The audience is silent, suspended in disbelief, not knowing how to respond. Shuddh Sarang in the evening is one thing, but these words . . . Time. That is death. A song about death. That is inauspicious. Classical music must not be about such things. Their silence seems to give Sharada's voice a sharper edge of pain so that every word is etched in space. Anima is struck by how perfectly the notes of Shuddh Sarang match the mood of the song. The raag belongs to the white heat of the midday sun. The words speak of small black lives quivering and freezing into stillness. The audience senses the intimacy of melody and word. An involuntary ‘wah’ escapes somebody, more like a sigh than an exclamation of aesthetic pleasure. Even as the listeners try to find a balance between habit and acceptance, Sharada ends her experiment, leaving a throbbing sense of incompleteness in the air.

The listeners are lost. Shekhar begins to clap. Anima and Janaki join in. There is some more scattered applause, full of uncertainty. Sharada's face shines. She thanks the audience sincerely for their tolerance. ‘I’m not going to try your patience further,’ she assures them with a mischievous smile and moves into the first words of the Bhairavi tappa. She sings of the beloved, of his constant presence in her life without which she is nothing.

Within a moment the listeners relax. They have found their place. They know this music and its sentiments. This is not an ambush. The beat is Pushto. It moves with the gait of a camel. The long, exquisite glissando at the end of the first line brings out spontaneous ‘wahs’. The audience loses itself in the swirling taans of the tappa and the tender emotion in Sharada's voice. Her eyes turn again and again to Shekhar. He returns her gaze. They exchange private smiles. He is the man of the song. He is that beloved, that friend, that lover in whose being lies her highest happiness. And what does one do with a beloved's not-being? The thought strikes Anima and her throat constricts as a wave of loneliness floods her.

The tappa ends. It has moved the audience. Some gather around Sharada to congratulate her, carefully tiptoeing around her experiment with murmured nothings. But other than that, she sang her pure gharana, in her guru's style.

Anima signals to Sharada over the heads of the crowd to say she will call the next day. She and Janaki leave together. Anima's mind is full of Siddharth. A life that quivered and froze. My beloved, my lover.

In the train Janaki asks, ‘What did you think of her composition?’

For a long time, Anima says nothing. Janaki is uncomfortable. She says tentatively, ‘There's no place for the bhayanak and the bibhatsa in our music, is there?’