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Authors: Amit Chaudhuri
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known in Calcutta.’
Mr Das nodded. ‘He is very well known,’ he agreed. And, leaving aside some of the day’s other work to do with letters and appointments and taxes, he began to make phone call after phone call.
The invitation cards went out. They were sent to the middle-class Bengalis – among them junior employees in Mr Sengupta’s company, who’d been watching his rise from a distance – who lived in Dadar, Khar, Prabhadevi, Mulund. Some of them would have come because Sumit Sen’s rendition of Tagore songs in the style of Hemanta was all the rage now in Calcutta; and ‘expatriate’ Bengalis liked to feel they were in touch with their homeland. For this reason they would flock to the Kala Kendra auditorium, and even tolerate Mrs Sengupta’s singing: because, privately, they concluded that the only reason she was singing on that day was because she was Apurva Sengupta’s wife. They resented having to make this journey through the traffic lights partly for Mallika Sengupta.
Mallika Sengupta didn’t care; she was somewhat contemptuous of the Bengalis who lived in Mulund and Khar. She knew what their ‘clubs’ and cultural programmes, their small-town ideas of recreation, were like. She was not one of them.
Sumit Sen had asked her to sing: so she would. Although she felt a distaste for his unfailingly populist choice of certain Tagore songs, and his sentimental version of Hemanta’s already sentimental style, and although he was quite unimpressive-looking, he was, astonishingly, a good man: that rarity. He had, somehow, spontaneously, after listening to her sing, realised what she was, in spite of being the wife of a Head of Finance: an artist. In this itself he was unusual.
Mrs Sengupta wore a green jamdani sari; she used to wear it sparingly, and saved it for such occasions. Nirmalya clenched a Panasonic tape recorder by the handle, and entered the hall, feeling rather indispensable and conspicuous, for he’d been entrusted with the mission of getting the performance on tape; not because he wanted to, but because he was so unthinkingly familiar with the ‘rewind’ and ‘record’ and ‘play’ buttons. He focussed fussily on the buttons.
Sumit Sen was in yet another white panjabi and dhuti, with his trademark air of simplicity. One could say that the show was a success: the suburban hall was almost three-quarters full.
For two days afterwards, the tape was played again and again. Out in the sitting room, near the balcony facing the Marine Drive and the indifferent glint of the sea, or inside the bedroom, the Panasonic lay propped against the sofa. Nirmalya’s parents listened intently. The muffled world of the auditorium returned, the applause in semi-lit aisles, the rather pedestrian, optimistic energy of Sumit Sen’s singing, Mrs Sengupta’s voice, as she sang Atul Prasad, hovering in the ether, all this absorbed and made cloudy by the small microphone.
‘Abhay Deshpande was there.’ Mr Das, taciturn personal assistant, conveyed this bit of information to Apurva Sengupta with characteristic restraint. ‘Abhay Deshpande?’ said Mr Sengupta, looking up. Deshpande was a leading music critic; he wrote for the Times of India and the Evening News . A small, short-sighted man, shaped like a bitter gourd. No one, except those who knew him, recognised him at music concerts.
‘But unfortunately,’ and Mr Das appeared crestfallen, ‘I don’t think he stayed on for the second half. I think he missed Mallikadi’s singing.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Mr Sengupta. Mr Das looked nervous. He nodded.
‘I saw him out, Mr Sengupta,’ he said. ‘He was in a hurry.’
For some reason, on the next two days, Mr Sengupta bought a copy of the Evening News from a small boy at a traffic junction on Marine Drive. He pored over it carefully as the car stopped at intersections; then set it aside. There was nothing; why had he expected otherwise? The flash of excitement at the Kala Kendra auditorium
Mr Das nodded. ‘He is very well known,’ he agreed. And, leaving aside some of the day’s other work to do with letters and appointments and taxes, he began to make phone call after phone call.
The invitation cards went out. They were sent to the middle-class Bengalis – among them junior employees in Mr Sengupta’s company, who’d been watching his rise from a distance – who lived in Dadar, Khar, Prabhadevi, Mulund. Some of them would have come because Sumit Sen’s rendition of Tagore songs in the style of Hemanta was all the rage now in Calcutta; and ‘expatriate’ Bengalis liked to feel they were in touch with their homeland. For this reason they would flock to the Kala Kendra auditorium, and even tolerate Mrs Sengupta’s singing: because, privately, they concluded that the only reason she was singing on that day was because she was Apurva Sengupta’s wife. They resented having to make this journey through the traffic lights partly for Mallika Sengupta.
Mallika Sengupta didn’t care; she was somewhat contemptuous of the Bengalis who lived in Mulund and Khar. She knew what their ‘clubs’ and cultural programmes, their small-town ideas of recreation, were like. She was not one of them.
Sumit Sen had asked her to sing: so she would. Although she felt a distaste for his unfailingly populist choice of certain Tagore songs, and his sentimental version of Hemanta’s already sentimental style, and although he was quite unimpressive-looking, he was, astonishingly, a good man: that rarity. He had, somehow, spontaneously, after listening to her sing, realised what she was, in spite of being the wife of a Head of Finance: an artist. In this itself he was unusual.
Mrs Sengupta wore a green jamdani sari; she used to wear it sparingly, and saved it for such occasions. Nirmalya clenched a Panasonic tape recorder by the handle, and entered the hall, feeling rather indispensable and conspicuous, for he’d been entrusted with the mission of getting the performance on tape; not because he wanted to, but because he was so unthinkingly familiar with the ‘rewind’ and ‘record’ and ‘play’ buttons. He focussed fussily on the buttons.
Sumit Sen was in yet another white panjabi and dhuti, with his trademark air of simplicity. One could say that the show was a success: the suburban hall was almost three-quarters full.
For two days afterwards, the tape was played again and again. Out in the sitting room, near the balcony facing the Marine Drive and the indifferent glint of the sea, or inside the bedroom, the Panasonic lay propped against the sofa. Nirmalya’s parents listened intently. The muffled world of the auditorium returned, the applause in semi-lit aisles, the rather pedestrian, optimistic energy of Sumit Sen’s singing, Mrs Sengupta’s voice, as she sang Atul Prasad, hovering in the ether, all this absorbed and made cloudy by the small microphone.
‘Abhay Deshpande was there.’ Mr Das, taciturn personal assistant, conveyed this bit of information to Apurva Sengupta with characteristic restraint. ‘Abhay Deshpande?’ said Mr Sengupta, looking up. Deshpande was a leading music critic; he wrote for the Times of India and the Evening News . A small, short-sighted man, shaped like a bitter gourd. No one, except those who knew him, recognised him at music concerts.
‘But unfortunately,’ and Mr Das appeared crestfallen, ‘I don’t think he stayed on for the second half. I think he missed Mallikadi’s singing.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Mr Sengupta. Mr Das looked nervous. He nodded.
‘I saw him out, Mr Sengupta,’ he said. ‘He was in a hurry.’
For some reason, on the next two days, Mr Sengupta bought a copy of the Evening News from a small boy at a traffic junction on Marine Drive. He pored over it carefully as the car stopped at intersections; then set it aside. There was nothing; why had he expected otherwise? The flash of excitement at the Kala Kendra auditorium
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