Totem Poles Read Free

slums. Dodgy to promote.”
    â€œWe won’t be copying the people of Mumbai,” said Puneet. “Human reproduction is for the likes of you and I. The saucer lizard will only be replicating the infrastructure. Dodeca-Mumbai will have twelve classic Royal Taj Hotels. Twelve Bombay Stock Exchanges. Twelve Marine Drives. Each and every Mumbai dweller will have twelve times as much room!”
    Leela made jotting gestures in her notebook. She gazed up at Puneet, widening her eyes. “Brilliance! The lowest slumdog sleeping on the pavement will prosper as a landlord. Imagine the looks on their faces in Dubai! The Arabs have a mile-high skyscraper, yes, but our metropolis will be twelve times so flat as ever before!”
    â€œIt’s good to have you as my business soulmate, Leela. Our brainpower is more than doubled. Dodeca-Leela-Puneet!” Puneet paused, studying Leela’s fair form. “May I venture another idea? What if we launch the first wave of Dodeca-Mumbai tourism with a fertility festival?”
    Leela frowned. “Sex tourism?”
    â€œNothing so hole-and-corner as that,” said Puneet, adjusting his coiffure with his manicured fingertips. “In Dodeca-Mumbai we are looking for the stars.” His voice grew soft. “Listen to me, Leela. You and I might inaugurate the fertility festival, should you permit. We two have been selling saucer worms for months. Isn’t it time we discovered our mutual humanity? Carnal yet noble—like the conjugal sculptures of Khajuraho. Stirring the milk of life with the cosmic cobra.”
    â€œThis is a marriage proposal?”
    â€œWho but Leela can be a worthy mate for the architect of Dodeca-Mumbai!”
    â€œVery jolly,” said Leela.
    Their nuptial ceremony was glamorous and elaborate. But in the midst of greeting the mass of wedding guests, and tying his robe together with Leela’s, and circling the sacred nuptial fire—all this while talking to the saucer salamander on his phone—well, Puneet made some slip-ups.
    The twelve copies of Mumbai failed to appear. Instead, there was only one copy of Mumbai, botched and glitchy, and shoehorned higgledy-piggledy into the streets and intersections of an existing sector of the town. The intended replica of the core metropolis consisted of 7,777 Royal Taj hotels.
    These sumptuous and vacant lodgings were immediately set upon by the angry Indians whose access streets had been built over. They now had to climb over the tops of buildings to get in and out of their homes. The citizens didn’t know whom to blame for their urban mishap, but they knew they’d been disadvantaged by some typical big-city swindle. Some of them settled into the massed new hotels’ million-plus rooms. Others began diligently stripping out carpets, doorknobs, towels, soap, and brass bathroom fixtures.
    Adroitly dodging the burst of public anger, Puneet and Leela crept incognito into one of the 7,777 bridal suites. They were drained by their intricate marriage ceremony—and dejected over Puneet’s bungling. Their initial attempt at sexual congress was desultory.
    â€œLet’s lie low,” said Puneet, sprawling on the wadded satin sheets. “Until the Mumbai corruption squads become bored with searching for scapegoats. Our fresh new married life should be about propriety, stability and impeccable Hindu values. No more saucer grubs. Just rice, coriander and chamomile tea.”
    Leela clumsily adjusted her incendiary wedding-night nylon-and-satin lingerie, which was a rumpled splash of sexy vermilion in the hotel’s saffron sheets. “I can write a press release blaming the Dodeca-Mumbai mix-up on that plume of grubs from the Ukraine. I’ve been in touch with a Russian woman who just arrived from there. She noticed our saucer lizard logo and she wants to meet the lizard herself. She has some odd notion about rebirth. Anyway, she’s offering me diamond