“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 safety.”
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.
Around four-thirty, we duck into an abandoned clothing store for lunch. The show windows have all been smashed, the mannequins stripped of their garments. They lie naked in a tangled orgy on the floor. We sit on stools and divide up a packet of orange biscuits. I’ve always detested the artificial orange filling, but today I’m glad for the tiny bit of moisture it carries. Jaz, on the other hand, licks it off each side with obvious relish before eating the cookie part.