Following is an excerpt from the chapter Rai's Journey in The Destiny of Shaitan.
The morning following a rave, Rai nurses a fierce
hangover and a broken heart in the sunshine at Nina’s café. It is one of the
few surviving coffee shops in the city, serving up steaming cups of the rare
brew. Already coffee beans are in short supply in the
galaxy. Only the better-off can afford it. The rest can only stare at the
steaming concoction with greed and lust. The café is tiny and has only four tables.
The dozen chairs are so small Rai can just barely squeeze his five-foot-eight
frame into one.
After fumbling for his sunglasses, he puts them on and presses
his right palm against the fierce pounding in his temples, which springs out of
nowhere. The morning is hot, the temperature already in the eighties. The small
ceiling fans overhead lazily turn the air, which settles right back down, hot
and dusty on his brow.
Rai is dressed for the heat, but a thin trickle of
sweat runs down his back. His once pristine white kurta, a loose shirt-like item worn by many in the city, is creased
from the night. He wearily stretches out his jean-clad legs ending in open
sandals in front of him.
Obviously a
coffee is not the answer, he thinks.
Then sighs, wondering if anything can heal the hole in his heart.
The temple
next door is one of the many replicas of the original temple of Mumbadevi that
have sprung up all over the city. Opposite is a new age shop with roaring
business, hosting females of many species from different parts of the world who
have come to get their chakras fixed.
Just then the old woman next to Rai, with skin
stretched so tight across her face that he is sure it will snap any minute,
makes appreciative noises. Nina serves her a tofu, which trembles in its dish.
“Oh my,” says the old woman, fanning herself with
red-tipped fingers. “Too much. Too much. I wanted just a little.”
Well eat up,
bitch, thinks Rai.
There seems to be too many of these old women
around with acid-peeled faces, white tights, and yellow, nicotine-stained
fingers, hanging onto equally-aged companions dressed in ridiculous holiday
attire. Light blue cardigans, ironed jeans, and old-fashioned Nikons with large
lenses adorn them. All of the tourists
smile at the quaint scene of the
Indian temple with the café opposite playing Bollywood love songs, as if they
have come to gloat at the remnants of the once proud city.
Bombay retains a certain exotic appeal, definitely
more than whichever city these pests come from.
He wonders again why people still like to play
tourist when so much of Earth has been destroyed by natural disasters over the
last decade. Few Earth cities are worth visiting these days.
What is the
appeal in going from one broken metropolis to the next? Some perverse kind of
dystopian porn?
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