IN ANOTHER AGE, Mr. Chatterjee, with his professional abilities and head for figures and statutes, his commitment to see a project through, might have been a munshi in a court, or an advisor to a small feudal aristocracy. Now it was he who, in a sense, ruled; he ran a company; he was the patron as far as people like Mohanji were concerned. It didn’t matter that, when he sang before him, Mr. Chatterjee didn’t understand the talas, that he simply smiled quizzically and shook his head from side to side in hesitant appreciation. That hesitant appreciation, to Mohanji, meant much.

Coming back home from the party, Mrs. Chatterjee would be so tired that sometimes she fell asleep with makeup still on her face. At such times, she felt almost glad she didn’t have children, because she would have lacked the energy to look in on them. All the same, she couldn’t sleep for very long and was awake, although she looked as if she needed more rest, when the cleaner came in for the keys to wash their two cars. She stood near the balcony with a teacup in her hand as the day began, not really seeing the sea, its water resplendent with sunlight. Then she might remember the guru was to come that day, and begin to think of the last song she’d learnt from him.

On these days, she’d sometimes be a bit listless during the lesson, and the guru would say, “Behanji, you seem a bit tired today.”

“It’s this life, Mohanji,” she’d say, preoccupied, but not entirely truthful in the impression she sought to give of being someone who was passively borne by it. “Sometimes it moves too quickly.” And she’d recall the exchanges of the previous night, now gradually growing indistinguishable from one another. Mohanji would regard her with incomprehension and indulgence; he was used to these bursts of anxiety and lassitude; the way an evening of lights, drinks, and strangers, when she was transformed into something more than herself, should change back into this sluggish morning, when she was unreceptive to the lesson and to him.

*   *   *

IN THIS BUILDING ITSELF, there were other amateur singers. On the seventh floor, Mrs. Prem Raheja sang devotionals. Her husband was a dealer in diamonds, and occasionally flew to Brussels. For her, singing was less an aesthetic pastime (as it was for Mrs. Chatterjee) than a religious one; she was devoutly religious. Then there was Neha Kapur on the eleventh floor, who liked to sing ghazals. No one really knew what her husband did; some said he was in “import-export.” These people were really traders made good, many times richer, in reality, than Mr. Chatterjee, though they lacked his power and influence, and inhabited a somewhat different world from his.