Sharada, judging the pitch of Janaki's voice, places her finger on the kaali chaar key for the first note ‘sa’. Janaki begins way off the note but adjusts her pitch till she gets there, more or less, before losing breath. Sharada plays all the notes in the scale one by one. Janaki follows approximately till all the notes are done. She is deeply embarrassed at her tunelessness.

‘You are using a false voice,’ Sharada tells her.

‘False?’

‘It's a top voice. It comes from the throat, not from the chest cavity and stomach. You’ll have to work hard to find your true voice. How much time will you have for riyaz? Do you have the space? Landlords and neighbours don’t take kindly to beginners in classical music.’ Sharada's smile holds an encouraging warning.

Janaki is silent. The contours of Sharada's body are round. Her voice too is sweet and round. But there's no roundness in what she says. That is straight. Janaki hasn’t thought about the questions she has posed. Mrs Khanna, her landlady, is a fun-loving widow. But Janaki isn’t sure she will be amused by her paying guest's early morning voice training to hit the right musical notes. Janaki is lucky to have found a room in Mrs Khanna's sea-facing flat at Worli. She doesn’t want to jeopardize it.

The phone rings while she is lost in thought. Shekhar brings the handset over to Sharada. His eyes are like flakes of ice. ‘Haridas,’ he says curtly. Anima glances at him sympathetically as he hurries away. Just the name Haridas curdles and sours his refined features. It is seven years since the time Haridas had taken possession of Sharada's body and mind, but it still hurt. In those spellbound days Haridas only had to suggest what Sharada should eat and drink, what colours and textures of saris she should wear, for her to happily submit. The only suggestion she had rejected, even while she was in thrall, was to change her guru. Haridas was of the opinion that women should learn from women gurus. Give up Pandit Kinikar, he had told her. Go to Sumati Sharangpani. But Sharada had stuck on with Pandit Kinikar because that was the music she wanted to sing.

The two years of bondage to Haridas had been painful for Sharada's parents and friends but specially for Shekhar, who admired her music, respected her as a person and had fallen in love with her. The world knew that Haridas was an incorrigible womanizer. Her friends could not understand how she could be so blind.