pp. 385, `499

Bombay is on the brink of annihilation. The threat of an imminent nuclear catastrophe hangs heavy in the air of a city polluted by religious fanaticism and the targeted, largescale violence it wrought. It’s a city where new demons seem to erupt every day, and they in turn unleash the inner demons of the people who live in the city, so much so that you can’t trust anyone else, trust them not to steal from you, trust them not to dupe you, deceive you, or worse, betray you or kill you. The hatred that breeds in the city poisons minds and bodies alike, eating everything it touches.
Amid this chaos, Manil Suri’s The City of Devi, named for Mumbai, the city named after the goddess Mumbadevi, takes us through the lives of three individuals, Sarita, her husband Karan, and his lover Ijaz, or Jaz, as he likes to be known, and the four eventful days before a supposed Pakistani nuclear strike is to take place. The city has turned into a ghost of its former self, with people fleeing to anywhere it is safer, which itself seems a lost cause, as the whole world, like most of the country, seems to be at the mercy of terrorism and at war with each other.
The frequent, and otherwise routine, sabre-rattling with Pakistan turns into a two-front invasion when China attacks from the northeast. When they withdraw, there is mongering and communiqués of nuclear retaliation.
And when there’s a mild hope that the West will put an end to the posturing, on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, dirty bombs go off in Zurich, London, New York and two more cities, followed by cyberattacks which trigger blackouts, crash planes and cause nuke plan meltdowns.
Mumbai itself seems to be gasping for breath, wracked by Hindus killing Muslims and vice-versa. When people lose hope in everything else, they turn to faith, and that faith can be powerful and at the same time dangerous, especially when it’s predicated on blind belief. Fundamentalists feed on the blindness and create a spectacle, both dazzling and frightening, of the Devi who has come to save her patrons.
Amid this anarchy, Sarita sets off to look for her physicist husband Kunal, who went for a conference to Bandra. Ijaz, also desperate for the sound and touch of his former lover, whom he has lost to Sarita, tags along pretending to be en route to his mother and saying he wants to make sure she reaches her destination safely since she’d earlier saved him from being hanged to death by a bunch of Hindus.
The plot has shades of a Bollywood song and dance spectacle, complete with a juicy climactic incident, what with the presiding deity of the city coming down in person to save her followers, all of which is set against the backdrop of the recurring images of Superdevi, a blockbuster film made on the exploits of a super heroine who always saves the day.
Sarita and Ijaz’s journey to Bandra and beyond is interwoven with the individual stories of their lives, how they both met Kunal and how both their lives revolve around this one person. It reminds one of the trinity Kunal keeps telling Sarita about, albeit of a different kind.
The two trace Kunal right to the villian’s lair, held captive among other scientists in great luxury by the firebrand Hindu fundamentalist Bhim, who, along with his followers, has taken over the city and massacred countless. Bhim evokes fear, but he’s become more insecure as he’s become more powerful, just like a dictator does. It is almost comical when he’s unable to believe that Ijaz, who is captured by his guards literally with his pants down, is not an assassin sent to eliminate him but an ordinary man who risks life and limb searching desperately for his love.
What follows is like reading a celluloid potboiler, with explosive action and the alternative feelings of hopeful anticipation and dread of what is to come next. All the time that the cat and mouse game with Bhim and his henchmen takes place, set against the grand Devi charade which is also orchestrated by him, what one wonders is what possible good ending could our protagonists have, with total destruction looming overhead and any escape seems only like a short reprieve.
But that’s possibly a pessimistic view of things, it may well hold the seeds of a new beginning for someone else.
Manil Suri’s storytelling is simple yet detailed, a little too detailed and long-drawn at times, especially the faceoff with Bhim, but that does not take away from the momentum of the narrative.
A mathematics professor at the University of Maryland, The City of Devi is Suri’s third novel, after The Death of Vishnu and The Age of Shiva.