and thatll just be the start of the downward spiral to retrogression and yet , in the forty-eight years that transpired between this fateful declaration by the teahouse matron and bunnus arrival in town , very little had seemed to change at all on the surface of bhaktis existence : by the age of 65 , his fate as the accordionist had crystallized with the passing of seasons until it became an indispensible fixture with which the people of this tourist town could no longer deny being associated .