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

with it before succumbing in a corner of the remaining shade. “Don’t mind me, it’s the heat,” she murmured, stretching out and covering her face with a handkerchief. “It’s very interesting, all these flavored particles—like little sweets.” Soon, she was snoring politely.
    “Let’s all go into the water,” Anoop said.
    THE WOMAN WITH the boy tries to attract my attention. I do my best to ignore her, but she is too determined. “Excuse me.” She tugs at my shoulder. “He really is very hungry.”
    I cover the pomegranate with another fold of my dupatta and close my hand protectively over it. “It’s always harshest on the children.” I hope the compassion in my voice will be enough to appease her.
    But the war has sharpened her senses too much. Her vision can slice right through cloth and flesh—she knows the position of my pomegranate, she can probably tell me its size, its weight, the number of seeds it contains. “It’s always been his favorite fruit. If you could just share it with him.”
    “Share what?”
    “The pomegranate. The one you have in your lap.” She makes the assertion loudly enough for people around us to hear. Her voice is bold and righteous, even tinged with indignation.
    What am I to tell her? That I need to offer Karun the entire fruit, not one with a segment rattling around in her boy’s stomach? That I have searched all of Crawford Market for it, given up my mangalsutra for this chance? That I would have liked to help her—it is not due to heartlessness or greed I will not? “It’s for my baby at home,” I finally lie.
    “All I’m asking for is a small piece, memsahib, as one mother to another.” She appraises the bulge in my lap and I can see the primitive calculation in her eyes. “There’s more than enough there for two—why just save your own child, when you can also save another?”
    Emboldened by his mother’s words, the boy advances his small brown fingers towards my lap. “Don’t touch it,” I hiss at him.
    “How dare you,” the woman cries. “How dare you talk to my son like that.” She pulls his hand back, and he bursts into tears. “Do you think we’re beggars, untouchables, that you can treat him like that?” She spits next to my foot, creating a fiery orange betel juice streak on the ground. “A curse on you and a curse on your pomegranate.”
    People turn to look at us. The woman lifts her hands into the air towards them and begins to wail. “Look how she has insulted me. Look what selfishness the war has raked in from the gutter.” A maid sitting nearby gives me a dirty look before edging away.
    The woman’s son keeps crying. “Pomegranate,” he repeats, between sobs.
    For a moment, I waver. I almost give it away. What does it matter in the grand scheme of things? We’re going to be annihilated by the end of the week anyway. But then I think of Karun, standing waist-deep in the sea. The water beading on his face and neck, foam sliding down his skin. The sun is so strong that I cannot make out the expression in his eyes. From the shore behind me come the sounds of crashing waves.
    BY THE TIME I got to the water’s edge, Uma had already entered the waves and was cavorting with Anoop some distance away. Unlike her, I hadn’t brought a swimsuit, so I pulled my salwaar up my legs as high as the openings would allow, and wrapped my dupatta around my waist. Karun stood with his back to the sun, the red of his shorts flaring in the tide. “I can only come in up to my knees,” I called out to him, but the wind blew my words away.
    I raised my hand against the sky to shade my eyes, but the glare from the water was too strong to make out his face. Waves broke against him, their foam encircled his waist. He stood where he was, his darkened form emerging like the statue of a deity from the sea. Didn’t they used to say a woman’s husband was her god, her swami, didn’t people still believe a spouse embodied divinity? Was I standing on