Manil Suri - The City of Devi

THE FIRST THING THAT STRIKES ME WHEN THE TRAIN CRASHES through the wall and barrels down the road is the collisions Karun and I used to engineer. The candles, the matches, the smoke billowing out from the windows, the flames burning paint off the cars. Surely when the weapons in my compartment detonate, they will surpass any of our extravaganzas. Too bad I’ll be seated right in the middle. The Jazter would have preferred being a spectator of the conflagration to come, rather than an ingredient.

The compartment twists and grinds around me like a giant pepper mill, and I am rendered airborne along with everything else inside, but only for the instant before we land on our side, skid along the ground, and come to a crashing halt. Three separate miracles occur in those milliseconds—I am unhurt except for a bruised arm, the weapons decide not to go off, and most magically, the door at the rear of the compartment bursts open. Perhaps Allah does have a soft spot for sodomites after all.

I climb out and see the engine lying on its side like a downed beast, smoke still heaving out in dying spurts. Behind it, the first compartment has somehow remained upright, though the roof has caved in and the walls have dramatically scrunched up. It all looks very cool—something we never could have done with the toy set. Two women are trying to pry loose a third—her upper half gesticulates animatedly out a window while the rest disappears inside, as if she is being eaten alive by the car. For an instant, I fear it is Sarita, who will no longer be able to lead me to Karun, but then I spot her sitting dazed on the road next to a wheel that has rolled off. Standing beyond are the engine driver and his assistant, contemplating the wreckage with identical small wrenches in their hands, as if with this single tool, they will get the train back on its tracks.

I run up to Sarita. For some reason, she’s changed into a bridal costume since I last saw her—the lead of her sari unfurls in a flaming red swathe around her feet. “Come, we have to get out of here.” She just stares at me when I offer her my hand—I notice the line of white dots decorating her forehead. “We don’t have any time.” Something flickers in her eyes, and I wonder if she’s placed me. “It’s Gaurav. From the hospital. And the aquarium. Remember?”

“Gaurav? What happened?”

“The train derailed. Probably an ambush. We have to run.”

“But how did you find me?”

“I’ll explain everything. Just come with me.” I can see the confusion on her face begin to harden into suspicion, so I squat down beside her. “I know you told me not to follow, but I did—I jumped into the rear compartment when I saw you get on. I still want to save your life, do the same thing you did for me. But we have to leave immediately, since whoever made the train derail will show up any minute.”

“I… I don’t think. The girls. I can’t leave them here.”

So we try to get the girls to come with us, but they’re reluctant. “Mura chacha’s still inside,” the one half stuck in the train says. Her name is Madhu, and despite her sandwiched state, she seems in charge. “Can you go in and free him? Then we can all go visit Devi ma.”

Sarita declares she wants to search the wreckage as well—not for this Mura character, but for a pomegranate. I think I have not heard her correctly, but she starts babbling about how it’s the last pomegranate in all of Bombay and her very fate depends on it. I wonder if she has a concussion—is there a way to unobtrusively check her scalp? Madhu, meanwhile, barks orders at the other girls from her horizontal position. “Guddi, leave me alone and go fetch the train driver. Anupam, get this man here to help you lift the sleeper berth that fell on Mura chacha. You there. Go and help.”

She gets very irate when I reply there’s no time. “Mura chacha’s much more important than a few of your precious minutes. How can anyone be so selfish?”

I’m trying to drag Sarita away from the train as Madhu continues to hector me when there is a retort. “I’ve been shot,” Madhu screams, and holds up her hand. She has, indeed, been shot—blood streams down her arm and drips from her shoulder. More shots ring out, and she slumps forward, dangling limply from the waist. As the other girls scream, I grab Sarita’s hand and pull her behind the bogey to take cover. She stops jabbering about her pomegranate.

We scramble down a side street, Sarita’s sari blazing as conspicuously as a flag. The sounds of gunshots ricochet between the walls on either side. A few times, I think I hear someone running behind us. I lead Sarita in a zigzag through the labyrinth of an abandoned slum, finally stopping at a curbside bus shelter to catch my breath. For a moment, neither of us speaks as we gulp in air.

“Are they going to come looking for us?”

I shake my head. “My compartment was full of weapons. That’s probably what they were after.” As if to endorse my words, the rat-a-tat of a machine gun starts up. The sound is uncomfortably close, a little beyond the buildings we face—we must have circled around inadvertently.

Someone laughs, a man screams, and I hear more gunfire. The screaming resumes—its cadence is pitiful, pleading. “That sounds like Mura,” Sarita says. “Those shots—I wonder if Guddi and Anupam—” She looks at me, her lip bloodless.

Before I can offer her any reassurance, a motorcycle revs up. We hear it circle behind the buildings, then begin to get closer. “It’s coming down the street,” I say, grabbing Sarita’s hand and pulling her down behind the shelter wall. I peer cautiously over the edge after the motorcycle has passed, then duck again, as another motorcycle, then a van, come rumbling up behind. The cries are now coming from the van.

“It’s the Limbus,” I whisper. “They’re just like the hoodlums in khaki, only Muslim. We couldn’t have done anything.” I’ve read about the group appropriating the word for “lemons” as their badge of honor—the same epithet used for years by the HRM to denounce Muslims who supposedly curdle the country’s milk-and-cream Hindu population.

The street lapses back into silence. The sun just manages to clear the empty buildings that run down its trash-strewn length. From the direction of the rays, it seems the Limbus are headed west. Is that the direction in which Karun awaits? Sarita is unresponsive when I ask her destination. “Bandra,” she finally reveals. “My husband is there, at a guesthouse.”

I’m tempted to press her for the exact address, but I know she’s still mistrustful of my helpfulness. “I actually need to make it further north to Jogeshwari to see my mother, so Bandra is on the way,” I say to assuage any suspicions. “Is your husband east of the railway line or west?”

“West. Near the water.” I try to get more details by engaging her in conversation but she rebuffs me with monosyllabic replies. Perhaps she’s still shell-shocked.

I wonder how to proceed. In addition to the Limbu-infested areas in between, we’re also cut off from Bandra by the expanse of Mahim creek. Rising sea levels and repeated monsoon floods have extended this breach all along the Mithi river, which at one point was little more than a canal emptying sludge into the creek, but now has widened into a chasm. The most direct way across the water is to go back and follow the train tracks, but the Limbus probably have that staked out. The alternative is to aim for the Mahim causeway bridge ahead—perhaps there will be a crowd of people crossing, and we’ll stick out less. Except I can’t quite imagine blending in with Sarita all decked up like a lollipop. “They wanted me to be one of Devi’s maidens,” she explains apologetically when I ask about her outfit. “It’s even supposed to glow when it gets dark, just like Superdevi.”