Money makes me uncomfortable. The less I have it, the more uncomfortable I become. Which is a universal phenomenon, but the roots of my discomfort are deep, personal and very boring, and not very clear even to me, but its manifestations are quite overpowering. For me, and others. I always remember Stephen Leacock’s story, “My Financial Career”, in which the narrator enters a bank to deposit a tiny sum of money and from sheer nervousness, conjures up a crisis that overwhelms not only him, but also the entire bank staff.

During the lockdown I had not attended to money matters at all. It was imperative that I did and I needed help. On a friend’s recommendation I got in touch with an accountant. His name was Amit Shah. I looked forward to meeting him.

When he arrived one morning, he turned out to be very unlike his famous namesake, which was not surprising. The young man who got out of the car was slim, bespectacled, wearing a neatly pressed shirt tucked into neatly pressed trousers; his hair, too, was neatly pressed on the left side of his head. He seemed to be in his thirties. In a few seconds, with a pleasant smile, he sized up all my problems — and my limitations — and assured me that everything would be taken care of. I felt great relief; the kind of relief that comes with the knowledge that someone else is there to actually solve your problems.

I offered him a cup of tea and he agreed to it. I think he may have felt some pity for me. But I wanted to ask him the question.

Sipping from the cup, I asked him: “So how does it feel to have a name like that?”

He smiled and said he knew I was about to ask him that. He said that he was as different as possible from the home minister of India. He hated politics, because he grew up in the late Eighties and Nineties watching some of the biggest episodes of political violence in the country. But he likes number-crunching, likes to deal with money and wants a certain amount of material security — and his profession allows him all of this. He will be working, however, only till he can build a certain amount of capital, so that he can retire and do what he really wants to do.

Which is music. He is a passionate singer, he said. He learnt Indian classical vocal from an early age and performs riyaz every evening, after work, at least for an hour. He trains with his guru every weekend. And, very tentatively, he added that he has started a YouTube channel where he posts recordings of his performances (mostly at home, very few in public) and told me what it was called, “Only if I had time and interest.”

And one day, he said, he would build a school for training in classical music, because he is not comfortable sometimes with the way the music is being taught these days. Which made me wonder again about discomfort. Not tragedy, not devastation, but an unease with what you have, you inherit? And what can follow from it, like violence?

The accountant did not say what he did not like about the teaching of some classical music now and looked into the middle distance so pointedly that I knew our conversation had come to an end.

“So I tried to reply to your question,” he said, smiling, as he got up to go. I told him that I would like to see him again, which was true, because I was certain my financial career had not yet ended and I would need help again. But I would like to see him again. Just.

Did all this really happen? Well, I made up the first name. I am given to fantasies. I like to think of alternatives.