Amit Chaudhuri - Real Time - Stories and a Reminiscence

The guru looked a little bemused, and embarrassed on Mr. Chatterjee’s behalf. He picked up a printed songbook.

“I did give behanji a new bhajan, Chatterjee saheb,” he said diffidently, but not without some humour and his characteristic courtesy. “Maybe you haven’t heard it. It’s a lovely tune,” he said, with a kind of innocent and immodest delight in his own composing abilities.

“Really?” said Mr. Chatterjee, lowering himself upon the edge of the bed and apparently forgetting the appointment he had to keep. “Do sing it for me, guruji.” He could spare five minutes. “Your behanji doesn’t tell me anything!”

The guru began to sing almost immediately, first clearing his throat with excessive violence; then an unexpectedly melodious voice issued from him; he looked up, smiling, twice at Mr. Chatterjee while singing.

“Wah!” said Mr. Chatterjee with unusual candour after the guru finished, the song fading in less than three minutes. He turned to his wife and asked, “Have you picked it up?” She waved him away with an admonitory gesture of the hand. “See? She doesn’t listen to anything I say.” The guru was greatly amused at this untruth. On his way out, Mr. Chatterjee looked into the room and said, “It’s a particularly lovely bhajan.”

The guru smiled, almost as if he were a child who’d entered forbidden territory; as if, through the bhajan, he’d entered a space, and a mind, generally reserved for official appointments and more weighty transactions than these; how else could he obtrude upon such a space?

* * *

TWO MONTHS LATERthey had a party in the flat; it came in the wake, ostensibly, of a new diversification for the company, but it actually had little to do with that. There were parties every two weeks, sometimes for no good reason, except to satisfy the addiction to the same set of faces; though these events were justified as being necessary for off-duty chatter among colleagues and associates and, more important, because there was a persuasive myth that it was an extension of business activity. Usually, however, the party turned out to be none of these, but an occasion for bad jokes, bickering, and mild drunkenness and indigestion.

This party was a little different, though; Mrs. Chatterjee was to sing tonight. Of course, she could be found standing by the door, a weak smile on her face, responding to the exclamations of “Ruma!” and “Mrs. Chatterjee!” and “Where’s Amiya?” as guests walked in with little nods and smiles, half her mind on the kitchen. They didn’t know yet that she was to be a prima donna that evening; going in, however, they noticed a harmonium and tablas kept on one of the carpets, and continued to circulate loudly among themselves, exploding noisily at moments of hilarity.

No one was surprised, or took more than a cursory note of the instruments; “musical evenings” were less and less uncommon these days, and were seen to be a pleasant diversion or a necessary hazard in polite society. Meanwhile, people cupped potato wafers and peanuts like small change in their hands; and a platter of shami kababs passed from person to person. The guru had come earlier, and was sitting with members of his family — his wife, his mother, his cousin, a shy and thin man who’d play the tabla today, and his son — cloistered in the air-conditioned guest room, semi-oblivious of the noise outside; they were having their own party, chattering in their own language, holding glasses of Limca or Fanta in their hands, unmindful of the party outside.

Mrs. Chatterjee hardly had time to think of the songs she’d rehearsed; she went frequently to the kitchen, her face pale, to see how the pulao was coming along, and to leave a regulatory word or two with the servants, whom she could never trust entirely. As she checked to see if the right cutlery was out, and the correct arrangement of crockery, a ghost of a tune hovered in the back of her head. She wasn’t really missed; one was missed at other people’s parties, but not at one’s own; one was not so much the centre of attention at one’s own as a behind-the-scenes worker. Other people became centres of attention, like the advertising man, Baig, who was holding forth now about the travails of advertising in a “third-world country.” Yet forty-five minutes later, leaving the kitchen on autopilot, she had to suffer herself to be, briefly, the cynosure of all eyes.

The cook measured out the koftas, while, in the hall, Mrs. Chatterjee lowered herself awkwardly on the carpet, the guru sitting down not far away from her, unobtrusively, before the harmonium. He looked small and intent next to her, in his white kurta and pyjamas, part accompanist and part — what? At first, it wasn’t the guests who listened to them, but they who listened, almost attentively, to the sound the guests made, until whispers travelled from one part of the room to another, the hubbub subsided, and the notes of the harmonium became, for the first time, audible. Mohanji could hear the murmurs, in English, of senior executives who worked in twenty-storey buildings nearby, and knew more about takeovers than music; it must be a puzzling, but oddly thrilling, experience to sing for them. It was odd, too, to sit next to Mrs. Chatterjee, not as if he were her guru (which he wasn’t, not even in name), waiting for her to begin, indispensable but unnoticed. The guests were looking at her.

She began tentatively; she couldn’t quite get hold of the first song, but no one noticed. Certainly, Mr. Chatterjee looked relaxed and contented. The only doubt was on Mrs. Chatterjee’s own face; the second one, however, went off better than the first. “You’re a lucky guy,” said Motwane, a director in a pharmaceuticals company, prodding Mr. Chatterjee in the shoulder from behind. “I didn’t know she had so many talents.” Mr. Chatterjee smiled, and waved at another friend across the room. Now, in the third song, her voice faltered in the upper register, but no one seemed to hear it, or, if they did, to be disturbed. Once her performance was over, the shami kababs were circulated again; a faint taste of “culture” in their mouths, people went to the bar to replenish their glasses.

* * *

THAT NIGHT,as they were getting into bed, Mr. Chatterjee said, “That went quite well.” It wasn’t clear to what he was referring at first, but it was likely he meant the party itself. Mrs. Chatterjee was removing her earrings. “And the songs?” she asked pointedly, making it sound like a challenge, but only half serious.

“Those were nice,” he said. To her surprise, he began to hum a tune himself, not very melodiously — she couldn’t tell if it was one of the songs she’d sung earlier — something he did rarely before others, although she’d heard him singing in the bathroom, his voice coming from behind the shower. He seemed unaware that anyone else was listening. Seeing him happy in this way — it couldn’t be anything else — she felt sorry for him, and smiled inwardly, because no one, as he was so successful, ever felt sorry for him, or thought of his happiness.

“We must have one of these ‘musical evenings’ again,” he said simply, following an unfinished train of thought, as if he were a child who spoke impulsively, trusting to intuition. Yet, if he were a child, he was one who had the power to move destinies. Not in a god-like way, perhaps, but in the short term, materially. But she loved his child-like side, its wild plans, although it tired her at times. She said nothing.

* * *

IN HIS CHILD-LIKE WAY,he could be quite hard. Not with her; but no investment justified itself to him except through its returns. That was because he couldn’t run a company on charity or emotions; or his own head would roll. Nor did he believe that the country could be run on charity or emotion.