“I wish I could sing like you, Mohanji. There are too many parties these days. I can’t practise properly.” Mohanji was always surprised by the desires that the rich had, a desire for what couldn’t be theirs. It also amused him, partly, that it wasn’t enough for Mrs. Chatterjee that she, in one sense, possessed him; she must possess his gift as well. Perhaps in another life, he thought, not in this one. The guru was a believer in karma phal, that what you did in one life determined who and where you were in the next; he was convinced, for instance, that his gift, whatever he might have done to perfect it in this life, had been given to him because of some sadhana, some process of faith and perseverance, he had performed in an earlier one. Of course, there were advantages to the position he was in now; in another time, he’d have had to submit to the whims of a rajah, with the not inconsiderable compensation that the rajah loved music. That empathy for music was still not good enough, though, to make you forget the frustrations of living under a tyrant. Now, in this age, all he had to do was attend to the humours of executives and businessmen and their wives who thought they had a taste, a passing curiosity, for music; it was relatively painless.

“Why do you say such things, behanji,” he said, unruffled. He scratched the back of his hand moodily. “There’s been a lot of improvement.” His eyes lit up slightly. “All those bada sahibs and their wives came up and congratulated you the other day after you sang, didn’t they, behanji,” he said, recalling the scene, “saying, ‘Bahut achhe, Rumaji,’ and ‘Very nice.’” He shook his head. “If you’d come to me ten years ago, I could have…” He sometimes said this with a genuine inkling of accomplishment at what he might have achieved.

“They may be bada sahibs,” said Mrs. Chatterjee, vaguely dissatisfied that this appellation should be given to someone else’s husband. “But Mr. Chatterjee is a bigger bada sahib than all of them.”

The guru did not dispute this.

“Bilkul!” he said. “Even to look at he is so different.” He said this because he meant it; Mr. Chatterjee, for him, had some of the dimensions of greatness, without necessarily possessing any of its qualities. There were so many facets to his existence; so little, relatively, one could know about him.

*   *   *