Manil Suri - The City of Devi

Unsure what Kali incarnation she planned to metamorphose into once Karun left, I scrambled to turn on the Jazter charm before she could produce a phalanx of extra arms or a garland of severed heads. “He’s very smart, your son. You must be so proud of him.” A bit lame, but I couldn’t muster any other compliment.

It was enough. The smile frozen on her lips since my arrival finally broke through to her eyes and lit up her face. “He topped his class every year in school right from the eighth standard. Studying so hard every night that I’d have to insist he put away his books and go to bed. I have all his report cards saved in his old attaché case.”

She told me how they collected one-rupee coins in empty jam jars for him to spend. “Except he always bought books, so one day, I decided to empty all the bottles and get him something fun—a game, perhaps. You should have seen his face when I told him what I’d done—I don’t think I ever saw him so furious.” She laughed. “But he ended up loving my purchase—a small telescope, not much more than a toy really, since that’s all the money I had. He would set it up by that window and study the stars through it every night.” She gazed towards the corner of the room as if Karun still stood there peering through his telescope, and for an instant, I could picture him as well.

“Did you know his father passed when he was eleven?”

“Yes, Karun told me how much you’ve done for him ever since.”

“No more than any other mother would have. But with just the two of us left instead of three, I had to keep every fiber in my body attuned towards his success. I’d always known he was a bit of a dreamer, prone to get lost in thought, unsure of what he wanted for himself. Channeling him into science was easy—his father had already laid the groundwork for that. The books, too, he’d always liked—I taught him to bury all his grief in them. It tore my heart to see him so lonely, but I told myself it would pay off in future happiness. Even that day in the toy store, when I went to buy something purely for fun—the telescope, I couldn’t help thinking, might be more profitable, lead to a possible career interest.”

“You were just doing what was best for him.”

“That’s what I thought. Except if I’d encouraged him to make some friends, to go to movies or play cricket, he’d have suffered from his father’s absence less. He’d be less inclined to take the wrong path to cure his aloneness. Less vulnerable to having his head turned, to fall under anyone’s spell.”

“I don’t think I know what you mean.”

She fixed me in her stare, the clarity in her eyes breathtaking. “What I’m trying to say is that Karun is my son, the focal point in my life—I understand him better than he understands himself. He’d find it difficult to hide even a sneeze from me—anything going on in his life, I can tell. I know exactly what will make him fulfilled, who will bring him misery and nothing else. I can look into people’s faces and recognize their natures much better than he can—I’m prepared to do anything in my power to keep him safe from harmful influences. His happiness is sacred to me—I’ve worked too long and hard to let him just throw it away like that.”

Whole minutes seemed to elapse before she released me from her gaze. “I’ll make some teas for the jalebis,” she finally said.

“I THINK SHE KNOWS about us,” I told Karun on the train back. “I think that’s why she probably doesn’t like me very much.”

“That’s absurd. If she did know, she’d like you more, not less. I’m thinking of telling her anyway.” Seeing my stunned expression, he retreated. “It’s only a thought.”

But he did disclose things to her, on a visit some months later. I could tell by his disheveled hair, his wild-eyed look, when he returned. “She didn’t take it as well as I thought. She wants me to marry—she reminded me of everything she’s done and said it’s the only thing she asks in return. She thinks you’re a bad influence, not so much because of your community or religion, but the foreign ideas you’ve brought back from living abroad. Ideas against our culture, she says—she demands I move out at once.”

That night, Karun didn’t want to have sex, but I insisted. I wanted to remind him why he stayed with me, to head off any notion he might form of leaving. At first, he simply spread his legs and stared into his pillow as I explored him with my tongue. He offered no resistance or reaction when I wrapped him in my arms and began to enter him. As my thrusts increased, he tried to shake loose, but I held him in place. He arched his neck back, crying out and curling his fingers into fists as we simultaneously came.

Cuddling him to my neck the way he liked afterwards, I asked him if he’d do what his mother wanted. “Don’t worry. I just have to make her understand that this is the way it is.” He said it defiantly, as if affirming it more to himself. “Besides, I’m no longer eligible for the hostel, and it’s not like I can afford my own place.”

He underestimated her. She developed cancer, the witch. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect—one Sunday, he bravely recited for her the speech he had rehearsed; the next, she calmly countered with her announcement. “She’d gone for a checkup last week. The results came this Thursday. It’s quite bad, since it might have spread to her spine. She says I shouldn’t worry, that she’s resigned to her fate. I know it’s crazy, but I can’t help thinking that if I hadn’t told her—”

“You’re right, that is completely crazy. You know there’s no connection.”

“Still, I can’t help but feel responsible. After all she did for me. And now she’s not even asking for anything.”

Of course she’s not, I felt like saying—was it so difficult to understand her strategy? Didn’t he realize the power of guilt? For all I knew, she might have fabricated the whole three-hankie drama to wean him away from me. Would it be too untoward to ask if I could take a good, hard look at the X-rays myself?

Then I felt sorry for him—even bad, a little bit, for the witch. “If you ever need to bring your mother to Delhi for tests or treatment, she can stay with us.”

But she refused to come to Delhi, even though it offered hospitals much better than any in Karnal. She claimed it was too far, though Karun and I both recognized this as a protest against my continuing presence. She began playing the matrimonial market for Karun, soliciting matches and responding to newspaper ads. Each Sunday, he returned with a new packet of notes and photographs. “All she keeps begging me for is a grandchild in the time she has left.”

As her health declined, Karun spent Saturdays in Karnal, then Fridays as well. More months went by, and he changed his status to part-time, then suspended his university work altogether a year and a half into her illness. He spent two months nursing her through chemotherapy, and when she was better, began returning to Delhi on Sundays. I wanted to go to Karnal to see him, but he stopped me each time, saying he wouldn’t be able to get away from her bedside.

About a year after Karun’s mother received her diagnosis, an unrelated problem had cropped up. Mrs. Singh fell in love with a Sikh gentleman living in Noida and started spending a lot of her time there. We’d had an inkling something was up ever since encountering her in a bright orange salwaar kameez one evening, trailing clouds of perfume down the steps. With her daughter recently married off, this left Harjeet as the only day-to-day occupant of the flat below.

At first, we tried to ignore his increased harassment. Instead of just blocking our way on the steps, he now started bumping into us, causing groceries to be knocked out of our hands on more than one occasion. Our mail disappeared from the common receptacle downstairs, forcing us to rent a post office box. The unemployed Sikh youths he hung out with became a permanent fixture downstairs—each night, they got drunk and sang Bollywood songs with crudely altered lyrics (“Homo Shanti Homo,” “Love Mera Shit Shit”). One day, we found a puddle of urine outside our door—another time, a pair of underwear stiff with semen on our balcony.