“This’ll give me indigestion,” he said; but he was distracted as well. No sooner had he been given his extension than a bickering had started among a section of the directors about it; not in his presence, of course, but he was aware of it. At such times, he couldn’t quite focus on his wife’s music lessons, or on the guru; the guru was like a figure who’d just obtruded upon Mr. Chatterjee’s line of vision, but whom he just missed seeing. “You know sweets like these don’t agree with me.” The sweets were an irrelevance; if the two directors—one of whom, indeed, he’d appointed himself—succeeded in fanning a trivial resentment, it would be a nuisance, his position might even be in slight danger; he must be clear about that. You worked hard, with care and foresight, but a little lack of foresight—which was what appointing Sengupta to the Board had turned out to be—could go against you. Sometimes, he knew from experience and from observing others, what you did to cement your position was precisely what led to undoing it.

Mrs. Chatterjee felt a twinge of pity for Mohanji. As if in recompense, she ate half a ladoo herself. Then, unable to have any more, she asked John to distribute them among the cook, the maidservant, and himself. “They’re very good,” she told them. She could see her husband was preoccupied, and whispered her instructions.

*   *   *

SENSING A TENSION for the next couple of weeks, which was unexpected since it came at the time of the extension being summoned, a time, surely, for personal celebration, she herself grew unmindful, and withdrew into conversations with a couple of friends she felt she could trust. Once or twice, the guru asked her, full of enthusiasm, what she’d thought of the ladoos, but never got a proper answer. “Oh those were nice,” she said absently, leaving him hungry for praise. A slight doubt had been cast upon the extension, although it was trivial and this was most probably an ephemeral crisis; still, she felt a little cheated that it should happen now. It also made her occasionally maudlin with the guru, less interested in the lesson than in putting unanswerable questions to him.

“Mohan bhai, what’s the good of my singing and doing all this hard work? Who will listen?” How quickly their moods change, he thought. There you are, he thought, with your readymade audience of colleagues and colleagues’ wives; what more do you want? The questions she’d asked chafed him, but he skirted them, like a person avoiding something unpleasant in his path. One day, however, he was feeling quite tired (because of a bad night he’d had) and lacked his usual patience; he said: