Mr. Banerjee took us into the first room through a white curtain with printed flowers. It had a centre table, a small sofa against the wall, two armchairs facing each other, all in a faded green cloth upholstery, wooden shelves with glass panels on the left, with a few hardcovers upon them. Mr. Banerjee switched on the fan. There was a window at the other end, with curtains that were smaller versions of the one at the doorway. Mr. Banerjee sat on the chair at that end, Binoy on the sofa, mastermoshai next to him, and I on the other armchair. Mr. Banerjee nodded at Binoy and said to mastermoshai:

“Is he the poet?” Binoy shifted uncomfortably, possibly wondering, suddenly, what he was doing here. But, dark-complexioned, almost black, in kurta and pyjamas, large-eyed, he did look poetic.

“No, no,” said mastermoshai. “He is his uncle’s son. This is the boy whose poems I showed you.” Mr. Banerjee turned to look at me.

“I see,” he said. Unsmilingly, he told me, “I liked your poems.”

Magically, tea and biscuits on a plate arrived from nowhere. Our presence had set off a small domestic machinery in the flat. Conversation opened up, and mastermoshai told Mr. Banerjee more about me, while Binoy sipped his tea and listened.

“I noticed a mood of biraha in your poems,” Mr. Banerjee told me. “Have you ever read the Baishnab Padabali?”

“No, I haven’t,” I said a little hesitantly. “But I am interested. Could you tell me where I can buy a copy?”

“He has trouble reading Bengali,” explained mastermoshai, “because he grew up in Bombay. As for the Padabali,” he said to me, “you should find it in College Street.”

“I will publish your poems next month,” said Mr. Banerjee.

Delight made us all silent. We finished our tea, got up to leave, and mastermoshai thanked him profusely, while Binoy and I, as before, merged into the background and assumed the status of bystanders. Mr. Banerjee closed the door, and that was the last I saw of him.

On my next visit to Calcutta, I found that mastermoshai had widened his interests; he was thinking of freelancing as a copywriter and relinquishing his job as a private tutor. He had inserted a small message in the classifieds column of The Statesman, advertising his skills and availability, but the message showed such a command of the idiomatic resources of English that it would have been unintelligible to most Bengali readers. One day he came to me and gave me a piece of paper. It was for my father, who worked in a firm that had dealings with Britannia Biscuits. “Ask him to show it to them,” he said with great pride and self-assurance. The piece of paper, which seemed blank at first glance, had its entire space filled with three large words written with a ballpoint:

BRITANNIA

IS

BISCUIT