In other ways, he felt that he was entering the twilight of his life in the company; though there was nothing more substantial than an intuition to suggest this. He suppressed this feeling before it could become a concrete thought. Among the more minor and personal, but persistent and cherished, projects he had in mind was to present his wife, Ruma, before an audience of friends and peers, with the repertoire of new songs she’d learnt from the guru. With this in mind, he’d ask her sometimes, with a degree of impatience:

“Isn’t he teaching you anything new? I’ve been hearing the same two songs for the last three weeks!” This might be said in the midst of talking about three or four other things, after he’d returned, yet again, late from the office.

He asked the teacher the same question in the course of the week, when he happened to come back earlier than usual, and found the lesson midway, in progress. He’d had a distracting day at the office, and he was about to go out again. He said, looming in his navy blue suit over the teacher sitting on the carpet with the harmonium before him:

“Do give her another one, guruji! I’ve been hearing the same one—the one about ‘Giridhar Gopal’—for about two weeks now.” He called him “guruji” at times, not as a student or acolyte might, but to indicate a qualified respect for a walk of life he didn’t quite understand. He used the term as one might use a foreign word that one was slightly uncomfortable with, but which one took recourse to increasingly and inadvertently.

The guru looked a little bemused, and embarrassed on Mr. Chatterjee’s behalf. He picked up a printed songbook.

“I did give behanji a new bhajan, Chatterjee saheb,” he said diffidently, but not without some humour and his characteristic courtesy. “Maybe you haven’t heard it. It’s a lovely tune,” he said, with a kind of innocent and immodest delight in his own composing abilities.

“Really?” said Mr. Chatterjee, lowering himself upon the edge of the bed and apparently forgetting the appointment he had to keep. “Do sing it for me, guruji.” He could spare five minutes. “Your behanji doesn’t tell me anything!”

The guru began to sing almost immediately, first clearing his throat with excessive violence; then an unexpectedly melodious voice issued from him; he looked up, smiling, twice at Mr. Chatterjee while singing.

“Wah!” said Mr. Chatterjee with unusual candour after the guru finished, the song fading in less than three minutes. He turned to his wife and asked, “Have you picked it up?” She waved him away with an admonitory gesture of the hand. “See? She doesn’t listen to anything I say.” The guru was greatly amused at this untruth. On his way out, Mr. Chatterjee looked into the room and said, “It’s a particularly lovely bhajan.”