Manil Suri - The City of Devi

The club materializes from the darkness, a large, faceless structure with the looming air of a warehouse. “Sequeira used to have his disco right next to the water,” Zara explains. “But then Mehboob Studios down the road sold him this place. It might not look like much, but they filmed parts of Superdevi in it.” The cavernous space inside is broken up into a series of recycled movie sets. People sip drinks in the seats of an Air India plane, they climb the sweeping staircase of a palatial mansion, lounge around the gardens of a Mughal palace. In the center, I even see what looks like the surface of the moon. “Remember the famous scene from the movie? When Baby Rinky voyages to the moon to get the magic crystal from the goddess there and attain the powers of a devi?”

The lunar surface is actually a dance floor—about two hundred people, in their twenties and thirties, gyrate to the tune of a remixed disco version of “I am Superdevi.” As we watch, a woman takes off her top and dances in bra and shorts among a group of shirtless men. “It’s a rebellion against the burkha,” Zara says, as another woman, also down to her bra, joins in. “A few months ago, nobody would have dreamt of something like this. But now people just want to thumb their noses at the Limbus. And Bhim as well. If the younger set doesn’t do it, who will?”

The Air India bar has a price list—Zara notices me wince at the thousand-rupee beers, the fifteen-hundred-rupee martinis. “Sequeira’s been jacking up the tab every week. He thinks everyone our age must have made so much money in the boom years that he’s doing us a favor by giving us a chance to enjoy it before it gets too late.”

Just then, Sequeira himself appears in a spotlight on the balcony above the Mughal garden. He’s dressed in vintage Bollywood—silver suit and top hat, white gloves and a bejeweled cane—something Amitabh Bachchan might have worn in one of his potboiler films, circa the seventies. “Welcome to the end of the world,” Sequeira says, swinging and wheeling jauntily, like old people do to show they’re still spry. He raises his cane to acknowledge the catcalls and cheers that rise from the dance floor. “You’re the brave ones, the ones who haven’t abandoned Bombay despite the rumors, despite all the efforts to tear us apart. This evening, Sequeira’s is going to be your reward. Whether or not the bomb falls, the most important thing tonight, like every night this week, is to dance as if tomorrow will never dawn!”

The crowd roars, the spotlight goes off, and Sarita gets even brighter at my side as the club is plunged into darkness. A siren starts up and a rocket-shaped missile descends from the ceiling. Inscribed along the sides are the words ATOM BOMB, blinking red lights outline its tail and fins. As it touches down, the darkness erupts with blinding flashes and thunderous explosions. “Superdevi” starts up again, and a horde of onlookers swarm to the dance floor. Zara insists we accompany her. “Your duty as newlyweds. Plus you need to burn up the floor in that sexy sari!” She goes on without us only after extracting a promise that we’ll join in for a future song.

The dancing makes me morose, bringing up memories of the one time I managed to drag Karun to a Gay Bombay disco. It took a good deal of further cajoling to actually lure him onto the floor, where he remained stilted and self-conscious. And yet, I found the awkward little twists I was able to coax out, the unsure waggles and bobs, completely endearing. I never did fulfill my new year’s pledge that winter to teach him the moves.

Sarita seems lost in nostalgia as well—could she have had better luck? At teaching Karun something more staid, like the waltz or foxtrot? I imagine them swirling down a polished ballroom floor, smoldering in each other’s arms. A burst of jealousy lances me at the thought.

She glances up at me, suddenly alert to my presence. Does she suspect something amiss, now that she’s had a chance to slow down and cogitate? I brace myself for more questions about the newlywed charade I pulled on the ferry, but she’s honed in on a more perilous slip. “When Rahim asked you about his uncle and auntie—I thought you mentioned your father died early?”

So she did catch Rahim’s inconvenient little revelation back at the hotel. “You misunderstood. He was asking about my father’s sister and her husband, not my parents. They’re auntie and uncle to both of us—my poor cousin, stuck in that hotel, doesn’t get to see them as much.”

She narrows her eyes and knits her brow, but lapses into silence. Just when I think I might slide by with my response, she springs the question I’ve anticipated all along. “Were you and Rahim— together ?”

Normally, the Jazter is militantly up-front in such matters, but this is hardly the shrewdest moment to promote gay visibility, to wave the rainbow flag in her face. “It happened a long time ago. Kids try out all sorts of things, you know.”

I think that should do the trick, convince her to drop it, but I’m wrong. “And now? Is that what—? Has that become your— preference ?” She has trouble enunciating the word.

“You mean men? You’re asking if I sleep with men? Not that it’s any of your business, but no.” Twenty questions is the last game I want to play, so I vent the words with all the offended self-righteousness I can muster.

She colors immediately. “I’m sorry. It’s just what Rahim was saying about a boy you followed—”

“Forget what Rahim says—he looks at everything through a lavender lens. That was just a colleague who brought me to Delhi for a job, not even a friend. The fact is, I’m not like Rahim—never have been.” The Jazter deserves to rot in hell for uttering such self-denying blasphemy. All in the interest of regaining his true love, he swears silently, to Allah or Jesus or Krishna or anyone else up there listening.

We go back to gazing at the crowd, Sarita’s forehead furrowed again. Perhaps I should ask her to dance—throw her off by flaunting my newly proclaimed hetero state. An ancient ABBA song comes on, the perfect opportunity, since it’s a tune even she must surely be familiar with. But she interrupts me as I try to summon up the right amount of swagger to make my bid. “Delhi’s such an interesting city. When did you live there?”

Her matter-of-factness makes me instantly vigilant—is she trying to figure whether Karun and I overlapped? Fortunately, Zara rescues me from having to respond, by bringing over Sequeira for an introduction. He looks even older up close than he did on the balcony, his face a palimpsest of deep-set wrinkles under powdery makeup. “My goodness,” he exclaims. “When Zara said you were a glowing bride, I didn’t think she meant it literally.”

“I told Uncle about your elopement. He said he’d help you find your brother in the morning.”

“Of course I will. But the morning’s a long way away. The night, as they say, is young—we have a lot to celebrate.”

The champagne a waiter brings over is nice and chilled, and most importantly, free. Though the Jazter can’t help feel a twinge if this is to be his last taste, and it hails from Nasik, not Reims. Sequeira makes several expansive toasts to us, barely sipping from his glass, but generous with the refills each time I knock back mine. “See, we must have known you were coming. Not only do we have disco lights instead of candles tonight, in honor of your wedding, but—you must have felt it already—air-conditioning!”

“Blowing your entire stock of generator fuel already?” Zara laughs. “Not to mention the champagne reserves. What if they don’t drop the bomb after all?”

“Actually, my dear, it’s all thanks to our intrepid merchant class—the Gujus, the Banias, the Marwaris, the whole lot. They’re so crazed by the idea of showing a loss in case their warehouses blow up that these last few days they’ve been coming door to door and practically giving away their stocks. In fact, have you looked in the cave? It’s the first time in months I’ve had the power to hook it all up.”