Page 118 of The Rules of Playing with Fire

“At a bank.”

“I thought he was a social worker?”

“That was his philanthropic side. He worked as a clerk in a bank. Good permanent job, sure, steady income, good pension plan, you know. Evenings, he spent caring for people who were less fortunate.”

Intrigued by her narrative, I’d stopped looking at the notebooks.

“It began quite by accident. On his way home one evening, he stopped to buy a jasmine gajra for my mother.”

I nodded. Gajra was a string of flowers that women put in their hair as an adornment.

“This kid was struggling with a mathematics problem, so father helped him and asked the child to come find him if he struggled again. The kid used to knock on our door often. It was a different, safer time, when people were more trusting. No iron grills on the doors. Anyway, Father began tutoring him, sort of. He lived in the slums close by. Then one evening, he came to our home to tell him that a kid begging on the street had collapsed. Father rushed over to see what the matter was. One thing led to another, and he was out every evening, helping someone or other. People with no homes, poor children, you know? That’s how he knew all the doctors too. He kind of recruited them to help him. Mother would be annoyed, because he was often gone until late hours of the night. But she changed her mind when that young kid he tutored cleared his tenth standard with flying colors, went to college, and got a secure job.” Malati laughed.

“Aah, we couldn’t change his mind. He used to say, ‘God has gifted me with a safe life, where I don’t have to worry about my next paycheck, so that I could donate my time to worthy causes.’ Anyway, did you find anything useful?”

“Oh, I haven’t looked,” I said when her question broke my spell. “This has a lot of initials, but nothing specific. I think he was trying to protect identities but keeping notes for himself to follow up. See here?” I pointed to a section. “It seems like this kid had a cough and fever, and he was treated by this doctor, with these initials, and these subsequent checks are when your father made follow-up visits. As far as I can tell…”

“That sounds right. He always used to say things like, ‘Today, I need to check up on this person or that person,’ and I often wondered how he remembered.”

I hesitated for a moment but decided to tread the waters. “I hope this doesn’t offend your sensibilities, but did your father know any sex workers?”

“Yes, sure,” she said with no hesitation. “He was on the board of a sex-workers’ organization until he was mobile. Why do you ask?”

“Mihir’s birth mother was one and gave him up,” I took the liberty of telling her. If he had come in search for his mother, Malati was the best lead, and Mihir would’ve had to share the truth with her anyway.

“Oh!” she said and frowned in thought.

“He just learned about this, and he’s hoping to find her.”

“Let’s see if my father kept notes of that kind,” she said and pulled a notebook into her lap.

We went through the whole stack of notebooks twice but couldn’t find anything helpful.

“Here, you look again. I’ll be right back,” she said and vanished inside the house. She returned with a bundle of papers tied up in twine and placed them carefully on the coffee table.

“What’s this?”

“Old letters,” she said, undoing the knots.

I picked up an envelope, and my eyes went wide as I read the sender’s name. Arvind Seth.

“That’s why I know the name,” she said. “I sorted Father’s things when I put them away. I wanted to throw them out, but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the last remnants of his memory.”

I put a hand on hers as she smiled and wiped away a lone tear.

“Take your time,” she said. “I’ll finish cooking lunch. My kids will be back from school in some time.”

Against the light sound of cooking pots, ladles, and water in the background, I went through the letters. I didn’t want to pry, so I resisted reading the details, but they were pretty standard letters with updates of their life in the U.S. with the progress Mihir was making. His pictures accompanied a few letters, but they were still in the envelopes, so either the birth mother didn’t want them, or Kamte never offered them to her.

If she had refused to accept the pictures, chances were that she’d not be keen on meeting him in person after all these years. Maybe Mihir was right in assuming that he might be a source of pain for her.

Despite this turmoil, a part of my brain remained distracted. The last time we had talked about his baby pictures, he’d mentioned kids and my heart had warmed. Holding Payal’s baby after she was born had made me crave motherhood. Now, I wasn’t sure. Although, the image of the chubby child in my hand was eerily similar to how I had imagined our baby during one random wild flight of my imagination. I pushed the thought away and focused on the letters.

When Malati peeped back in, I said, “None of these give any clue about the mother except that her name was Sharda, which we already know.”

“Wait, her name was Sharda?” she said with a wooden rolling pin in her hand.

I flew out of my seat. “Yes, why? Do you know her?”

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