My husband smiled. 'The mechanics will claim their wages before they deliver their supplies,' he said.
Sandip swelled his chest as he retorted: 'Don't you trouble about that. Their wages shall be paid.'
'I shall bespeak the festive music when the payment has been made, not before,' my husband answered.
'You needn't imagine that we are depending on your bounty for the music,' said Sandip scornfully. 'Our festival is above all money payments.'
And in his thick voice he began to sing:
'My lover of the unpriced love, spurning payments,
Plays upon the simple pipe, bought for nothing,
Drawing my heart away.'
Then with a smile he turned to me and said: 'If I sing, Queen Bee, it is only to prove that when music comes into one's life, the lack of a good voice is no matter. When we sing merely on the strength of our tunefulness, the song is belittled. Now that a full flood of music has swept over our country, let Nikhil practise his scales, while we rouse the land with our cracked voices:
'My house cries to me: Why go out to lose your all?
My life says: All that you have, fling to the winds!
If we must lose our all, let us lose it: what is it worth after all?
If I must court ruin, let me do it smilingly:
For my quest is the death-draught of immortality.
'The truth is, Nikhil, that we have all lost our hearts. None can hold us any longer within the
