Gradually, the other guests began to trickle in, the doorbell was rung, and each couple greeted with varying degrees of surprise, recognition, and familial warmth. “Where’s Amal?” everyone wanted to know, as if the solution to this party lay not in its social hierarchies, or in the longer-term destinies it vaguely pointed to, but in where, and who, the boy was. Because the party, after all, was a serious business.

As the party moved on, and the evening darkened outside with the intermittent light of other buildings, Atul Gupta found himself, at nine o’clock, alone and moorless for a few minutes in the corridor, with a drink in his hand. He realised, with a sort of tentativeness that was rarely visible but had been reserved for his first days in the office, which had been naked then but was apparelled in decent clothes since, that the door not far away from him, which had been left slightly ajar and from which a bright light was shining, was the boy’s door. He saw his ambition and fear and curiosity had preceded him here and were waiting like a shadow outside it. He cleared his throat and, taking a few steps forward, knocked.

“Come in,” said a small voice from within. Mr. Gupta’s heart beat a little faster. He pushed the door by the handle; the beast, or god, or mystery, the company’s inmost secret, however you chose to view him, was sitting there at the edge of his bed, a glass of cola on the floor before him, a drawing book in his hand. This was the head of finance’s innermost sanctum, this was where his life and heart beat, and he, Assistant Company Secretary, must, against his own wishes, surrender and bow his head silently before it. On a bright red carpet lay, innocently, three or four dinky toys, including an overturned truck; stopping near it as if it might go off if he touched it, Mr. Gupta said:

“How are you, young man?” The boy turned to look at him; and Mr. Gupta flinched, as if his future, or what little he knew of it, had turned to look at him in that air-conditioned room and judged him; for these were not his boss’s eyes, but the eyes that, invisibly, ruled and governed his boss’s life. He had not known, before he’d begun, that company life concealed such mysteries; the Managing Director’s children were long grown up and lived abroad, in England. It was here, then, that, by default, all that was sweet and virginal and innocent about the company dwelt, a savage whose mind was far removed from adult reasoning and the laws that governed adult life.

“Hello, Uncle Atul,” said the boy, without much interest. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“May I sit down?” said Mr. Gupta, smiling, but feeling as if he were straining against a hidden door that wouldn’t open.