The Immortals

Amit Chaudhuri

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9780571361601
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

**Includes a new foreword by Pankaj Mishra**

Bombay in the 1980s: Shyam Lal is a highly regarded voice teacher, trained in the classical idiom but happily teaching more popular songs to well-to-do women, whose modern way of life he covets. Sixteen-year-old Nirmalya Sengupta is the rebellious scion of an affluent family who wants only to study Indian classical music. With a little push from her mother, Shyam agrees to accept Nirmalya as his student, entering into a relationship that will have unexpected and lasting consequences.

With quiet humor and unsentimental poignancy, The Immortals is a luminous portrait of the spiritual and emotional force of a revered Indian tradition, of two fundamentally different but intricately intertwined families, and of a society choosing between the old and the new.

Table of contents

• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Introduction
• Contents
• The notes of Bhimpalasi emerged
• On the way to the city
• The company office was on Tulsi Pipe Road
• When the first promotion had come
• That day, as Motilalji and Shyamji came out
• Two years after Apurva Sengupta’s company
• He was lordly with her
• The boy came out into the sitting room
• When Sumit Sen visited Bombay
• Prashanta and Nayana Neogi still lived
• The company Mr Sengupta worked in grew
• The next day, after the party
• Nirmalya, unobtrusively but firmly rejecting
• Nirmalya had a maroon kurta
• Apurva Sengupta decided
• She knew she could have been famous
• But the heart murmur
• The family planning programme
• ‘You’re teaching Mallika these days.’
• Hanuman Prasad Rao came from a landowning family
• It was Shyamji’s good fortune
• ‘What do you talk to him about, baba?’
• He went to the balcony
• Despite the urge to go to the Himalayas
• Two months ago, Nirmalya and Mallika
• Shyamji’s stock had gone up
• ‘Well, there was that man’
• Shyamji fell ill
• ‘Saab, we are in need of some money.’
• Gradually, Shyamji got better
• Mrs Lakhani’ s home was a two-storeyed house
• But Shyamji didn’t leave the country
• During Shyamji’s absences in England
• There were rumblings in the background
• There was no great change
• The Bombay Chamber of Commerce
• Finally they left that side of the city
• A few of the things that had furnished
• Nirmalya – though he still hadn’t completed college
• He went walking around Pali Hill
• He had to have a photograph taken
• The city had begun to glitter
• Shyamji wasn’t well
• Shyamji scratched his cheek
• Nevertheless, he continued teaching
• ‘What can you do with a man who won’t be treated?’
• The suitcase had been packed
• Two days after he’d left, Shyamji came
• Jumna – this woman who’d come to their house
• He kept going to the window
• Exploring the epicentre of London
• ‘There’s an invitation, ji’
• Along with an invitation to join a discussion
• Now, after Shyamji’s death
• After Shyamji’s death, Pyarelal received
• Pyarelal was returning to his small flat
• Later, at the close of the year
• ‘Karkhanis has failed,’
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Further praise for The Immortals:
• By the Same Author
• Copyright