It was not me who rushed to the driver and his mate. It was the demon Trivasti.
‘Stop stop at once!’ I cried. ‘Your alternator has seized! You will burn us up.’
The driver pulled into the narrow draw, up against the raw rock. On the offside, trucks passed with millimetres to spare. We got the hood up. We could see the smoke wafting from the alternator. The men shook their heads and pulled out palmers. The passengers piled to the front of the bus to stare and talk.
‘No no no, give me a wrench,’ I ordered.
The driver stared but I shook my outstretched hand, demanding. Perhaps he remembered the crying baby. Perhaps he was thinking about how long it would take a repair truck to come up from Kathmandu. Perhaps he was thinking about how good it would be to be home with his wife and children. He slapped the monkey wrench into my hand. In less than a minute I had the belt off and the alternator disconnected.
‘Your bearings have seized,’ I said. ‘It’s a persistent fault on pre-2030 models. A hundred metres more and you would have burned her out. You can drive her on the battery. There’s enough in it to get you down to Kathmandu.’
They stared at this little girl in an Indian sari, head covered but sleeves of her choli rolled up and fingers greasy with biolube.
The demon returned to his place and it was clear as the darkening sky what I would do now. The driver and his mate called out to me as I walked up beside the line of vehicles to the head of the pass. We ignored them. Passing drivers sounded their multiple, musical horns, offered lifts. I walked on. I could see the top now. It was not far to the place where the three roads divided. Back to India, down to the city, up to the mountains.
There was a chai-dhaba at the wide, oil-stained place where vehicles turned. It was bright with neon signs for American drinks and Bharati mineral water, like something fallen from the stars. A generator chugged. A television burbled familiar, soft Nepali news. The air smelled of hot ghee and biodiesel.
The owner did not know what to make of me, strange little girl in my Indian finery. Finally he said, ‘Fine night.’
It was. Above the smogs and soots of the valley, the air was magically clear. I could see for a lifetime in any direction. To the west the sky held a little last light. The great peaks of Manaslu and Anapurna glowed mauve against the blue.
‘It is,’ I said. ‘Oh it is.’
Traffic pushed slowly past, never ceasing on this high cross-roads of the world. I stood in the neon flicker of the dhaba, looking long at the mountains and I thought, I shall live there. We shall live in a wooden house close to trees, with running water cold from high snow. We shall have a fire and a television for company and prayer banners flying in the wind and in time people will stop being afraid and will come up the path to our door. There are many ways to be divine. There is the big divine, of ritual and magnificence and blood and terror. Ours shall be a little divinity, of small miracles and everyday wonders. Machines mended, programs woven, people healed, homes designed, minds and bodies fed. I shall be a little goddess. In time, the story of me will spread and people come from all over; Nepalis and foreigners, travellers and hikers and monks. Maybe one day a man who is not afraid. That would be good. But if he does not come, that will be good also, for I shall never be alone, not with a houseful of demons.
Then I found I was running, with the surprised chai-wallah calling, ‘Hey! Hey! Hey!’ after me, running down the side of the slow-moving line of traffic, banging on the doors, ‘Hi! Hi! Pokhara! Pokhara!’, slipping and sliding over the rough gravel, towards the far, bright mountains.
The Djinn’s Wife
Once there was a woman in Delhi who married a djinn. Before the water war that was not so strange a thing. Delhi, split in two like a brain, has been the city of djinns from time before time. The Sufis tell that God made two creations, one of clay and one of fire. That of clay became man; that of fire, the djinni. As creatures of fire they have always been drawn to Delhi, seven times reduced to ashes by invading empires, seven times reincarnating itself. Each turn of the chakra, the djinns have drawn strength from the flames, multiplying and dividing. Great dervishes and brahmins are able to see them but on any street, at any time, anyone may catch the whisper and momentary wafting warmth of a djinn passing.
I was born in Ladakh, far from the heat of the djinns – they have wills and whims quite alien to humans – but my mother was Delhi born and raised, and from her I knew its circuses and boulevards, its maidans and chowks and bazaars, like those of my own Leh. Delhi to me was a city of stories, and so if I tell the story of the djinn’s wife in the manner of a Sufi legend or a tale from the Mahabharata, or even a tivi soap opera, that is how it seems to me: City of Djinns.
They are not the first to fall in love on the walls of the Red Fort.
The politicians have talked for three days and an agreement is close. In honour the Awadhi government has prepared a grand durbar in the great courtyard before the Diwan-i-aam. All India is watching so this spectacle is on a Victorian scale: event-planners scurry across hot, bare marble hanging banners and bunting, erecting staging, setting up sound and light systems, choreographing dancers, elephants, fireworks and a fly-past of combat robots, dressing tables and drilling serving staff and drawing up so-careful seating plans so that no one will feel snubbed by anyone else. All day three-wheeler delivery drays have brought fresh flowers, festival good, finest, soft furnishings. There’s a real French sommelier raving at what the simmering Delhi heat is doing to his wine plan. It’s a serious conference. At stake are a quarter of a billion lives.
In this second year after the monsoon failed, the Indian nations of Awadh and Bharat face each other with main battle tanks, robot attack helicopters, strikeware and tactical nuclear slow missiles on the banks of the sacred River Ganga. Along thirty kilometres of staked-out sand, where brahmins cleanse themselves and sadhus pray, the government of Awadh plans a monster dam. Kunda Khadar will secure the water supply for Awadh’s one hundred and thirty million for the next fifty years. The river downstream, that flows past the sacred cities of Allahabad and Varanasi in Bharat, will turn to dust. Water is life, water is death. Bharati diplomats, human and artificial intelligence aeai advisers, negotiate careful deals and access rights with their rival nation, knowing one carelessly spilled drop of water will see strike robots battling like kites over the glass towers of New Delhi and slow missiles with nanonuke warheads in their bellies creeping on cat-claws through the galis of Varanasi. The rolling news channels clear their schedules of everything else but cricket. A deal is close! A deal is agreed! A deal will be signed tomorrow! Tonight, they’ve earned their durbar.
And in the whirlwind of leaping hijras and parading elephants, a Kathak dancer slips away for a cigarette and a moment up on the battlements of the Red Fort. She leans against the sun-warmed stone, careful of the fine gold-threadwork of her costume. Beyond the Lahore Gate lies hiving Chandni Chowk; the sun a vast blister bleeding onto the smokestacks and light-farms of the western suburbs. The chhatris of the Sisganj Gurdwara, the minarets and domes of the Jama Masjid, the shikara of the Shiv temple are shadow-puppet scenery against the red, dust-laden sky. Above them pigeons storm and dash, wings wheezing. Black kites rise on the thermals above Old Delhi’s thousand thousand rooftops. Beyond them, a curtain wall taller and more imposing than any built by the Mughals, stand the corporate towers of New Delhi, Hindu temples of glass and construction diamond stretched to fantastical, spiring heights, twinkling with stars and aircraft warning lights.