"That," he said to Nirmala, in the aftermath of the applause, "was not terrible."
"High praise from a civil engineer," she said.
"In engineering, 'not terrible' is the beginning of excellent."
She looked at him for a moment. Then she said, simply: "Yes. It was."
And they went to find their chairs in the audience, and the antakshri group started, and the evening went on in all its ordinary, extraordinary way.
