The Immortals Read Online Free PDF Page A

bearer, ‘what are you doing, see, the saab’s plate is empty.’
    Laxmi Ratan Shukla raised the palm of one hand. ‘Bas,’ he said.
    Two years later, as they were going down the curve of Haji Ali – a grey day, with very few cars on the road, when it seemed it was going to rain – Mrs Sengupta said a little resignedly, ‘Do you know, I don’t think he’s ever going to let me cut a record.’ She didn’t expect a reply from her husband; his policy, she knew, was long term: Wait and see. She was the opposite; she was impatient; there was no point in waiting and watching.
    Dark clouds hung over the twin towers of Samudra Mahal. She stirred restlessly in her seat, and he gave no answer. Then, as the car left the panorama of the steel-grey sea behind, he said, ‘Well, let us see. You’ve had the new teacher, Jairam, a little over a year now. I’ll speak to Shukla again.’
    She’d got rid of Motilalji, partly because of his drink-induced irateness, and this new man, balding, enthusiastic, had taken his place. Jairam came on Laxmi Ratan Shukla’s recommendation. He was a family man; he had four children. The third was a daughter, an eight-year-old called Kamala, whom he brought home with him one day. She was dark and quiet. ‘Brij Mohan’, said Jairam, referring to a well-known aficionado and concert organiser, ‘says she sings like Lata. In ten years . . .’ The girl was quiet, but sang without much prompting. ‘Gao beti,’ said Jairam – they say that men with a paunch have a cheerful disposition, and this was certainly true of Jairam. ‘Sing a bhajan for behanji.’ She launched, in her thin voice, into a Surdas bhajan.
    O Govind, O Gopal,
    Keep a refuge for me, I
    ’ve pledged you my life.
     
    The little girl stared into the distance as she sang. The parrot-like quality was almost touching. But the Lata-like timbre of the child’s voice grated on Mrs Sengupta’s ears; it inflamed her, this schooling in replicating this voice, and it also made her despair for Kamala. She imagined that this was what Lata herself might have looked like when she was a child, and had been taken by Dinanath Mangeshkar (or so the myth went) to audition for a film-maker; and he had been mesmerised. Lata, too, would have been like this child in her orange frock, expectant and unknown, the progeny of a struggling musical family. But Kamala was not Lata; neither in identity, nor in talent. She was just another girl being asked to live up to her father’s dreams.
    Jairam was himself a competent teacher, but Mrs Sengupta wasn’t impressed by him. He seemed to lack purpose – except, perhaps, where his daughter was concerned. On that particular day, he’d talked continually about his sons and his daughter, sipped tea and gratefully accepted the snacks offered to him, and gossiped about other singers and music teachers; the morning, Mrs Sengupta had thought privately, had become a family affair. Mrs Sengupta didn’t like too much conviviality during her music lesson.
    It began to rain now, on the office buildings between Worli and Prabhadevi. Under the dark clouds, the sky was changing colour; as on the wing of a bird, one colour fades or deepens into another. He is used to giving orders, thought Mrs Sengupta of the man beside her, but how incredibly cautious and accommodating he seems before Laxmi Ratan Shukla! The large drops clattered onto the windshield of the Ambassador and melted against the glass. With a tick-tick sound the wipers came to life, and through their swathes the road between Worli and Prabhadevi became visible.

 
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    W HEN THE FIRST promotion had come after Mr Deb’s death, to Company Secretaryship, almost the first people to know in Bombay were the Neogis. The Senguptas still had few friends in the city. This friendship was a result of an encounter in the fifties, in a foreign land, in England, where Prashanta Neogi had travelled to study art; Apurva Sengupta to peruse Company Law. The story was