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he whispered.
    " 'Your son? Have you lost your son in these hills?'
"He handed me a record, saying 'The boy always wanted to sing at the tomb of Amir Rumi.'
" 'How can I help you unless you tell me what has happened?'
" 'No one can help me. I am a murderer. But I must give the boy's music to Amir Rumi. Can you do this for me?'
"I took the record, assuring him I would see it was treasured as a valued offering to the saint's memory.
"He looked relieved and I could see the gentleness in his eyes. Thinking to ease the man's mind a little, I encouraged him to tell me about the crime of which he accused himself.
"Perhaps it was the lateness of the hour, or the ecstasy of the singers pouring through the open window, which gave him the strength to speak. But once he began it was as if he could not halt himself."

TH E TEACHER' S STOR Y
    Master Mohan was not a bitter man. Although he led an unhappy life, his gentle nature disposed him to small acts of kindness—helping a stranger to dismount from a rickshaw, reaching into his pockets to find a boiled sweet for a child—and when he walked down the narrow streets leading to the avenue where he boarded the tram that took him to his music students, he was greeted warmly by the neighbors sitting on their tiny verandas to catch the breeze.
    "Good evening, Master Mohan."
"A late class tonight?"
"Walk under the streetlights coming home,
Master Mohan. These days one must be careful." Near the tram stop, the paanwallah smearing

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    lime paste onto his paan leaves always shouted from inside his wooden stall, "Master! Master! Let me give you a paan. A little betel leaf will help you through the pain of hearing your students sing."
    Even though it meant losing his place on the queue, Master Mohan stopped to talk to the paanwallah and listen to his gossip of the comings and goings in the quarter. And so he was the first to learn the great Quawwali singers from Nizamuddin were coming to Calcutta.
    "You should ask Mohammed-sahib to go with you. You are a teacher of music, he is a lover of poetry. And they are singing so close, in that mosque on the other side of the bazaar."
    "But my wife will not go even that far to hear—"
"Wives! Don't talk to me of wives. I never take mine anywhere. Nothing destroys a man's pleasure like a wife."
Master Mohan knew the paanwallah was being kind. His wife's contempt for him was no secret on their street. The small houses were built on top of each other, and his wife never bothered to lower her voice. Everyone knew she had come from a wealthier family than his and could barely survive on the money he brought back from his music lessons.
"What sins did I commit in my last life that I should be yoked to this apology for a man? See how you are still called Master Mohan as if you were only ten years old. Gupta-sahib you should be called. But who respects you enough to make even that small effort!"
Her taunts reopened a wound that might have healed if only Master Mohan's wife had left him alone. The music teacher had acquired the name as a child singer when he had filled concert halls with admirers applauding the purity of his voice. His father, himself a music teacher, had saved every paisa from his earnings to spend on Master Mohan's training, praying his son's future would be secured with a recording contract.
But it takes a very long time for a poor music teacher to cultivate connections with the owners of recording studios. For four years Master Mohan's father had pleaded for assistance from the wealthy families at whose houses his son sang on the occasion of a wedding or a birthday. For four years he had stood outside recording studios, muffling his coughs as tuberculosis ate away at his lungs, willing himself to stay alive until his son's talent was recognized, urging the boy to practice for that first record which would surely astonish the world.
When the recording contract was finally offered, only weeks before the record was to be made, Master Mohan's voice