At first, I’m confused by the chair’s ordinariness, its utilitarian plastic slats and dull aluminum frame. Then I notice the feet, gleaming with the sheen of real gold, resting on a brocaded red pillow like sacraments presented for worship in a shrine. Guddi immediately throws herself upon them, kissing them with almost fetishistic fervor.
For a moment, I can only stare on. I’ve always assumed there is some sort of fraudulence to the Devi, but what if she’s real, if this is the shimmer of divinity? When I look into her face, though, the illusion lifts—the gold, I realize, comes from a glaze of paint. Tiny creases around her brow and chin give the game away—the pigment is a mask, through which the whites of her eyes float up luminously. Coddled in the chair by a cloud of puffy pillows, her body looks even tinier than it appeared on the turret. How strange that they’ve used a midget to fill the role, I think. Then she bids us welcome, and I realize she’s simply a girl of eight or nine.
“I’m so gratified you’ve come to see me. Do you know the one cure for all the unhappiness in this world?” The words sound the same as those spoken from the turret, though the voice is different, the delivery clumsy. “For all the fear and danger. For all the fear and danger and… the fear and danger and…”
“Strife,” Chitra whispers, and the Devi girl repeats the word, then the entire sentence a few times.
Guddi finally tears herself away from the Devi’s feet, and I bend down for my go at them. Splayed for convenience, raised to be within easy reach of the devotees, they remain perfectly still when I touch them. They are chubby like the rest of her body, even the soles look fleshy. “I am your protector, your savior,” the girl says, then again forgets what comes next. She stumbles through a few unsuccessful attempts to continue, then reaches out for a bottle of Coca-Cola on the plastic beach table next to her.
That’s when I notice her extra pair of arms. The two appendages emerge from her shoulders, the right longer than the left, but both stunted and elbow-less. At first I think they are prosthetic devices glued on for effect. But then I see the nubbed club of flesh at the end of the left arm, which suggests a birth defect. “Once your feet have touched these sands, I will forever keep you safe under my shield,” she suddenly spouts, her memory refreshed by the caffeine.
The perfectly formed hand at the end of her right appendage mesmerizes me. The digits move and bend unconsciously, spider-like, as she concentrates on delivering more of her lines. The arm itself is too short to reach out to grab the Coke bottle, but once she’s ready for another sip, the extra fingers adeptly lift the straw out from the neck to her mouth. I want to touch them, squeeze them, trace the bones under the flesh to make sure they’re real.
“What are you staring at like that?” she says, stopping mid-sip.
“I’m sorry, Devi ma—I was just lost—lost in your words.”
She glares at me, then turns to Chitra. “Where are my maidens? You promised they’d dance on the terrace below me in glowing saris.”
“Forgive me, Devi ma, there’s been a delay—the enemy attacked our train and stole the saris. Only these two maidens made it out—let me have the lights turned off, so you can at least see what the saris look like.”
The demonstration flops. Perhaps the light levels aren’t low enough, or the dunking has permanently washed away the fluorescence, but the saris refuse to perform. Guddi’s still manages a few weak flashes near the arms and across the chest, but mine hangs as lifelessly around me as a shroud. After screaming for the head of whoever’s responsible for the derailment, the Devi turns to me. “Show me what you’ve brought.”
Fortunately, Chitra has warned me of the need to bear a gift, so I take out my last packet of orange biscuits (unharmed within their watertight wrapper) and lay it on the pillow, between the girl’s feet. She rips it open—I try not to gawk as her extra hand rustles around in the packet and brings a biscuit to her mouth. She chews on it, then spits the mush out at my face. “This is horrible. Are you trying to poison me?”
I wipe it off, noticing Chitra’s frantic shake of head too late. My action enrages the girl. “How dare you wipe off my blessing? Don’t you know everything from me is holy, is prasad?” She rises from her chair to lunge at me when Chitra and Guddi intervene.
“Forgive her, Devi ma, she didn’t know. Next time, she’ll bring the bonbon biscuits you like.” They force my forehead down to scrape it at the girl’s feet.
“Get her up,” the girl commands, and the two pull me up and hold me between them. For an instant, I think I will be blessed with Devi spit again, but instead, she shakes up the Coke bottle and sprays the froth at me. Seeing me dripping with cola, she bursts out laughing. Then she hurls the bottle at my face. I hear it whiz by my ear and smash on the terrace behind. “What else do you have for me besides biscuits?”
“She’s brought a pomegranate, Devi ma,” Guddi says, and I turn to her sharply. The fruit fell out when I changed out of my wet sari, but I scooped it back up quickly and didn’t think anyone had noticed. “Go on, let Devi ma see how red it is.”
I have no intention of squandering it. “It’s actually for my husband. I’d be happy to offer it to Devi ma, but first she must help me find him.”
The girl flares up instantly. “What do you think, you can bargain with Devi ma? Give it to me, at once, or I’ll have you flung off the terrace.” She shouts for the guards when I don’t move. Guddi starts pleading with me to give it up as two Khakis trot over.
Reluctantly, I hand over the pomegranate. The Devi girl tosses it in a little juggle between her three hands, then presses at it with the nubs of her club to test its ripeness. Before I can stop her, she bites in as if it’s an apple. “It’s bitter!” she exclaims, spitting out seeds and skin and pith and flinging the fruit away. I almost throw myself after it as the pomegranate bounces across the floor and falls off the edge of the terrace. “I’ll have you drowned in the sea for this. I’ll have you trampled under the elephants.”
Both Guddi and Chitra are begging the girl to show me mercy when Jaz intervenes. “Devi ma, wait. That pomegranate wasn’t for you—the actual present my friend brought is with me.” He rummages around in his many pockets, then finds what he’s looking for and extends it to her in outstretched palms. “For days now, my friend has been saying that this is what the Devi ma craves, this is what she will eat.” To my horror, I see he is offering her the Marmite.
The girl looks at the jar suspiciously. “How do I know it’s not poison?” The fingers in her extra hand curl warily, like question marks.
I try to think of some way to stop Jaz, impress upon him the lunacy of expecting the girl to find such a foreign taste appealing. But he has already opened the jar to demonstrate it’s safe by eating some. “Mmm… wait till you taste this chutney. It’s so nice and salty.”
Her curiosity aroused, the girl sniffs at the jar, then straightens one of her bent fingers to scoop some out. “It’s so black.” She puts it in her mouth. I wait for her to spit it out, to summon the elephants, but she has a thoughtful expression on her face. “It’s like no chutney I’ve ever had.” She takes another fingerful, then grins shyly, toothily, at Jaz. “It tickles my throat. Devi ma is pleased.”
JAZ INSTANTLY SEEMS to acquire the status of most favored disciple. The Devi girl allows him to touch not just her feet, but his limb of choice at will (even letting him rub the nubs on her appendage). She undoes her hair and sweeps it playfully over his face, declaring it to be a special blessing she’s invented just for him. She insists he feed her pieces of samosa with his own hand—he ingratiates himself further by dipping each bite in Marmite. They take big swallows from a shared bottle of Coke like pals in a TV commercial, giggling as the bubbles come out their noses. As a special gesture of appreciation, she regurgitates some of the samosa and offers it to him in her palm as prasad—Jaz has no choice but to swallow it with love (delight, even) writ all over his face.