Mrs. Chatterjee hardly had time to think of the songs she’d rehearsed; she went frequently to the kitchen, her face pale, to see how the pulao was coming along, and to leave a regulatory word or two with the servants, whom she could never trust entirely. As she checked to see if the right cutlery was out, and the correct arrangement of crockery, a ghost of a tune hovered in the back of her head. She wasn’t really missed; one was missed at other people’s parties, but not at one’s own; one was not so much the centre of attention at one’s own as a behind-the-scenes worker. Other people became centres of attention, like the advertising man, Baig, who was holding forth now about the travails of advertising in a “third-world country.” Yet forty-five minutes later, leaving the kitchen on autopilot, she had to suffer herself to be, briefly, the cynosure of all eyes.

The cook measured out the koftas, while, in the hall, Mrs. Chatterjee lowered herself awkwardly on the carpet, the guru sitting down not far away from her, unobtrusively, before the harmonium. He looked small and intent next to her, in his white kurta and pyjamas, part accompanist and part—what? At first, it wasn’t the guests who listened to them, but they who listened, almost attentively, to the sound the guests made, until whispers travelled from one part of the room to another, the hubbub subsided, and the notes of the harmonium became, for the first time, audible. Mohanji could hear the murmurs, in English, of senior executives who worked in twenty-storey buildings nearby, and knew more about takeovers than music; it must be a puzzling, but oddly thrilling, experience to sing for them. It was odd, too, to sit next to Mrs. Chatterjee, not as if he were her guru (which he wasn’t, not even in name), waiting for her to begin, indispensable but unnoticed. The guests were looking at her.

She began tentatively; she couldn’t quite get hold of the first song, but no one noticed. Certainly, Mr. Chatterjee looked relaxed and contented. The only doubt was on Mrs. Chatterjee’s own face; the second one, however, went off better than the first. “You’re a lucky guy,” said Motwane, a director in a pharmaceuticals company, prodding Mr. Chatterjee in the shoulder from behind. “I didn’t know she had so many talents.” Mr. Chatterjee smiled, and waved at another friend across the room. Now, in the third song, her voice faltered in the upper register, but no one seemed to hear it, or, if they did, to be disturbed. Once her performance was over, the shami kababs were circulated again; a faint taste of “culture” in their mouths, people went to the bar to replenish their glasses.

*   *   *