The labourers left early that Friday.
The sky had turned the colour of wet slate by four-thirty, and the threat of the first pre-monsoon shower sent everyone hurrying for their motorcycles. Arjun paid their daily wages from the envelope Gupta-ji had left, locked the main gate behind the last rattling Hero Honda, and stood alone in the sudden, swallowing quiet.
He ate quickly—dal thick with ghee, two rotis, a raw onion sliced on the side—then washed the steel plate under the office tap. The restlessness that had been growing inside him for days now felt like a second heartbeat. The cleared rows looked too clean, too obedient. Row 5 still waited, untouched, its shutters sealed like sleeping eyes.
He told himself he was only doing the rounds.
Torch in one hand, bolt cutter hanging from his belt like a sword, Arjun walked the familiar lanes between the shops. Moonlight poured through the open shutters of Rows 1 to 4, turning broken glass into scattered diamonds. Row 5 began at the far end, darker, cooler, smelling of bat droppings and old rain.
He moved slowly, boots crunching.
61… 63… 68…
Most padlocks had already been snapped during the week, the rooms swept bare. The labourers joked that Row 5 was "bad luck" because a banyan root had cracked the roof of Shop 74 and a swarm of bees had chased two men out of Shop 79. They were happy to leave the rest for Monday.
Arjun's torch beam slid across the stencilled numbers until it stopped dead.
Shop No. 81.
The shutter was down all the way, no gap at the bottom, no dent from previous crowbars. The padlock was different—older, heavier, almost black with rust, the kind of British-era Yale that museums display behind glass. Someone had oiled it once, long ago, because the keyhole still gleamed faintly when the torch hit it.
He stood there longer than he meant to.
Every practical voice in his head—his father's, his mechanics professor's, Gupta-ji's—told him to mark it for Monday and go sleep. The labourers had the big cutters, the ladders, the numbers. One more day would not matter.
But the lock looked patient.
It looked like it had been waiting.
Arjun set the torch on the ground, beam pointing up so the shutter glowed blood-red in the reflection. He fitted the jaws of the bolt cutter around the thickest part of the shackle.
One hard squeeze.
The lock surrendered with a dry metallic sigh, as though it had expected him all along.
He rolled the shutter up just enough to duck underneath, then let it drop again behind him. The clang echoed inside the empty shop and died quickly, swallowed by fifty-eight years of dust.
The room was almost bare.
Cracked concrete floor. One high ventilator choked with cobwebs. A rough wooden workbench against the far wall. Two iron racks standing like tired sentries. On the racks: cloudy glass jars, tarnished brass trinkets, stacks of newspapers turned the colour of tea stains, a few cloth-bound ledgers whose pages had fused into solid bricks.
And in the corner, the almirah.
Forest-green Godrej, taller than his head, doors shut tight. No key, no scratches, no dents. Perfectly preserved, as if its owner had locked it yesterday and simply never come back.
Arjun's pulse thudded in his ears.
He had opened dozens of almirahs in the last month—some full of rusted files, some holding nothing but rat skeletons and the sweet-sick smell of death. None had ever looked like this one. None had ever felt watched.
He told himself he would just check quickly, take a photo for Gupta-ji, lock everything again.
But the bolt cutter was useless here. On the workbench lay exactly what he needed: a two-foot iron rod, thick as his thumb, and a flat-head screwdriver left behind half a century ago, waiting like patient servants.
He wedged the rod into the narrow gap between the doors and leaned his weight.
The lock was old and tired. It gave with a dull pop that sounded too loud in the sealed room.
The doors swung open on silent hinges.
Top half: two shallow shelves. Neat stacks of yellowed papers, three cloth-bound registers in surprisingly good condition—the sealed almirah had kept out damp and rats. Nothing valuable. No cash, no jewellery, no gold.
He almost laughed at himself.
Then he saw the bottom.
Normal Godrej almirahs have shelves all the way down. This one didn't. Below the second shelf the space dropped straight to the floor—a single empty cavity almost four feet high. The metal base looked thicker than it should, too solid.
Arjun knelt. He tapped it with the iron rod.
Tock… tock…
Then a hollow tonk.
His fingers found the recessed clip at the back corner, hidden behind the weld. He worked the screwdriver in, twisted, felt something shift.
The entire bottom panel lifted like a lid.
Cold, dry air breathed up into his face—air that had not moved since 1967.
A perfect square hole, two feet by two feet. A narrow steel staircase bolted to the concrete wall, disappearing into absolute black.
Arjun sat back on his heels and stared, torch forgotten on the floor, its beam cutting a white tunnel across the dusty concrete.
The almirah had been built around the entrance.
Someone had wanted this staircase hidden so badly they had welded a Godrej over it, locked the shop, walked away, and never returned.
His phone buzzed in his pocket—probably Gupta-ji's nightly call—but the sound felt miles away.
Arjun tightened the strap of the head-lamp he always carried for night rides on the Splendor. He clicked it on. The beam stabbed down the staircase, catching on rusted rungs that went deeper than the light could reach.
Twenty-five rungs, maybe thirty.
He looked once more at the empty shop above, at the thin blade of moonlight under the shutter.
Then he started down.