Urmila noticed, to her dismay, that Sonali was smiling at Murugan again, almost as if she were egging him on. Her heart sank. Sonali was always doing things like this – stopping to talk to strangers, getting into conversations in the lift and missing her floor and so on. As a rule Urmila didn't mind: if anything she thought it endearing that someone as celebrated as Sonali Das should take such evident pleasure in talking to people she didn't know. But today Urmila was in a hurry: she had an assignment to finish and she needed to talk to Sonali.

Earlier in the day she'd dropped in on Sonali, at her fifth-floor office, to suggest that they go over to the ceremony together, hoping to talk to her on the way. But inevitably, they ended up in one of those taxis whose drivers seemed incapable of finding their way from one end of Chowringhee to the other. She and Sonali had spent the entire twenty minutes of the drive from the magazine's Dharmatola office to Rabindra Sadan hanging over the front seat and issuing minute by minute instructions: 'Turn right here… look out… bus ahead… dog there… ditch in front.'

And now, just when she had finally got her alone, here was this odd-looking man in the cap and the goatee.

Urmila considered making a more forceful interruption and then decided against it. She was still a little unsure of herself with Sonali: in fact it hadn't been at all easy to go up to her office today, without an invitation.

Urmila had been working at Calcutta since college, three years ago. She prided herself on dealing with hard news, on being the only woman on the reporting desk. She no longer thought anything of storming into the Home Secretary's office in Writer's Building, or of asking pointed questions at the Chief Minister's press conferences. But when it came to Sonali Das she found herself becoming unaccustomedly shy and tongue-tied. Sonali was such a presence in the city; the kind of person you read about in film magazines and newspaper gossip columns; whose name you grew used to hearing on the lips of your aunts and cousins, pronounced with equal measures of censoriousness and admiration, envy and outrage. She was one of those people whom everyone talked about without quite knowing why.

In part, her fame was due to her late mother, a famous stage actress from the forties and fifties. But Sonali had acted in a couple of Bombay films herself while still in her teens. The first one created a sensation, because it wasn't the usual song-and-dance affair. But then, just when she looked set for a big career, she left Bombay and came back to Calcutta. A few years later, she published a wonderful little memoir, funny, but also wistful, even sad. It was mainly about her mother, but also partly about her own childhood – about her mother's friends in the literary world, about the old studios in Tollygunge and Bombay, about accompanying her mother when she acted with jatra companies that travelled the countryside staging vast historical melodramas. A radical young director turned the book into a play; the play, in turn, was filmed, to much acclaim from critics and film societies. From then on, Sonali Das was permanently famous, even though she never did anything else – or at least not until she agreed to join Calcutta , at the owner's special request, to look after the women's supplement.

Urmila was intrigued to hear of Sonali's appointment at the magazine, but she hadn't for a moment imagined that they would become friends. And then one day she found herself standing beside Sonali in the lift. She recognized her instantly, even though she'd only set eyes on her once before, years ago. She was much changed, but Urmila decided at once that the changes were all for the better: that white streak in her hair, for instance – she was right to let it show. It suited her, marked her out.

After the first quick glance, Urmila kept her eyes carefully on the lift door, determined not to stare. But before she knew it Sonali was talking to her. Within minutes they were sitting in the magazine's grimy little canteen, drinking tea and chatting.

Urmila had broken her watch strap that morning, while struggling to keep her footing on a crowded minibus. She felt foolish mentioning it: what possible interest could someone like Sonali Das have in a broken watch strap? But far from being bored, Sonali proved to be very useful: she told her about a stall near Metro Cinema where you could get your watch strap fixed for a couple of rupees. Urmila was astonished that she should know about something like that.

And now, in the same indiscriminately helpful way, Sonali was telling the stranger with the goatee that the Vice-President had come all the way from Delhi to give Phulboni his award.

Urmila could tell that the only way they were ever going to get rid of the man was by going into the auditorium. 'Come on, Sonali-di,' she said, jogging her arm. 'Let's go, or we'll miss everything.'

Sonali took a last, long drag on the cigarette and stuck the glowing tip into a sand-filled ashtray. 'I'm afraid we have to go now,' she said flashing Murugan a smile. 'My friend here has work to do.'

Urmila led the way to a door and pushed it open. The auditorium was packed: waves of heads rippled away towards the brilliantly floodlit stage, where a tall, whitehaired man was standing at a lectern, wearing a plain white shirt and an old fashioned, high-waisted pair of trousers of a faded military green. The spotlights above had cast long shadows over his craggy face, but there was no mistaking the dark, glittering eyes beneath the jutting brow. Urmila froze: she had heard so much about him, read so much he had written, but she had never set eyes on him before, not in the flesh.

She took a hesitant step along the darkened aisle. Absently she noted that the Vice-President was swaying sleepily on stage, behind Phulboni.

The writer was gripping the edge of the lectern, leaning forward, speaking in a low, rasping voice. 'The silence of the city,' he said, 'has sustained me through all my years of writing: kept me alive in the hope that it would claim me too before my ink ran dry. For more years than I can count I have wandered the darkness of these streets, searching for the unseen presence that reigns over this silence, striving to be taken in, begging to be taken across before my time runs out. The time of the crossing is at hand, I know, and that is why I am here now, standing in front of you: to beg – to appeal to the mistress of this silence, that most secret of deities, to give me what she has so long denied: to show herself to me… '

Urrnila cast a glance over her shoulder, down the aisle. She noticed that Murugan had followed close behind and was standing at her side, trying to push his way into the auditorium. An usher walked up, torch in hand. He glanced at Sonali's press tag and then at Urmila's and waved them through. Walking down the darkened aisle Urmila looked back again. She was relieved to see that the usher was leading Murugan firmly out of the auditorium.

On the stage there was a minor commotion: the VicePresident's drowsily nodding head had knocked against the back of his chair.