The old Hero Splendor coughed twice, spat out a puff of blue smoke, and finally caught with the familiar tired note that always made Arjun's chest tighten. Twelve years old, the red paint long gone dull and scratched to silver in places, the seat cover patched with black rexine and safety pins—yet it was still his father's bike. The only thing that had survived the slow collapse of everything else.
It was the last week of April 2025. Final-year internals were over, and the campus looked half-dead. Friends crowded the canteen arguing about internships in Pune or Bangalore, about signing bonuses and cab reimbursement and whether the free dinner at Zomato was worth the fourteen-hour shifts. Arjun had stopped listening months ago. His phone gallery still held the screenshot of the offer letter he had once received from a small automotive firm in Manesar—₹22,000 per month stipend, a number that had felt like winning the lottery until the same week his father's creatinine touched 7.8 and the nephrologist at the district hospital used the word "dialysis" for the first time.
That evening he rode from college to Gupta-ji's godown as usual, the Splendor rattling over the speed-breakers near Pari Chowk like an old man clearing his throat. The godown stood in Greater Noida's Sector 3 market, a narrow two-storey building squeezed between a sanitary-ware wholesaler and a plywood shop. Sixteen shutters, barely enough space for two trucks to stand together. Gupta-ji had been running the business from here for twenty-three years, and every year the place seemed to shrink a little more.
Arjun parked in the tiny lane behind the office, chained the bike to the same iron pole he had been chaining it to for the last eighteen months, and climbed the narrow staircase. The office smelled of beedi smoke, old ledgers, and the faint rose air-freshener Gupta-ji's wife kept refilling even though no one had ever asked for it.
Gupta-ji was on the phone, feet on the table, arguing with someone about a late payment. When he saw Arjun he waved him in, ended the call with a curt "Bas, Monday tak," and pushed a steel glass of cutting chai across the desk.
"Sit, son. Exams finished?"
"Yes, sir. Last internal was today."
"Good, good." Gupta-ji took a long sip, studying Arjun the way he studied damaged goods—trying to decide how much it could still be worth. "Listen. I have news. I finally bought that big property outside the city. Wadia Godowns. You know the one—twenty-seven kilometres out, two hundred shops, full three-acre plot. Paperwork finished yesterday. The judge himself signed."
Arjun nodded slowly. He had heard Gupta-ji talk about the Wadia property for two years, every other phone call ending with "Court has given another date." It had become background noise, like the hum of the desert cooler.
"It is mine now," Gupta-ji continued, voice dropping into the satisfied tone men use when they have outlived their enemies. "But the place is a jungle. Fifty-eight years locked. I need someone there full-time from next week. Workers will start cleaning, electricians, painters, plumbers—everything has to happen fast before monsoon. I cannot run between here and there every day. I need a supervisor who stays on site."
He paused, let the silence settle like dust.
"I thought of you."
Arjun's heart gave one hard thud. He set the glass down carefully so it didn't clink. "Sir, college is closed for summer break from next Friday. Two and a half months."
"Perfect." Gupta-ji smiled, the gold tooth flashing. "You stay there. Live there. One of the shops will be your room. Food I will arrange from the dhaba nearby, or cook yourself, whatever you want. No travelling, no petrol, no tension. And salary—" he leaned forward, lowered his voice like he was sharing a state secret, "—double. Thirty thousand rupees per month. Cash. Every first of the month. Plus whatever scrap bonus comes. You just keep the work moving and keep thieves away."
Thirty thousand.
The number hit Arjun behind the eyes like bright light.
His current salary was fifteen thousand for the night shift. Out of that, six went on rent and mess, two thousand on petrol, and almost all the rest reached the village before the tenth of every month. Thirty thousand meant… he did the maths in the same second he always did: dialysis session and medicines twelve thousand, sisters' fees four, household five… for the first time in three years there would be something left over. Maybe even enough to buy his father the soft cotton kurtas the hospital recommended instead of the rough ones his mother still stitched at night.
He swallowed. "Sir, I… yes. I will do it."
Gupta-ji's smile widened. He reached across and patted Arjun's cheek twice, the way uncles do when they are genuinely pleased. "Good boy. I knew I could trust you. From next Friday you shift there. Take whatever you need. I will tell the cook at Shiv Dhaba to give you food on my tab. And Arjun—" he pointed a thick finger, suddenly serious, "—that place has been closed since 1967. Anything you find inside that you can sell—old iron, copper, brass, anything—it is yours. Understand?"
Arjun nodded again, unable to speak.
That night he rode home slower than usual, the Splendor's weak headlight cutting a thin tunnel through the market crowd. Thirty thousand. The words kept repeating with the engine's rhythm. Thirty thousand. Thirty thousand.
When he reached the rented room he sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, staring at the red bike parked in the corridor outside his door. The same bike his father had taught him to ride on the empty village roads when he was sixteen. The same bike that had carried him to coaching classes, to his first college fest, to the railway station the day he left home with one suitcase and the promise that he would study well and find a good IT job.
He ran his fingers over the cracked rubber grip, the little Hanuman sticker fading on the tank.
Next Friday the bike would carry him twenty-seven kilometres out of the city, away from hostels and deadlines and the smell of canteen Maggi, into a ruined empire of two hundred locked shutters.
He only knew one thing for certain: for the first time in three years his mother would have money left over after sending his salary home, and that felt like the closest thing to hope he had been allowed in a very long time.