The City of Devi: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

game, now that my mangalsutra is gone. I give him a short and cauterizing glare, then turn away at once.
    “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bother you. I was just wondering where you—”
    I walk away mid-sentence. With all the problems I’m already juggling, a proposition is the last thing I need. I find a spot to sit on the floor, making sure a moat of ayahs surrounds me, to discourage my potential Romeo.
    The woman closest to me sits cross-legged with a boy in her lap. She wears a coarse cotton sari with a red and green border, looped between the legs in the style followed by washerwomen. Perhaps I should befriend her for added insurance against my would-be suitor. How worthy I would feel for crossing the class barrier—a welcome distancing from the rich socialites’ nastiness. The woman’s son is clad in pants frayed to the calves, and a T-shirt so dirty that the picture on it is barely visible. I peer at his chest and make out a crudely done likeness of Donald Duck.
    “Why are you staring at him like an owl?” the woman asks me in Marathi. She squirts a stream of betel juice out on the ground. Flecks of betel nut stain her lips orange—I notice a quarrelsome tilt to her jaw.
    Would it be terribly elitist not to acquaint myself with this woman after all? As I try to negotiate this ethical conundrum, a loud banging at the door silences the room. The orderlies look nervously at each other, their menace evaporated. They proceed up the steps where one of them fumbles with the keys. Some of the khaki-clad men pick up chairs, ready to defend us against the Pakistani threat, apparently advanced to our very door.
    The lock is turned, to reveal an ebullient group of doctors and nurses. They’ve risen to the call of duty, they proudly announce, by sticking with an operation even after the siren sounded in the middle. I look for a stretcher bearing the patient, but they’ve left him upstairs in his room. His appendix is out, so he won’t succumb to it, but whether or not he weathers a bomb attack isn’t in their purview.
    The drama successfully concluded, the orderlies return to their scowling and the khaki-clad men to their strategies of defending the motherland. I can sense the woman still staring at me—I try not to look at her, but find my gaze pulled in. Her expression is no longer hostile but a mixture of amusement and craft. “Raju, say hello to Auntie,” she says, not taking her eyes off me. “Auntie wants to know who that is on your shirt.”
    “Bimal Batak.” Bimal the duck. I remember the new coalition government’s edict to mollify their loony right fringe: all cartoon characters must now have traditional Hindu names. Bugs Bunny has become “Khatmal Khargosh.” Superman was first dubbed “Maha Manush,” but with Superdevi ’s success, gets by as “Supermanush.” Archie and his gang have been banned altogether for being too culturally subversive.
    The boy starts complaining he is hungry, and his mother’s gaze falls to my lap. Too late, I realize the reason for her sudden friendliness—she has spied the pomegranate. I quickly cover it with my dupatta. “I’m hungry, too,” I tell the boy, and it’s true. These days I am always hungry, we all are. For now, though, I have given up on fish. Suddenly, it’s Marmite I crave.
    THE MORNING OF THE PICNIC, I saw my mother rummage in the fridge for things to add to the chicken. We had eaten the bird the night before in a curry—just the skeleton really, since my mother had stripped the bones clean for the sandwiches. Not quite satisfied with her pile of shredded meat, she found some leftover coriander chutney to mix in, half an onion, chopped cabbage to pass off as lettuce, and the secret ingredient without which the taste would be incomplete: a generous dollop from the jar of Marmite in the corner of the vegetable bin.
    Uma and I were raised on Marmite, we craved its saltiness, its aroma, its pungency, more than chocolate or ice cream. Even a trace