jaz adds that the material used to pack the connections between the separate land masses might be particularly vulnerable. “Imagine if we revert to the original seven islands—the way the city was discovered by the Portuguese.”
I remember Karun repudiating the drainage duct theory, but don’t say anything. Instead, I think of him trying to return home to me as the hotel manager said, a fact I turn and twist in my heart for the comfort I’m able to wring out. Why, though, did he leave in the first place? The pretense of the cancelled conference, the first few days he spent in Bandra while the trains might still have been running? If only I’d embarked on my journey earlier, we might have been united by now. Beneath this wistfulness, a sense of alarm creeps in on me. Who has kidnapped Karun? Where has he been for the past week? Could he really be a hostage of this supposed Devi?
The fissures ease off as the shore turns rocky. Thickets of scrubby trees sprout forth from the cracks. Strands of tattered cloth festoon the branches, like decorations intended to give a ghostly look. We stumble onto a grove of sculptures made from trash. One of them consists of gloves hanging from a scaffold. They wave in the wind, empty fingers blowing and twirling, searching for the digits that once filled them. Beyond lies a fishing village at the mouth of a small cove, still reeking of shrimp left to dry in the sun. Two boys playing around a boat pulled up next to a hut quickly disperse as we approach. “Wait up,” Jaz calls, but this makes them clamber even faster away over the rocks.
We spot the crows soon after, black specks circling over a break along the shore. Hundreds of them rise and fall in the sky—as we near, we hear their excited calls. Then the stench hits us. The gap in the rocks is actually a vast carpet of bodies, in various states of decomposition—the crows hop and pick and peck among them. Mounds of flowers and vermilion lie strewn about, like the remnants of a slapdash funeral rite. “Stay here,” Jaz says, and I am only too glad to turn away.
He returns a moment later. “I know this is creepy, but it has to be done.” Between his fingers is a pinch of the vermilion, gathered from around the corpses. “For the Khakis, as you call them. They might think you’re Muslim if you don’t look more properly Hindu.” To my horror, he smears the vermilion down the parting of my hair. “A bindi, too,” he says, and presses one onto my forehead with the color remaining on his fingertip.
After that, I insist we walk along the roads. Unfortunately, this does not immunize us from the gore—torsos and limbs lurk in almost every alley and corner. “It’s probably the Khakis—their buffer zone, just like the Limbus created,” Jaz says. He’s right—within a block, we begin to see the familiar pattern of charred buildings and burnt-out storefronts.
Just as I wonder where the Khakis might be all hiding, two of them slide out of a doorway. They spot us at once and stop, blocking our path. “Going for a stroll, all dressed up in red, my jaaneman?” the taller one says, wetting a finger with his tongue and slicking his hair back, Bollywood-villain style. I try to look unfazed as he touches me lightly in the abdomen with the tip of his machine gun.
“Is this the way to the Devi?”
“Come with us, we’ll personally make sure you get to her,” the other one leers.
He’s about to grab my wrist when Jaz intervenes. “Actually, we don’t need to trouble you. You can just tell me.”
“And who do you think you might be?”
“I’m accompanying her—I’m the one responsible for her saf
ety.”
I can tell Jaz is thinking of going for his revolver—a terrible match for a machine gun, especially considering the ineptness he’s displayed. “Bhim’s waiting for us,” I blurt out. “I’m one of the Devi’s maidens. Can’t you see this red sari I’m wearing?” I’m surprised at my own resourcefulness.
Bhim’s name gives them pause. I force myself not to wilt as they assess my bedraggled clothes, my hastily smeared-on bindi. Then the taller one spits on the ground. “Keep going until you come to the main road.” He spits again. I feel their stares on us as we walk past—I resist the temptation to run.
“I almost pulled out the gun,” Jaz says in an awed whisper. “Though I think if I had, we might both be dead.”
After that, we slink along in the shadows of buildings wherever possible. We almost run into Khakis on two more occasions, but I manage to spot them and lead us to cover each time. I still haven’t been able to figure out Jaz’s motives. What is he after? Why does he tag along? Perhaps it’s the fact that our positions have reversed—he’s the vulnerable one now, dependent on me to shepherd him through this inhospitable Hindu terrain. Should I run and let him fend for himself? Would I feel guilty of leaving him to his fate? Perhaps not a wise strategy—with all the Khakis around, a lone woman, Hindu or not, is probably not very safe.
He seems to pick up on my thoughts. “I hope you don’t mind my company. The most direct way north to my mother is through Juhu, and I’d have a hard time crossing alone.”
I nod curtly at this return of the phantom mother. “There’s safety in numbers for both of us.” I try not to think of my own mother, of whether I will ever see my parents or sister again.
