The City of Devi: A Novel (37 page)

We both end up naked. I feel too exposed with Jaz in the same room, so I draw back my divested sari to spread like a sheet over us. Every rustle and scrape gets amplified in the confines of the shed, and I keep worrying we will awaken Jaz. But he dozes through it all—the kisses and nestling and exploration as Karun and I reacquaint ourselves with each other’s person. “So long since I slept next to you,” Karun says, and I wonder how I could have mistaken his earlier dispassion, misread the pomegranate’s call. As his excitement reaches its usual modest plateau, I realize I can’t sustain it. We don’t have enough room for free movement, for gymnastics like Jantar Mantar. My body ignites just as his fades. He embraces me in a cuddle that promises only affection, unaware of the chemicals that surge through my blood ways.

Karun nuzzles against my body. I caress his neck as he drifts away. It takes me a while before I can calm myself enough to follow him.

Neither the night nor the heat has lifted when my eyes next open, but something has changed. Karun’s breath comes in rasps—he still holds me, but his body seems further away. Abruptly, he arches back his neck, and I feel the fullness of his manhood press into me. I think he’s in the midst of a dream, but through the darkness, I glimpse his eyes are open. He subsides, then pushes forward again, his whole body arching this time, his legs and torso meeting at the focal point of his groin. Seeing me awake, he buries his face in my neck and covers it with kisses. As he presses forth, he pulls me to him, so that my body bends against his in the same arc, like in the yoga asanas we once practiced. I feel his penis climb up my thigh.

His hands caress my breasts, his lips work down the hollow of my throat to my chest. Thrown off by his movements, my body nevertheless responds to his touch. He groans as I take him in my hand. I’m unsure what drives him, but I want him to continue, I will help any way I can.

That’s when I glance beyond. At first I think it’s just an aberration, the darkness massing together into a shadow more substantial. As my eyes adjust, I realize it’s Jaz. Naked and awake, engaging Karun in what way, I can’t exactly tell. Instantly, I retract. Karun tries to hold on to me. “Wait,” he gasps.

Jaz wraps an arm around Karun’s chest and draws him away towards his own body. “Wait,” Karun says again. “No, not yet.” His eyes close and his words trail off as he leans his head back. Jaz twists around as if preparing to devour him—clamping his mouth over Karun’s, silencing him before he can utter anything else.

For an instant, I watch as Karun lolls helplessly in Jaz’s control. Limbs flash, chests strain, muscles flex. This is the image I never had: what it looks like between the two of them. Not content to be just a spectator, I latch onto Karun’s waist. As their conjoined bodies thrust towards me, I grasp Karun again and guide him into myself. He cries out my name, his pelvis pushing forward, his shoulders tilting back.

Matching their rhythm proves elusive. I lose Karun, have to repeatedly tuck him back in. To my amazement, he neither wilts nor fades, unlike any of our previous attempts.

Perhaps Jaz decides my lack of synchronization hampers his efforts as well. He positions Karun prone over me, caging him against my person, splaying his hands on the floor as if he might escape. Lying under Karun, I now feel the sensations reach deep inside me—every time he presses in, every thrust that drives into his body. I try not to think of these thrusts, try to ignore the sounds from Jaz’s heaving frame. Instead, I concentrate on the rising throb of pleasure and pain within me, the same interplay I see mirrored on Karun’s face. The realization that he feels every stimulus when I do, endures a version of every sensation he inflicts, fuses my experience with his. As the tides gather and the wave begins to build, I have a flash of intuition. I suddenly know what it feels to be Karun—the passivity at the core of his being, his need to be a conduit, the passion he can experience only when thus initiated. I want to share this insight with him, assure him that I empathize, that I accept and forgive. But the wave is already too close, its waters too high—before we can slow down, its obliterating form thunders in. Karun’s features dissolve, my insides turn liquid, and as Jaz labors on, the two of us are simultaneously swept away.

Surely supernovas explode that instant, somewhere, in some galaxy. The hut vanishes, and with it the sea and the sands—only Karun’s body, locked with mine, remains. We streak like superheroes past suns and solar systems, we dive through shoals of quarks and atomic nuclei. In celebration of our breakthrough fourth star, statisticians the world over rejoice.

Afterwards, I lie on the mats as before, with Karun at my side. I savor the familiar smoothness of his ankle, the steady sound of his breathing, the reassurance of his fingers clasped with mine. A bubble of optimism buoys me. We will complete our journey to safety, set up a house in another city, live once again in normal times. Even the dream of realizing our family trinity seems within reach now—the door has opened to this opportunity, to finally trying for a child.

Then an alarming thought occurs to me. What if our trinity is already complete, with Jaz forming the third element? Surely he doesn’t plan on leaving—Karun would be unprepared to let him go anyway. More critically, wouldn’t the union we just experienced have been impossible without Jaz? Wasn’t he the catalyst, the very engine, without whom Karun and I would have never made it past the foothills of the slope we climbed?

I feel chilled, even though the air around remains as oppressive. I imagine a lifetime of sharing, of deference, of compromise, the role of a less privileged wife. What allowance would I get of Karun’s day, what part of his attention, his love, his life? Given Karun’s hopeless passiveness, wouldn’t I have to struggle with Jaz over every day, every minute? And sex—would it play out like tonight, Jaz calling the shots each time? The indispensable savior, the proud conqueror, riding in on his own wave a few seconds after mine?

The sky slowly lightens in the hole above us. I watch the dawn advance, swallowing the stars most weakened from their vigil through the night.

A TERRIBLE THIRST
, much worse than the accompanying hunger, afflicts us all in the morning. We look longingly at the coconuts sprouting from the unreachable tops of the nearby palms, fantasizing more of their sweet juice than their meat. Jaz breaks into a cluster of shuttered stalls just off the beach, finding the first three completely stripped of their wares. In the fourth, he gets lucky while feeling around under the counter, discovering both a one-liter Pepsi bottle filled with water and loose Marie biscuits in a plastic bag—someone’s personal stash, perhaps. “Not quite Gluco,” he tells Karun as we eat the biscuits, and they both smile. I feel left out at the private joke, but nothing like the shock I experience when Jaz leans forward and plants a kiss on Karun’s lips.

“You shouldn’t mind him,” Karun says, while Jaz is off trying to break into another stall. “The Gluco biscuits—when we first lived in Delhi, we shared a packet for breakfast every day.”

I look at the sea, at the resurgent tide, at the frothing waves. Perhaps I need to take solace from their exuberance. Perhaps I need to tell him I can’t do this, he has to choose, pick a side. “He’s actually very nice. You’ll see when you get to better know him.”

As if to prove Karun’s point, Jaz returns with some salted gram he has found, which he divides between us, scrupulously to the last grain. “There’s a bit of water left, too,” he tells me, “if you want it.”

Jaz’s prediction of the beach narrowing quickly comes true—in fact, the sea sweeps right across our path along several stretches. The waves force us to clamber over the rocks stacked as reinforcement against the water. Behind the rocks rise walls, some topped with spikes and barbed wire, which enclose towering skyscrapers—or their bombed-out hulks. The barbed wire continues across the mouths of several of the lanes running perpendicular to the shore—a post-war addition, no doubt, to keep out beach riffraff like us.

The trio of fighter planes appears as we make our way over a particularly challenging tract of rock. They pass harmlessly overhead as we try to scramble up and flatten ourselves against the wall. “The enemy’s,” Jaz says. “I used to think that could only be Pakistan—now I’m not so sure. But we should be safe from them—they must be looking for something bigger to bomb.” Before I can offer a correction based on my personal experience, we hear a fourth jet—one with a lower-pitched drone (could it be the same one that shot at me on Marine Drive?). Fortunately, the wall has an overhang of sorts under which we can all squeeze in, so the pilot probably doesn’t see us. My unease is well-founded—seconds later, we hear him farther down the beach, strafing the rocks.

We sight more jets. None fly directly overhead, but their presence reminds us that the war continues in full force. Surely this increased activity is ominous, considering that the nineteenth is tomorrow. Jaz feels just the opposite, given the sounds of bombardment we hear. “If they were planning on dropping the Big One in twenty-four hours, why would they bother with this small stuff right now?” Minutes later, a volley of explosions sounds from the direction of Juhu, as if the Devi might be putting on a special morning edition of her show. A black column of smoke rises in the distance—Karun wonders if it’s the hotel.

“Might very well be. Bhim apparently had a special thing going with the CIA or some other such protector—who exactly, I didn’t find out. With him gone, the Pakistanis—” Jaz breaks off, as a fresh series of explosions send an enormous tree-shaped cloud of smoke into the sky. “Such a glaring target, what with the Devi and all. I’m amazed they held back for so long.”

As more smoke billows up, I have a vision of Devi ma bursting through the cloud. Darting after the jets that bombed the hotel to shoot lasers at them with all four extended arms. One after another, the planes succumb, disappearing in loud and spectacular fireballs. Even as the wreckage falls towards the water, Devi ma lets loose some extra rays to dispatch the parachuting pilots—she’s never been known for mercy, one cannot expect impunity messing with her. Then she heads back to land, towards her cheering droves, another morning’s errand done.

BY TEN, WE STAND
at the northwest edge of Versova, where Malad Creek cuts off the land. Madh Island lies directly across the water, barely a few hundred meters away, the ruins of its fort visible on a knoll to the left. The rickety landing wharf is gone, probably the victim of a bombing attack. Craters line our side as well, which is puzzling, since the shore had little worth bombing to begin with. No terminus, no docks, not even an elevated landing platform—the place has always been notorious for forcing ferry passengers to disembark directly into the mud. Further down the creek, the mast of a capsized boat sticks up through the water, its exposed lines still supporting tattered pieces of sailcloth. Two small fishing vessels float next to it like dead fish, their hulls overturned.

The bombs have not spared the fishing village next to the shore either. Even though most of the shantytown lies in ruins, a fair number of people mill around. A man walks ant-like along the water’s edge with an enormous bundle on his back, while in the shade of a small tree, a woman sits next to a pile of belongings nursing an infant. Jaz goes looking for hawkers selling food, and returns with four plastic bottles of water and a stack of chappatis, stale to the point of crispness. “I think I saw some Khakis in there. Best to stay hunkered down, in case Das and his men have made it here from the hotel.”

We realize we don’t know where the ferry will stop—on this side, or across the water. Jaz goes back into the village to ask around, but nobody seems sure which ferry he’s talking about. “All they know is that one of the boats taking people to the opposite bank was bombed, after which the other two took off. Since then, people have been forced to swim across. Some of them drown.”

Since we can’t take the chance of the ferry missing us, the only sure way is to have someone stationed on either side of the creek. “Why don’t I swim there?” Karun suggests. With no boat available, and both Jaz and I possessing only rudimentary aquatic skills, we have little choice but to go along with this idea. However, I’m filled with apprehension. What if something happens? If Karun gets caught in debris lurking under the surface, or falls victim to the current? Who knows what dangers lie on the other side, where he’ll wait alone and unprotected? “Don’t worry,” he tells me, as he strips off his clothes and piles them neatly next to the provisions Jaz has assembled. “There’s no controlling fate.” At the last minute, he decides to take his pants tied around his waist, because he doesn’t want to wait on the other side just in his underwear.

As he wades into the water, some sort of premonition makes me shout after him. “Don’t go. We’ll be fine waiting here—the ferry’s bound to see us if we wave.”

He turns around. “Stop worrying, or I’ll have to take you with me.” For a moment, I wish he would, that we were back at the pool and it was time for a lesson again. Then he lunges forward to embrace the water, and swims away with sharp, precise strokes. I stand on the shore with Jaz, watching the third vertex in our triangle recede further and further away.

“He’s always been very good in the water,” Jaz says, after Karun’s made it to the other side, after I’ve finally stopped looking for the shark or tidal wave that will claim him, finally exhaled. “I remember, once we went to a beach at Marve and—” He stops, perhaps sensing my unresponsiveness. For a minute, we both watch Karun wring his trousers to squeeze the water out—he puts them on and waves.

“I want to apologize for following you the way I did.”

I suppose I could answer that I would have done the same. But I don’t—I’m not quite ready to play the make-up game. And yet, the fact that Karun is far away from the two of us brings me closer to Jaz in a way I can’t quite understand. Perhaps it’s the act of looking across the water, the bond of both being in love with the same person. Is this what wives feel in a harem?