Mr Wilson, from the lower echelons of the company’s personnel department, arrived at the flat late one morning. Having been let in, he stood there sheepishly. Then, almost casually, with the enquiring look of a man in a museum, he strolled into the main hall.
News was relayed down the long corridor to the main bedroom, by Arthur, then Jumna, then another, that Wilson was here. Finally, Mrs Sengupta, fresh from a bath, equanimous for the moment in a tangail, came out from the corridor into the sunlight of the drawing room.
She knew Wilson; as far as she was concerned, he was an odd-job man. When something needed to be done — when she needed to find out if the flight her husband was on was delayed; or to book a private taxi because the driver hadn’t turned up — he was the one she got in touch with. He was a big, burly man who spoke English in his brief polite responses with a South Indian accent, rolling his r’s and everything else softly; and he got the job done.
‘Madam,’ he said, apologetic, but also as if he were sharing an unpleasant secret, ‘I must have an inventory done before you move. Which things are belonging to the company, which things are not. .’
‘Wilson,’ she said quickly, ‘are you mad? What are you talking about?’
In all these years, his sanity had never been questioned. He was wounded, but he was also ashamed.
‘I’m sorry, madam. What can I do?’ he said, sullen and obdurate, falling back on the phrase that was a favourite whenever he was in a sticky situation with his superiors. ‘I have orders from office.’
Tentatively, Wilson began to walk around the drawing room, where he’d never been before, either as visitor or guest, with a notepad and pen in his hand. ‘It’s a disgrace,’ said Mallika Sengupta in a clear voice, as the figure moved further away. ‘I will complain.’
‘These will stay,’ he thought, looking at a rosewood cabinet and the large L-shaped sofa with a qualified but proprietorial eagle eye, as if he’d formed some sort of kinship with them. He barely glanced at the Grecian urnlike table lamps. At a huge stretch of carpet, deep and ruddy, he paused, undecided, and glanced at the paper in his hand. He was in a peculiarly emotional mood, at once self-effacing and blithely, insularly unstoppable. The only time he smiled slightly was at three photographs on a rosewood shelf, a close-up of Mrs Sengupta’s face from ten years ago, her charming uneven teeth showing in her blissful smile, and another of Nirmalya when he was eleven and pudgy, proudly wearing a zip-up T-shirt a relative had sent him from Europe, squinting unthreateningly (those were his last days without spectacles) at the sunlight, with parents on either side, against a wilderness that was actually Elephanta island; then another one in which Mr and Mrs Sengupta and nine-year-old Nirmalya, dressed for the Delhi winter, were posing beside a severe woman with a patient but unprevaricating gaze, who turned out to be Indira Gandhi. A spring came to Wilson’s step, a barely noticeable feeling of abandon; till, gradually, once more, he became serious and attentive. Around him, as if he were no more than a fleck of dust, Jumna reached casually with her jhadu for one of the many tables, and then wove herself towards the sofa to plump up a cushion.
When he left, he had the pained, wise air of someone who’d been far happier booking private taxis for Mallika Sengupta, and checking times of flight arrivals and departures. ‘Thank you, madam,’ he said, as if he were referring not to the grace of the last half-hour, but redeeming the small role he’d played in her life.
‘How is your son?’ said a woman whom Mrs Sengupta knew well from these occasions, a Sindhi businessman’s wife. Mallika Sengupta, startled, didn’t know where to begin. They had plates of dessert on their laps, the sort of juxtaposition that was becoming increasingly popular in the business and corporate community, honeydew melon ice cream and semi-transparent, plastic-yellow jalebis. ‘He is reading all the time, very difficult books,’ she said, laughing. She was always defensive about him. ‘What will he study?’ the woman asked, persistent. ‘MBA?’ Mrs Sengupta was pleased, cruelly, because she knew her answer would disturb her companion’s ingestion. ‘He says he wants to study philosophy,’ she smiled. The woman paused, tried to capture, with her spoon, a slippery fragment of ice cream, and said with averted eyes, ‘Very nice.’ Then added, as if speaking of a rare condition she was not going to condemn or probe too deeply: ‘So he is not into money.’
To regroup, she asked: ‘You are leaving this side of the city, Mallika? Where do you plan to go when your husband leaves the company?’ ‘Bombay is such a huge place, and so expensive,’ said Mrs Sengupta, glancing at her reflection to check if her hair was all right; the wall had large glass panels that doubled everything — the fluted frames of the chairs, the doorways opposite opening on to corridors, the hair held ornately in buns or falling darkly upon shoulders, the glow of the chandelier — with various degrees of approval. ‘My son’, she said with secret pride, ‘says he wants to go somewhere quiet and green.’