Now that these limbs have attained the status of sacred relics, only the chosen few dare touch them without risking severe bodily harm. The Jazter, most favored member of this club, has discovered the right sequence of knuckle-nubs to press (like finger buttons on a trumpet) to make her coo softly. Thus lulled, into a stupor almost, she discloses her debt to Baby Rinky. “They tried to get her first, even though she was only a make-believe screen devi. Had her mother not insisted on leaving Mumbai when the war worsened, they might never have discovered me. I was so thin then—they had to fatten me with laddoos for a week.”
She breaks off, looking up at the sky dreamily. “What I want to do someday is star in my own movie. Would they like me, do you suppose? After all I am the true Devi.”
“They’d love you, Devi ma. You’d be a much bigger hit than Baby Rinky.”
She laughs, and reaches with her toes to affectionately stroke my cheek. “Don’t worry—I wouldn’t leave you out—we’d find a role for you to play as well. Vishnu’s horse, in fact—wouldn’t that be the perfect part? Always running and moving and jumping—tell me, my Gaurav-ghoda, what do you think?”
Somewhere in the midst of a long list of things we’ll do together (ride through the sky in a magical chariot, eat the same flavors of ice cream on the moon as Baby Rinky, kill lots of bad people with big big guns) she dozes off. The Jazter would have never believed it, but she actually looks innocent—her breath emerges rhythmically through her lips, her cheeks bulge as cherubically as a baby’s. Disengaging the curls of my hair clutched so lovingly (if painfully) in her fingers, I stretch out on the floor next to her lounge chair and fall asleep. In the morning, she greets me with a glass of nectar. “Amrit. I made it for you myself.”
Except it’s not nectar, but urine—still steaming a bit. I tell her I can’t possibly accept when the long-suffering devotees behind their chain of guards have been waiting so patiently for prasad. “Devi amrit,” they cry, and take a joyous sip each. The Jazter doesn’t quite get it—chacun à son goût, must be a Hindu thing.
Fortunately, before my personal prasad factory can manufacture something more solid from all the samosas it has processed overnight, a summons arrives from downstairs. Pooja is at nine and Devi ma must preside as idol-in-residence to be worshipped. Between bites of laddoo, she gives me her blessing to go sniff for scientists. I am to be extended every privilege, all through the hotel, with Chitra and Guddi and Sarita to accompany me. At farewell time she wavers—wouldn’t it be fun if she came along for the ride? She means this literally—Gaurav-ghoda carrying her around from room to room—after all, she’s never much explored the hotel, really. But vermilion and incense and clamoring devotees call from downstairs—not to mention, good God, the promise of more sweets. “Come back quickly,” she warns, and for the time being, I am free.
NOW THAT I’VE secured my Laddoovielfraß’s permission to look for Karun, how do I actually find him? I can’t dial the front desk or switchboard operator and simply furnish his name. Chitra is dismissive when I ask where they store their occupancy information. “Devi knows where even the tiniest ant in the hotel lives. She doesn’t need to consult a list.”
“Yes, but you do. When she demands to see someone, for instance—how do you know which room it is?”
“We ask the clerks. They write down the room number of everyone who comes to visit her.”
So we go to the desks outside the suite. The clerks are ferociously protective of their ledgers, and make resentful grinding noises in their throats when Chitra invokes Devi ma’s authority to examine the pages. Karun’s name doesn’t appear anywhere. “Could you have made a mistake?” I ask the clerks, and their grinding turns into outright vituperation. Chitra quickly shepherds us away.
Why is Karun not listed? Doubts, as sharp-eyed as hawks, instantly begin to swoop in: Karun never made it to the hotel, the van took him to some other destination, who knows if he’s even in the city still? I dispel these thoughts with one inescapable notion: Karun has to be here, since it’s the only way we will ever meet again.
Might they record names at the restaurant counters where incoming devotees queue to check in? Chitra believes they did at one point, so we go down to investigate. The lobby hall is as busy as a bus terminal, with elephants arriving and departing in regular succession and attendants trailing after to scoop up their extruded bounty. The restaurant’s coffee bar now serves as a canteen for Khakis, dozens of whom mill around, dipping rusks of bread into tea. A mass of supplicants clamors at the counters—seeing the chaos, I realize no useful records can possibly surface, even if we manage to wade in.
Which means the hotel is one giant labyrinth we must scour inch by inch. The lobby and its surrounding arcades spilling with people, the guestrooms of which there are three hundred (though perhaps it’s four, Chitra thinks), the teeming grounds and corridors—a wall-to-wall dormitory has even mushroomed in the disco downstairs. Chitra asks if we want to start by checking out the audience gathered for Devi pooja outside. Her offer sounds wan, halfhearted—she already seems eager to call the search off, looking at her watch, muttering how busy she is.
I listen to the sounds of rapture stream in through the doors to the garden, imagine the congregation rollicking in worship. Somehow, I can’t imagine Karun in its midst. Nor do the rooms beckon with any special promise. I need time to mull through the sweep of search possibilities to see if anything activates my shikari instincts.
Sarita, though, has a determined plan—she wants to check out Room 318, which three years ago served as their bridal suite. “I know it sounds crazy, but I can still picture him lying in that very same bed.” For no better reason than to humor her along, we go upstairs. I feel a rush of misgiving as Chitra swipes open the door—after all, Karun’s wedding night marks when I unequivocally lost him (the suite practically qualifies as a crime scene for me). But I needn’t have worried. The interior is bloodless, untroubled by ghostly evidence—the linens, hospital-crisp, have not been slept in for weeks. Sarita hugs a pillow to her chest as if squeezing out nostalgia from it, then stands silently on the balcony to stare at the sea.
Now that we’re here, the third floor is as good as any to start with, so we check out the neighboring rooms as well. Chitra raps smartly at each door, waits for a scant half-minute (hardly enough for a response, it seems), then unlocks it with her magic swipe card. A plump middle-aged couple looks up startled from a plate of parathas in the first, an enraged film producer (one of the VIPs granted an audience with the Devi last night) chases us out of the second, while the third is empty, save, inexplicably, for a small goat tethered in the bathroom. “Can’t I take it to my room?” Guddi asks, and we have to tear her away from it. I can discern no order to the accommodations—next to the goat is a room crammed with workers squatting on mats, engrossed in a card game. Seeing us, they hasten to douse their cigarettes and squirrel their bottles of hooch away.