I am going to kill him. He made a break for the door.

‘Amaaan! Where are you going? Ama- . . .’ Upasna’s voice faded into the background as he ran down the hallway.

He couldn’t find the man. Sanaka was nowhere to be seen. Upon his return a few minutes later, Aman found his mother sitting on the floor, her hands covering her face. Her eyes were swollen with tears that had smudged the kajal she wore.

‘Who was that?!’ Aman demanded.

She sighed, removed her hands from her face and looked at him. ‘I am sorry, beta. I am so sorry.’

She knew why Sanaka’s visit had enraged Aman. After her husband’s treachery and demise had become the subject of TV news channels, her son had been unable to fathom what was going on. Their acquaintances and occasionally even strangers found new ways to put them to shame. The verbal volleys sometimes gave way to physical displays of derision—stones had been thrown at them when they were moving out of the army quarters; there would be heavy knocks on their door in the middle of the night; and anonymous callers would ring their phone number and shout expletives. There had even been one local policeman who had started turning up to pronounce that only his protection could fill the gap of a missing male figure in their lives—at a price, of course. Whether Sanaka was like them all was a riddle that remained unsolved.

The only peace Upasna ever found was in the embrace of her son, Aman. His very name meant peace. But his steadfast support, too, seemed to be straying away from her.

‘NO!’ Aman shook his head. ‘Tell me! Who was THAT?’

Upasna clenched her jaw. ‘Why are you always so self-absorbed? Have I ever had a supporting hand from YOU?’ She tried to pull herself together. ‘But you’re right,’ she resumed, wiping her face and standing up. ‘I was hoping to wait until next year, when you turn nineteen, but you are an adult already. I can’t hide things from you any longer,’ she said, walking towards the wall adjacent to the front door. She ran her finger down its yellow plaster. ‘You deserve to know . . .’

She took a deep breath. ‘Avi Chandra was anything but a traitor. I don’t know why the army said . . . Aman, he was a good man. It’s just . . . his final job, the orders that eventually forced him out of our lives—I don’t know why, but he was gone for a long, long time.’

‘How do you know all this? I’ve seen the one letter they sent. Were there other letters?’

‘I know because a friend of his, a fellow soldier, paid us a visit a year after his death. He told me a story that I refused to believe. Until he showed me Avi’s belongings. His notes. His photos from the mission. I doubt you’d remember Uncle Deepak, beta . . . but you need to hear it from him. Maybe when you see those things, you’ll believe it too. In fact, we should go first thing tomorrow.’ Her eyes lit up. ‘We can take the morning bus to Agra. It’ll only take a couple of hours. But in the meantime, I do have something to show you.’ She continued examining the wallpaper. ‘Grab your cricket bat for me.’