‘Say your line, Meera.’

‘The surest way to a man’s heart?’

‘Why’s that a question? We’re trying to sell. Say it with conviction.’

‘Sorry.’

She took a deep breath, but grew more nervous.

‘Err, could you tell me what the product is?’

‘It doesn’t matter, just say the line.’ The voice at the other end was losing patience.

‘The ...’ She cleared her throat. ‘The surest man to the way’s heart. Excuse me! Sorry! The surest way to a—’

Why can’t I remember a simple line!

‘It’s okay, take your time, Meera,’ a different voice spoke to her now. It sounded kinder, less curt, and she relaxed a bit.

‘A surest way to a man’s heart,’ she finally managed.

‘It’s THE. The surest way to a man’s heart,’ the voice corrected her.

It was then that she realized why it was important for her to rehearse her lines and clear up her vocals, just like the other girls in the waiting room.

‘The surest way to a man’s heart.’

There was a moment of silence that felt too long to be comfortable.

‘Go on, keep going. Say it in a few different ways.’

‘The surest way to a man’s heart. The surest way to a man’s heart. The surest way to a man’s heart. The surest way to a man’s heart.’

She went on. It was nerve-wracking as she heard her own voice on the headphones – she thought she sounded terrible. After a dozen attempts, the previous man interrupted her again.

‘Okay, okay, let’s try the jingle now. Are you getting this?’

She could hear a sing-song version of the line being played for her. A perky female voice with exaggerated joy sang ‘A surest way to the man’s heart’ as though she’d found true love.

‘Could you please play that again?’

The tune was awful and the tone made no sense to her. She could point out a million things wrong in that single line. Thankfully, it stopped playing after a few minutes.

‘Okay, let’s go.’

How can I mimic that, she thought. Her guru would have thrown her out of the gharana if she ever attempted such an atrocity in his presence. So, she gathered all her courage and sang the line as it should have been sung. No one spoke for a while.

‘Meera, we want you to deliver it in the same style as the sample track,’ the man with the gentler voice spoke.

‘With all due respect, sir, the tempo is wrong. I can’t even place the—’

‘It’s not a Dhrupad or whatever, it’s a jingle. Just get on with it, will you?’ The first voice was back and sounding decidedly displeased with her. Something inside her snapped.

‘Sorry, but I can’t do this,’ she said definitively. ‘Thank you for your time.’

Not waiting to hear their response, she took off the headphones and briskly walked out of the audition room.

The noise of Bombay hit her with full force the moment she stepped out of the studio. A thousand honking vehicles and galloping horse carts were competing with each other in a rush to go home after a busy day. Meera knew that it wasn’t particularly brave of her to refuse to compromise her principles for money. The fact was that she had choked. She could have sung off-key if she tried, but an old, deep-seated fear of performing professionally had taken over her. A familiar fear that had overpowered her a dozen times in the past, resulting in many missed opportunities. A fear whose genesis she wasn’t ready to fully acknowlegde yet, let alone confronting it. Her specatcular performance at the Orient Club was an exception, not the norm. Abhimanyu’s invigorating presence had helped her come through. But now, in his absence, her anxiety got the better of her. She folded the paper with the tag line, tucked it in her pocket and boarded the bus in despair to meet her man at Lucky’s.