Ten days after Gupta-ji's offer, the Splendor rolled under the broken archway of Wadia Godowns for good.
Arjun killed the engine and sat for a moment, letting the silence settle. Twenty-seven kilometres outside Greater Noida, the air felt different—drier, heavier, as though the city had exhaled and forgotten to breathe back in. A pair of peacocks called from the overgrown neem trees beyond the boundary wall. The sky above the ruined compound was a flat, merciless white.
He wheeled the bike up the cracked ramp and into the only place Gupta-ji had told him was now home: the old office cabin beside the main gate. A ten-by-fifteen-foot box with peeling cream paint, a sagging tin roof, and a faded sign that still read WADIA TRADING COMPANY in flaking black letters.
"Live in the office itself," Gupta-ji had said over the phone. "It has everything—desk, fan, attached bathroom, borewell tap that runs cold and clear. Lock the main gate at six. No one will trouble you."
Arjun parked the red Splendor inside, right next to the steel desk where the brass nameplate lay face-down in dust. He made three trips from the bike to unload his entire life:
A folding cot with one leg shorter than the othersA blue steel trunk that had once belonged to his grandfatherAn induction plate, one small pressure cooker, two steel plates, one glassA plastic bucket, a mug, a packet of Surf ExcelA cardboard box containing his college books, two sets of notes, and the folder with his father's medical reportsClothes—four T-shirts, three shirts, two jeans, one formal pant for placements that never happened—hung from nails he hammered into the wall with the heel of his slipper.
The bike stood between the cot and the door like a loyal dog that had followed him into exile.
By noon the first batch of labourers arrived: twelve men on rattling motorcycles, paan-red mouths, shovels balanced across shoulders. Gupta-ji had sent them with one line: "Start from Row 1. Don't stop till every shutter is open and every room is empty enough to rent."
Arjun became everything at once—timekeeper, chai-maker, photographer, guard. He woke at six when the first cycle bell clanged outside the gate, pulled up the office shutter, brewed tea thick with sugar and elaichi in the pressure cooker, and stood in the heat with a small notebook while they attacked fifty-eight years of neglect.
They dragged out ghosts.
One shop spilled thousands of empty violet glass bottles that had once held some long-forgotten tonic. Another was full of rusted cycle rims stacked like giant coins. A third contained nothing but a child's wooden rocking horse, paint gone, one eye missing, rocking gently whenever the breeze sighed through the broken ventilator.
Arjun photographed every room, every pile, every oddity. He sent the pictures to Gupta-ji on WhatsApp with short voice notes: "Row 2, Shop 19–25 cleared… Shop 31 has copper wiring, maybe two quintal… yes sir, I'll keep the scrap separate."
The scrap dealer's truck came twice a week. Arjun weighed the metal himself, haggled for ten rupees extra per kilo, and transferred whatever bonus he earned the same evening. The village replied with his mother's tired voice notes that always started the same: "Beta, paise aa gaye… dialysis Monday ko hai… don't worry about us."
Days melted into one another.
Sunrise at six, white and pitiless. Lunch sitting on the office steps with a steel plate balanced on his knees. Evening chai at four when the temperature dropped two degrees and felt like mercy. The labourers left by five-thirty, motorcycles coughing away into the dust. Arjun locked the main iron gate at six sharp, sliding the heavy iron rod into place with a clang that echoed across two hundred empty shops.
At night he ate alone. Sometimes the boy from Shiv Dhaba cycled over with a steel carrier—dal, sabzi, six rotis wrapped in newspaper, Gupta-ji's tab. Arjun always pressed a ten-rupee note into the boy's sweaty palm anyway.
He spoke to almost no one. College WhatsApp groups filled with placement memes he left on seen. The only human voice he heard regularly was Gupta-ji's evening call: "Kya haal hai, hero? Kitne shutter khul gaye aaj? Theek hai, kal aur aadmi bhejta hoon."
He fell asleep by ten, the ancient ceiling fan creaking overhead, the faint smell of old petrol from the Splendor drifting across the room like a lullaby.
He told himself this was enough.
Money was reaching home on time. His father had started the new injection the doctor had prescribed. His younger sister had bought the extra reference book for her Class 12 boards. For the first time in three years there was a small surplus in the family account—three thousand, four thousand, once almost seven. His mother had sent a photo of the new soft cotton kurtas she had bought for his father. White ones, the kind the hospital said wouldn't chafe the fistula.
Some nights he sat on the office steps after dinner and stared at the rows of open shutters—black rectangles against the moonlight, like missing teeth in a giant broken smile. The silence was enormous. You could hear a leaf fall fifty metres away.
He began to understand how loud emptiness could be.
But the work kept him moving, and the money kept coming, and the red Splendor never asked questions. So he woke each morning, pulled up the shutter, brewed tea, and opened one more lock on the slow resurrection of a dead kingdom.