Indeed, he had married her twenty-two years ago for this very reason: that he might hear her sing continually. Not everyone might agree about the enormity of her talent; but something had touched him that day when he’d met her in the afternoon in his still-to-be in-laws’ place in one of the more distant reaches of a small town, and heard her sing, not the usual Tagore song, but a Hindi devotional by Meerabai. He was the “catch” then—a medium-sized fish that had the potential to be a big one.

Fifteen years they’d lived together in Bombay now, and for ten years in this flat that gave the illusion from certain angles that the sea approached very near it. And for fifteen years, almost, he had wanted his wife’s voice to be heard more widely than it was—what he thought of as “widely” was a hazy audience comprising mainly colleagues from his company, and from the many other companies he had to infrequently, but repeatedly, come into contact with—though it wasn’t as if he’d mind terribly if the audience extended beyond this group of semi-familiar faces into the unclear territory of human beings outside.

She had a weak voice, admittedly. It managed one and a half octaves with some difficulty; it was more at ease in the lower register, but quavered when it reached the upper sa and re, something the guru had grown used to. When she sang “Meera ke prabhu” now, towards the end of the song, there was, again, that quaver. It was something she met reasonably bravely, head-on, or ignored it altogether, as did the guru. Neither could continue their respective pursuits—she, of being a singer, he, of being her teacher—if they took the quaver and its signal too seriously; they knew that one or two of these limitations were irremediable, but without much significance in relation to the other dimensions of their partnership.

“How was that?” she asked after she’d finished. She needed to know, in a perfunctory but genuine way, his opinion.

“It was all right today,” he said. He was never quite ingratiating in his response, but never harshly critical, either. They had reached a silent mandate that this was how it should be. He went over a phrase as the servant brought in a tray with teacups and a small plate of biscuits.

It was always a pleasure to hear him, even when he was humming, as he was now. And he was always humming. There was no denying his gift; but he probably still didn’t quite know what to do with it. He was almost careless with it. He sipped the tea slowly and carefully selected a biscuit. Sometimes they might give him a gulab jamun, towards which he’d show no lack of intent or hesitation, or a jalebi.

*   *   *