The first thing Rajiv Sen ever learned to categorize was smell.
Not flowers, not rain, not the aroma of street food that made other children run toward it. No, Rajiv's world opened with the damp, acrid smell of unprocessed turmeric and the sour tang of old limestone. It was the smell of St. Jude's Home for Boys—a crumbling colonial structure that seemed to frown down on the children inside, as if the building itself judged them unworthy.
The other boys were in the courtyard, kicking a deflated football through puddles of mud. Their shouts echoed against the cracked walls, bouncing off the rusted fire escape like ghosts. Seven-year-old Rajiv sat on those very stairs, counting. Not in the childish way other children counted candies or coins. He counted bricks, breaths, heartbeats, and the way the wind bent the thin branches outside.
Three hundred and forty-two. That was the number of bricks in the eastern wall, each one chipped in a slightly different way.
Twelve. That was the number of times the head warden, Mr. Ghosh, tapped the gold-plated HMT watch on his wrist during his afternoon smoke.
Six. The seconds it took for the heavy iron gate to creak shut after the milk truck left.
Rajiv didn't try to remember. He simply couldn't forget. His mind was a ledger of everything—cataloged, cross-referenced, impossible to ignore.
"Rajiv! Get down here before you fall and break a bone we can't afford to fix!"
Sister Mary's voice, soft but urgent, broke his focus. She was the only adult at St. Jude's who treated the children with anything resembling care. Rajiv looked down, not at her face, but at the left sleeve of her habit. Four fraying threads. Her limp was subtle but unmistakable, the result of arthritis worsened by the humidity—82% today, he noted silently.
"Coming, Sister," he said, his voice calm, almost too calm for a seven-year-old.
Every step down the fire escape was deliberate. He knew which ones groaned and which were silent. He descended as if walking on a chessboard, each move calculated, precise.
That evening, the incident happened.
The kitchen's emergency tin—a small metal box meant to hold donations for days when food ran low—was missing five thousand rupees. Mr. Ghosh's face turned the color of rotten beetroot. Accusations flew at the older boys, threats of police, threats of hunger. The air in the dining hall was heavy with fear and the acrid smell of burnt dal.
Rajiv stood. Small, thin, ribs showing beneath his cotton shirt, he lifted his chin with the kind of quiet authority that made others blink.
"It wasn't the boys, Mr. Ghosh," he said.
The room froze. Ghosh's eyes narrowed. "And how would a brat like you know anything?"
"Yesterday at 4:15 PM," Rajiv began, his voice flat, meticulous, "you wore your grey trousers with the deep pockets. You went into the kitchen to check the stove. When you reached for your matches, your keys caught the tin. Two notes slipped into the gap between the flour sack and the wall. You didn't hear it because the ceiling fan was on the third speed setting, which clicks at 120 beats per minute."
Ghosh froze. The color drained from his face.
"You'll find them there," Rajiv added. "Next to the dead beetle and the spilled salt."
They did. The money was exactly where he said. No applause. No "good boy." Only a heavy, oppressive silence. The other children began to regard him not as a friend, but as something strange. Something dangerous. A Pret—a ghost who could see through walls, through intentions, through the superficial masks everyone wore.
Rajiv returned to his cot that night, staring at the ceiling. He realized something profound: people didn't hate lies. They hated truth when it made them uncomfortable.
He closed his eyes and "scrolled" through his day: the spilled salt, the exact shade of red on Ghosh's face, the IAS recruitment poster he had seen on a street wall earlier that week. Serve the Nation. Uphold the law.he law would betray him someday. But that thought was distant, almost academic. Right now, he was alone, and his memory was the only thing that would never abandon him.
He counted the heartbeats of the boy in the next cot. Seventy-two per minute. Steady. Unaware.
Rajiv Sen was already a man among children, a librarian in a world that refused to be read.
And in the quiet of that night, as the wind whispered through broken windows, he made the first of many unspoken vows: If the world is going to betray the innocent, I will learn its rules. I will map its weaknesses. And someday, it will answer for every lie, every cruelty, every stolen life.