Prakash slips a visiting card towards Janaki. It is saffron with gold lettering. Inclining his head slightly, he says, ‘Call me after eleven o’clock any morning. I meditate till then.’

‘And when do you paint?’ Janaki asks making her voice deliberately casual.

‘Whenever I feel inspired. Even at night . . . all hours.’

Janaki sits before her computer with a bitter mouth. Her mind is alive with negative thoughts. I have turned into a circus clown here. A thwack on the backside with a new split stick every day and a pay cheque in return for handing over my backside to them. Come, Prakash dear, be my guest. You turned out smart. Found out in double quick time in which direction to wag your tail.

Janaki’s nose now picks up the fragrance of khus that had earlier filled Singh sahib’s cabin. Sumitraben must have wafted out. Janaki closes her eyes quickly pretending to be in very deep thought. But when the fragrance begins to billow around her and does not move on, she is forced to open them. The woman and the man stand before her.

Sumitraben murmurs in her honeyed voice, ‘It is not our way to interrupt meditation. We would have waited,’ and does a very humble namaskar. ‘You will come for the big event, I hope. You really must.’ Then like a kathak dancer, signalling towards Prakash with her eyes without moving her head, she says, ‘We will be waiting for you.’ The ‘we’ carries notes of warm intimacy.

Looking at their retreating backs, Janaki grins to herself. Singh sahib, I have a really spicy story for you. Shall I write it? But of course, she knows that the whole world (or the part of it that matters) knows what’s going on and, equally, that none of them would want to see the story printed. Singh sahib is only a very small fish in Sumitraben’s net. Seen beside her in page-three photographs are personages of the stature of the supremo of the MR Party, sundry CEOs of giant multinationals and one permanent fixture—a majorly corrupt, majorly womanizing joint police commissioner who is supposedly a lover of art.

Janaki swallows the bitter taste in her mouth and gets down to work. If she takes care not to grumble about interviewing Prakash, she’ll be able to slip in Ashesh’s interview without Singh sahib protesting. With this thought in mind, she ends ‘Indian Art in the International Market’ with a flourish.

Janaki leans back in her chair, then eagerly picks up the phone. ‘This is an exhausted Janaki speaking. I see a good chance of being able to publish your interview Sunday after next. I will pay the price this weekend.’

‘What price?’ Ashesh sounds horrified.

‘Tell you when we meet.’

31