Janaki and the children, as special guests of the featured artist, are in the front row. She gets the children settled as the rest of the audience clap, but they get restless again within minutes of Vani beginning the kirthanai, and Janaki rearranges them, so that Kartik is on the other side of Thangajothi, and Kashyap between her and Janaki. Sundar is to Janaki’s right and Amarnath on the other side of him-if Janaki can separate her children from their younger cousins, she can trust them to behave, but Vairum and Vani’s boys are difficult under any circumstances and she is already grimly anticipating that she will miss most of the concert. She would have preferred to leave them at home with the help, but she wanted her own children to come and it was difficult to bring them without pointing up the younger boys’ unmanageability.
She’s made her peace with not paying full attention to Vani’s playing; she has had the equivalent of a private concert each of the last few days as Vani has practised at home, and she will stay with Vani and Vairum ten days longer. It’s Janaki’s first time attending the Madras concert season. She intends to relish it. She taps Kartik’s and Kashyap’s knees sternly. Thangajothi stares dreamily at the stage. It’s already breaking Janaki’s heart that her daughter is not musical. Amarnath is the only one of her children with real promise in this department. Baskaran got him a first-class mridangam two years ago, and an excellent tutor. Sundar is made to participate in the lessons and makes no pretense of gaining anything from them, but is not jealous of his brother’s talent. Thangajothi attends veena and vocal lessons with two of her school chums at a neighbour’s. Janaki insists on the lessons but never makes Thangajothi practise at home because she can’t bear to listen.
Intermission. Alone, Janaki might have made some attempt to move into the crowd, see if she recognizes anyone, have a glance at the new fashions, but today, she does no more than herd the children around the back of the concert hall to relieve themselves. Thangajothi refuses, feeling herself too old, at ten, for public urination.
When they are seated again, Vairum arrives, clearing a path through the noise to join Janaki in the front row, creating more noise in his wake as people realize who he is. She’s relieved to be able to turn his sons over to him. He sits one on each knee and whispers to them through the second half. By the end, Kartik is asleep on his shoulder and Kashyap appears to be paying attention to the music. Who could have guessed Vairum, with his passionate tempers and dogmas, would make such a patient and attentive father?
Afterward, they go backstage, a large lean-to with a thatched roof like that over the concert hall. On one of the mats, Vani reclines against a bolster and accepts a tumbler of hot lemon water. Her children bound toward her and Kartik steps in the ill-tempered ghatam player’s coffee. By the time Vairum has finished apologizing, the mat is aswarm with ants attracted to the sugar. Vairum offers the artists lifts home, but other patrons are in wait to pay similar favours and the children have great and inadvertent powers of dissuasion. At home, they alight into that urban dusk Janaki loves, its glow intensified by layers of dust and pollution.
All through the evening, Vani receives gifts with notes from admirers who were present and those who could not attend: boxes from The Grand Sweets, garlands that putrefy in the puja room, statuettes of goddess Saraswati. There are visitors-international businessmen, political petitioners, fawning philanthropists-all of whom are received with efficient grace.
The next morning, the gifts resume. Servants transport them to the appropriate corners of the house even as Janaki listens to Vani’s daily practice and readies herself for a 1 p.m. concert. She will leave the children at home today, and frets over this, though the children are pleased. Thangajothi has books, the boys have each other, meals and snacks appear exactly when they should and none of them can get out-Janaki repeats all this to herself as she rattles in a cycle rickshaw toward the Music Academy, not far at all, she tells herself. A servant can run and fetch her in twenty minutes if anything… nothing will happen, she tells herself until, with relief, she returns home at four. The children have hardly noticed her absence, and she resolves on relaxing when she attends the festival in subsequent days.
She has finished her bath and is combing her hair when she hears yet another visitor arrive. Vairum is not home from work yet; Vani doesn’t entertain. And it is her practice hour, so this person will be snubbed. Janaki has seen this here before-for a visitor in the know, it’s a mark of inclusion not to take offence. She strains with curiosity to hear what will happen, as, her plait coiled at her nape, she hurriedly drags the comb from her part to her ears, once on each side. She dabs vermilion onto her forehead and freezes, her finger in her part, as the visitor’s voice resolves out of the household hum.
It’s not a voice Janaki would have recognized any longer had it not been restored to her through film, given as a gift to all Tamils. She is a provincial treasure, now that there is a Tamil province, that face, that grace, those now-beloved gestures.
Vani begins her evening session. The music’s effect is as familiar as its form is unfamiliar, and Janaki hesitates, but can’t wait long before entering the main hall to join the audience of one. Bharati, arrayed on the white divan, stands and nods a greeting, more composed than Janaki, as always. But how has she come to be so coolly sitting in Vairum’s salon? Is Janaki’s appearance, for her, a surprise? They sit in silence, giving Vani their full and companionate attention-a familiar and unforgotten state, though Janaki is soon distracted by her own thoughts.
She has changed out of the heavy-bordered maroon silk she wore to the concert, but makes a point, in Vairum’s house, of always wearing a sari suitable for receiving guests of standing. She’s glad she’s not embarrassed by her own appearance, though she is awed and mildly dismayed by Bharati’s. In contrast with Janaki’s matronly nine-yard windowpanecheck sari, Bharati is splendid in the latest thing, a five-yard “sugar silk,” a fine silk spun roughly so that, woven, it gives a crystalline effect, in her signature colours, which are now all the rage: baby mango green with a marigold border. Janaki thinks the sari is a bit young for Bharati-not for her public age, true, but for her real one. But Bharati is, in the modern sense, unmarried, and-as far as Janaki knows, she thinks with a retrospective wince-childless, not to mention that she’s part of the world of showbiz, all of which makes such display less inappropriate than it might be were her situation comparable to Janaki’s own.
She steals looks at Bharati, whose beauty has been sharpened by age and experience, though the camera doesn’t show the faint lines evident now to Janaki. On screen, Bharati looks like a sheltered innocent miraculously graced with the best effects of age-poise, wisdom, temperance. She appears to combine, Janaki admits, the best qualities of her half-sisters-Visalam’s light humour, Janaki’s creative spirit, Kamalam’s inviting warmth-and none of the worst: not Sita’s bile or Saradha’s stodginess.
Janaki tries to keep face forward and listen to the music-she’s only here for twelve days, she doesn’t want to miss anything. Once, she looks at Bharati inadvertently and finds Bharati looking at her. Bharati raises her eyebrows slightly and smiles; Janaki smiles, too, briefly and with strain, and looks back at Vani.