장 1: Chapter 1: The Secret of Saving
The little house at the end of Raman Street always smelled faintly of mothballs and ironed clothes. Raghavan had lived there all his life, first as a son and then as a husband and father. Now, at fifty-eight, he walked through its narrow corridors with the cautious pride of a man guarding something precious.
Inside the wooden almirah in the bedroom, beneath neatly folded sarees, a tin box lay heavy with crumpled notes. Under the floor tiles of the kitchen, wrapped in plastic, lay another bundle. Even the old rice drum carried not just grains but the glint of hidden gold bangles. Every coin, every rupee, had been tucked away carefully over decades.
"Don't tell anyone, not even Arjun," Raghavan would whisper to his wife, Meera. "One day, when he's grown and needs us, we will open all this before him. He will realize how much we sacrificed."
Meera nodded, her eyes soft. "Yes… he will see. Children don't understand parents' silence, but money will speak for us."
Meanwhile, in the courtyard, ten-year-old Arjun played with a broken cricket bat. He looked up at his parents, who were again counting coins at the dining table. They didn't notice him watching.
He sighed and turned back to the cracked cement wall, hitting the ball against it again and again. The sound echoed, filling the silence his parents never broke.