Nirmalya began to see less of his friends. In the twilight world he’d created, or chanced upon, in the intersection of the raga and nature, his friends were intruders; that world accommodated a great part of the universe — sun, dark, rain, the beating of a pigeon’s wings, a crow’s harsh cry — but it couldn’t accommodate Rajiv Desai, Sanjay Nair, and the others.
Without entirely planning to, Nirmalya abnegated ‘normalcy’; and suffered because of it.
He had moods of withdrawal and renunciation.
‘I want to go to the Himalayas,’ he said, as if he’d given this, and the life he was leading in general, some thought, and decided this was the easiest and most obvious solution. His audience was his mother and Nayana Neogi, the tall bespectacled woman who’d known this family for more than twenty years, and seen Apurva Sengupta transformed from a minor England-returned aspirant into a corporate bigwig with an apartment of seemingly infinite size. She’d reconciled herself to this; her own life with her commercial-artist husband and their pets, and the early thrill of the bohemian manner (she unwaveringly smoked fifteen cigarettes a day, and they lived in the rented ground-floor apartment they’d first occupied twenty-five years ago, and had no property to their name) had become jaded and habit-ridden. Yet habit has the warmth and familiarity of flesh and bone. She was large now, having put on weight in her failed artist’s idleness; too large to wear the hand-woven saris and rudimentary sleeveless cotton blouses with comfort. Instead, she plunged, these days, into a single loose garment that covered her from shoulder to toe and in which she moved about with a sort of freedom. Her old pets died; new ones entered the ground-floor home. A dachshund, a lovely, large-hearted thing, Nirmalya remembered from his childhood, with its low platform of a body and its charred stub of tail; that had, long, long ago, intended to cross the street outside their house and been run over by a car. But there were other, natural deaths, as cats and fox terriers died in old age and senility; as well as a tragic recent one. Nayana had been lying on the beautifully-crafted divan (so plain you might not notice its beauty) with a kitten nestling at her great back; she’d fallen deep asleep in the afternoon, and turned. Waking up to the sound of sparrows, she, who’d not felt a thing, discovered, distraught, that she’d become the kitten’s final darkness and seal. Today, partly with this sorrow, and with the sorrow of her own excessive weight, but buoyant at the change of surroundings, she’d come all the way to the magnificent apartment in Thacker Towers to spend the day with Mallika Sengupta. She was amused to see this boy in the old kurta, whom she’d known since he was a school-going child, standing self-absorbedly before her, the child in him still faintly visible, but also the new, unhappy young man. Ridding it of its cumulus-like appendage of ash, she took a drag on her cigarette; she was oddly moved by his unhappiness.
‘Why, Nirmalya? What can you possibly lack? You have everything.’
Later, he joined them for lunch and dourly polished off Arthur’s fruit trifle.
* * *
DESPITE THE URGE to go to the Himalayas, he also went with his parents to the Taj, and ate chilli cheese toast with them in the Sea Lounge. With a mixture of firmness and practised intimacy, Mr Sengupta, as he entered, placed an arm on the waiter’s shoulder and asked to be led only towards the left to the large sea-facing windows. There they sat at the tables meant for two — for couples or business accomplices; indeed, his parents came here every Saturday, for one unadulterated hour of silent nibbling and tea-stirring punctuated by conversation — and when Nirmalya came with them, he descended oddly on the third, awkward chair that was placed before the table by someone, and waited for the rectangular strips of toast with their swollen topping of cheese flecked with warning red spots.
Never entirely removed from where his parents were, or the areas in which he’d grown up or studied, he could still be spotted — even in the Taj on a Saturday — at different places almost simultaneously, as if these different incarnations of him — in the bookshop, at one end of the lobby, then at another end — all had a mysterious purpose or mission. Once, floating unmindfully, almost contentedly, down the glassy surface of the corridor that connected the old Taj to the new, he saw, and was seen by, a small figure, motionless among elegant passers-by. Pyarelal!
‘Pyarelal, what are you doing here?’ asked the boy, delighted, confused.
Pyarelal grinned as if he had a secret. His pale yellow kurta shone. Then, as Apurva and Mallika Sengupta approached, he dipped low and did a namaskar.
‘I have a programme here at six,’ he explained — he hadn’t shaved properly; there was still a bit of grey stubble on the chin. ‘My student Jayashree Nath performs before tourists. Please come whenever you have the time, baba.’ Behind him was the church-heavy door of the Tanjore restaurant. It was ajar; through a small gap, Nirmalya peered in to see a waiter in a dark suit, a shadowy, noticeably handsome figure — the restaurant was empty of diners at this time of the day — and a group of what looked like American men and women.
And, indeed, next week, Nirmalya did drop in to Tanjore; he pushed open the door, and was let in by the waiter in the black suit without a word. There were about fifteen tourists in the semi-dark of the restaurant; red-faced women in dresses or trousers, as if congregated in some suburb for a dashing evangelist, or to debate the environmental policies of an industrial house; and large men who were unaccountably shy. When Pyarelal appeared in a businesslike manner, he glanced at the audience, as a great artist resurrected from the dead might regard the living, without surprise, but with restrained curiosity; and then he spotted Nirmalya. He was pleased, and sent him a knowing smile. Bowing, but gazing above the audience’s heads, he did an elaborate namaskar, almost as much part of the performance as the dance itself. The tourists stirred vaguely, respectfully, as at the beginning of a speech; they didn’t know what the correct response to this was. He sat down before the harmonium with great solemnity; the dignity was expected of him; he’d cast aside the other Pyarelal, the one who was married to Tara, with three children, Puaji to the nephews and nieces, old Puaji, who would never go away, and who lost his temper at night. There was a sound of bells, again, again, and then Jayashree Nath, the bells round her ankles vibrating with every step, appeared on the platform with a young tabla player who ducked his head and glanced goofily at the visitors. She, however, had a far more worldly, assured air, like a tourist guide, cheerful, mechanical, underneath her apsara’s appearance; and, in a tourist guide’s English, she related the story she was about to perform, the perennially winsome one about Radha going with her friends to the banks of the Yamuna and there being harried by Krishna.
When she began to dance, and Pyarelal, clearing his throat daintily, to croon the words in raga Khamaj into the microphone, the explanation gradually became superfluous. The suburban women’s blue eyes sparkled like chips of aquamarine, as if extra interpretation were unnecessary. Repeatedly, surreptitiously, but in a strangely public way, like a lover who wants to make his excitement plain to anyone who cares to notice, Pyarelal glanced at Nirmalya; today’s performance was for him. The tourists were never not appreciative; even on bad days, when they danced and sang with less involvement, going through the motions in a way only they were aware of, the tourists’ applause was always spontaneous and automatic. This left Pyarelal content but secretly disconnected; he knew he’d been transformed into a fresco, a gilded element in a larger ‘Indian’ experience. Today, Nirmalya’s presence gave the performance a hidden competitiveness; they were no longer ‘Indian’ artistes, they felt they needed to show him that they were good artistes. So, although the tourists were innocent of this, Pyarelal and even Jayashree Nath and the tabla player were engaged in a give-and-take of concealed pleasure, of revelations and gestures, with the intruder.