Writing literary fiction while teaching applied mathematics may seem like an incongruent equation, but Professor Manil Suri from the University Of Maryland, Baltimore Country, pulls it with panache. His latest book, City of Devi, touted as a sex comedy with the thrill of Bollywood and the pull of a thriller, is set in a Mumbai reeling under the threat of nuclear apocalypse. Citizens flee, police officers and gangs run riot as the city awaits doom. In this chaos, Sarita goes in search of her missing husband, the physicist Karun, and encounters Jaz who is linked to Karun’s past. Together Sarita and Jaz are drawn into the manic whirlpool that is City of Devi, while elsewhere, the patron Goddess has revealed herself. City of Devi completes the trilogy which Suri began with The Death of Vishnu and The Age of Shiva.u00a0More recently, Suri wrote a widely-read personal essay on being gay in India in the ’70s, and also an op-ed in The New York Times on the global message of the US Supreme Court’s historic decision on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and same-sex unions. He talks to
SUNDAY MiD DAY about all this and much more.