But the Shahjahan is also an abode of transients, the location of carefully, discreetly planned liaisons as well as careful monitoring of guests from “certain countries”. It is not one world but two, where, as the lift moves up from the cold, air-conditioned guest floors to the warmer air of the employees’ terrace, even the liftman relaxes and bends to scratch himself. Shankar’s mentor Sata Bose reserves his formal politeness for guests, and warm friendliness for fellow employees. The main thing that matters to Gurberia the waiter is not who built the Taj Mahal but whether the tips are shared equally among the waiters at the Taj, or retained individually. And the finicky ways of the glittering set are mystifying to the hotel staff, for whom even RSVP, as far as they knew in school, meant only “rashogolla-sandesh-very-pleasing”.

One of the most moving scenes in the novel is a farewell party given by the hotel employees for one of their colleagues, a man who fought for their free tea and stood by them through every crisis. The simple affair is held in “Little Shahjahan”, under a tin roof and a naked sixty-watt bulb, with neither napkin flowers nor cutlery. But in front of their guest of honour is a china plate, proper cutlery and a napkin neatly folded into a flower. Their guest, who until now has been an employee like them, chides them gently: wouldn’t the management be upset that they had borrowed the hotel’s crockery without permission? But no, the employees tell him, they haven’t brought it from the hotel; they have each paid four annas and bought a new plate, cutlery napkin from New Market. Watching the lives of the employees as they scurry about to keep their wealthy guests in comfort and their own jobs secure, our narrator observes their situation: “All of us seemed to be sitting like beggars by the roadside, trying to grasp the extraordinary through ordinary means.” Chowringhee is the moving story of this struggle.