In the acute loneliness of Nirmalya’s life, these hours with Pyarelal were animated with actual happiness. For Pyarelal, too, it was an extraordinary transposition; being here, in this apartment. And he worked hard with the boy; he went beyond his brief, although — perhaps even because — he was not his true guru. At lunch, he was never comfortable at the large glass table, with its grid of mats and cutlery carefully laid out, sitting with Mrs Sengupta and Nirmalya, confronted, in a strange kind of isolation, with the variety of china. Rotis were made for him, because he was not a natural rice-eater, and he tore these delicately, shaking his head slightly, as if he were in a private conversation with the bits of the roti that he dipped in the daal, and as if he could, by keeping his eyes fixed on the plate, wish away the context of the dining room. The thick glass dining table on elaborate legs was the only place where Pyarelal was uneasy; then it was back to discussion, perhaps a temporary parting of ways, then practice again.
The boy was fond of Pyarelal, and, spontaneously and without calculation, took advantage of his love during this residency. ‘Pyarelal, could you tape the tabla thekas for me?’ or ‘Could you tell me how Asavari goes?’; and the man would comply. Learning with Pyarelal was a form of playfulness, even competitiveness, in which the older man was always surrendering to the younger one. ‘Well, that taan is too difficult for me; you do it,’ Pyarelal would say, looking glum and pleased. He wasn’t lying; he was exaggerating. His love for the boy made him, during these hours of practice, ingenuously overplay his limitations.
By the end of the fourth day, the boy had actually grown a bit weary of this camaraderie; once or twice, he caught himself wanting to be alone, and tried to keep this fact from himself. But Pyarelal, attuned finely to the unsaid, sensed it, and it hurt him and made him behave badly at dinner with the servants who were intent on serving him daal or chicken, shooing them away peremptorily, or barely acknowledging them in a curt, bureaucratic way, as if they had no business being there — and so further aggravating Nirmalya’s belated but untimely sense of being intruded upon.
The next morning, as if to consolidate the illusion that he was going to be with them for many more days, Pyarelal finished his pujas, and, as he’d been doing for the last three days to everyone’s slight embarrassment, paraded the flat with three lit incense sticks (from a bundle Mrs Sengupta had given him), pausing before various icons and deities scattered everywhere in the form of decorations, as well as pictures and portraits of the Senguptas’ long-departed parents, closing his eyes, bowing and muttering some sort of a spell, waving the incense sticks, then hurriedly, self-importantly, resuming his tour before suddenly stopping in exactly the same way before the next picture or likeness. This extraordinary demonstration had led, partly, to Nirmalya’s frayed nerves; but, on this last morning, he didn’t know what to feel — whether to be touched, or thankful that it wouldn’t be happening tomorrow.
Before ‘guru purnima’ that year, Tara, Pyarelal’s wife, dropped a hint:
‘Baba, won’t you give your guru something?’
Everywhere that evening, under the light of an immense full moon, disciples and students of a variety of accomplishments would go throughout the city towards their dance or music teachers with yards of raw silk in packets, awaiting to be tailored into kurtas, or with flat red boxes crammed neatly with sweets, the thread with the shop’s name faintly printed on it knotted professionally and efficiently round the box; then, with a mixture of apprehension and self-effacement, touch the teacher’s feet and leave the packet wordlessly next to him. Nirmalya stared open-mouthed at his extortionist — uncertain of whom she was talking about. She was smiling, so it could all be put down to teasing. The temerity — she obviously meant Pyarelal.
‘How dare she!’ said Mrs Sengupta. ‘You have one teacher — and that is Shyamji. How dare she suggest anything else?’
The boy ruminated on this. And, of course, he wouldn’t give Shyamji anything — it would be too formal. He abhorred not so much the act of giving as the exhibition of devotion; he hated excess and the display of something as private, as closely guarded and unquestionable, as his reverence for his teacher. And, happily for him, Shyamji wasn’t that kind of guru; the almanac and the waning and waxing of the moon didn’t in any way interfere with their relationship.
‘Well, he has helped me a lot,’ said Nirmalya, divided and in thought. He meant Pyarelal.
‘Oh, it’s just that Tara wants something — she looks at you and she sees an opportunity,’ said his mother, exasperated.
Her expression now indicated that she’d lighted upon a simple solution. She rose and went to the cupboard and, parting its slatted doors, put her head into its faintly twinkling darkness for a few silent but busy minutes and eventually took out a sari with a deep pink colour. ‘It’s that synthetic sari I got as a gift that I don’t know what to do with.’ She looked sublimely pleased. He gazed at it with horror, but trusted her, and her knowledge of other people, implicitly; he knew she wouldn’t take a false step and embarrass him or herself. ‘I’ll give it to Tara. It’s the kind of thing she likes.’
* * *
THERE WERE RUMBLINGS in the background Nirmalya was hardly aware of, mild but far-reaching tectonic shifts in the topography of the company, from whose tremors the boy was on the whole insulated.
‘That Thakore,’ muttered Mr Sengupta, when he’d come back home at six o’clock, as if he’d just had an absolutely stupid argument. This was followed by a reminiscent look of dismayed wonder; he was slightly red-faced, and embarrassed. To all appearances, he’d been made to look foolish in a game of some sort. He was speaking of the non-executive chairman he’d inducted to the board a few years ago, in the euphoria of the first weeks after being appointed chief executive; every gesture, at the time, had seemed not only an exercise of judgement, but of generosity; a new set of peers had come into existence, with whom he was quickly on casual first-name terms, and each one was a friend. ‘They’re not renewing my extension,’ he said to his wife. She was seated in front of the dressing table; she stared at his reflection behind hers in the mirror, as if he were wandering about in an imaginary room. ‘What does that mean?’ she asked, her lips suddenly thin. Coat-less, he shook his head and laughed. ‘They’ve created a new post for me — Special Advisor. It means nothing really; I have no executive powers.’ Then, as was his habit, he decided to round off the news with a positive interpretation — his longevity was dented but not damaged; this was a hiccup; he’d change direction and recover. ‘I continue to draw the same salary, and I keep this flat for a year.’ Mrs Sengupta was silent; then, with a somewhat aggrieved deliberateness, she began to powder the face through which contradictory thoughts were flitting. ‘I should never have trusted Thakore,’ he remonstrated with himself, speaking again of the pompous chairman who was not content to be a rubber-stamp. ‘It seems he conspired with that fool Dick,’ he was referring to the British shareholder who materialised unfailingly for the Annual General Meeting like some lost, amnesiac member of a scatterbrained royalty, put his arms round the shoulders of the directorial fraternity, sang songs, then vanished again, ‘and Raman.’ Raman, soft-spoken, cold, who spoke perfect English, and regularly went with his wife to classical concerts, and looked like he would have been a curator if he hadn’t been a corporate executive. ‘They all have their interests in marginalising me. Raman is the new Managing Director from next Monday,’ he added without interest or emotion, as if the changes, astonishing in their unexpectedness and finality, had failed, for some reason, to impress or move him. ‘So you’re still the Managing Director?’ she asked without irony, like a child who needed to be instructed in these things. He didn’t answer her.