“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.
* * *
BUT THE GURU WASN’T always well. A mysterious stomach ulcer — it was an undiagnosed ailment, but he preferred to call it an “ulcer”—troubled him. It could remain inactive for days, then come back in a sharp spasm that would leave him listless for two days. To this end he’d gone with his mother and wife to a famous religious guru called, simply, Baba, and sat among a crowd of people to receive his benediction. When his turn came, he was asked only to touch Baba’s feet, and, as he did so, the Baba whispered a few words into his ear, words that he didn’t understand. But after this, Mohanji felt better, and the pain, though he hadn’t expected it would, seemed to go away.
When his behanji heard about this one day, she was properly contemptuous. “I don’t believe in baba-vaaba,” she said. The guru smiled, and looked uncomfortable and guilty; not because he’d been caught doing something silly, but because Mrs. Chatterjee could be so naively sacrilegious. It was as if she didn’t feel the need to believe in anything, and affluent though she might be, the guru was not certain of the wisdom of this. “If you have a problem, it should be looked at by a real doctor,” she went on. The guru nodded mournfully, seeing no reason to argue.
Of course, the problem was partly Mohanji’s own fault. As he went from flat to flat, he was frequently served “snacks” during the lesson, the junk food that people stored in their homes and dispensed with on such occasions. Sometimes the food could be quite heavy. Mohanji could never resist these, eating them while thinking, abstractedly, of some worry that beset him at home. This irregular consumption would leave him occasionally dyspeptic.
* * *
HE SUFFERED FROM tension as well, a tension from constantly having to lie to the ladies he taught — white lies, flattery — and from not having a choice in the matter. He had raised his fee recently, of course; he now charged a hundred rupees for lessons all around, pleading that a lot of the money went towards the taxi fare. In this matter, his “students” found him quietly inflexible. “I can’t teach for less,” he said simply. And because he was such an expert singer, his “students” couldn’t refuse him, although a hundred rupees a “sitting” was a lot for a guru; making him one of the highest-paid teachers doing the rounds. But they’d begun to wonder, now and again, what they were getting out of it themselves, and why their singing hadn’t improved noticeably, or why they — housewives — couldn’t also become singers with something of a reputation: it would be a bonus in the variegated mosaic of their lives.
“But you must practise,” he’d say; and when a particular murki or embellishment wouldn’t come to them, he’d perform a palta or a vocal exercise, saying, “Practise this: it’s for that particular murki,” as if he were a mountebank distributing charms or amulets for certain ailments.
* * *
MR. CHATTERJEE’S OFFICE HAD a huge rosewood table; now, on the third anniversary of his being made Chief Executive of this company, a basket of roses arrived; after a couple of files were cleared away, it was placed on a table before him, and a photograph taken by a professional photographer arranged by Patwardhan, the Personnel Manager. “Okay, that’s enough; back to work,” he said brusquely, after the camera’s shutter had clicked a few times. Once the photograph was developed and laminated, its black-and-white colours emphasised, rather than diminished, the roses.
The guru loved this photograph. “Chatterjee saheb looks wonderful in it — just as he should,” he said, admiring it. “He must have a wonderful office.” He ruminated for a little while, and said, “Brite detergent — he owns it, doesn’t he, behanji?” “He doesn’t own it,” said Mrs. Chatterjee, tolerant but short. “He runs it.” The guru nodded, not entirely convinced of the distinction.
He continued to give her new songs, by the blind poet Surdas, and by Meera, who would accept no other Lord but Krishna. During these lessons, he came to know, between songs, in snatches of conversation, that Mr. Chatterjee had got his two-year extension at the helm of the company. He took this news home with him and related it proudly to his wife.
Two days later, he brought a box of ladoos. “These aren’t from a shop—” he pointed out importunately. “My wife made them!” Mrs. Chatterjee looked at them as if they’d fallen from outer space. There they sat, eight orbs inside a box, the wife’s handiwork.
“Is there a festival?” asked Mrs. Chatterjee. In the background, John, the old servant, dusted, as he did at this time of the day, the curios in the drawing room.
“No, no,” said the guru, smiling at her naiveté and shaking his head. “She made them for you — just eat them and see.” She wasn’t sure if she wanted to touch them; they looked quite rich.
“I’ll have one in the evening,” she consoled him. “When Chatterjee saheb comes. He’ll like them with his tea.” But in the evening, Mr. Chatterjee demurred.
“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.