Arjun could set his watch by the residents of Sunshine Apartments — not because he tried to, but because Ramlal kaka never let him forget who arrived when.

“Sharma sir’s car, ten past nine,” Ramlal would say, “always ten minutes late from his badminton.”

“Who cares,” Arjun muttered to his friend Vivek one evening, swinging on the gate. “He just sits in that chair all night. Anyone could do his job.”

Vivek laughed. Ramlal, sharpening a pencil stub by torchlight, said nothing.

That Saturday, the second floor threw a birthday party for four-year-old Aditi. Balloons hung crooked from the railing. Aunties argued cheerfully about whose kachori was better. Nobody counted heads.

Ramlal did.

He knew Aditi’s mother always kept her within arm’s reach near strangers, and that Aditi herself never wandered past the mango tree alone — not at this hour, when the street lights outside blinked on and the gate stayed open for late guests.

So when a small figure in a yellow frock stepped past the gate towards the dark road, chasing a balloon that had slipped its string, Ramlal was already moving.

“Aditi beta,” he called, catching her wrist just as a scooter swerved wide around the corner. “Balloons don’t need chasing. They come back on their own.”

She sniffled, forgot the balloon, and pointed at his torch instead, fascinated by the beam.

Upstairs, nobody had noticed she was gone. Downstairs, Arjun had seen everything from the stairwell window.

He came down slowly and stood by the gate, not saying much.

“You knew she doesn’t usually come out here,” he said finally.

“I know everyone’s footsteps,” Ramlal said, going back to his chair. “That is the whole job, beta.”

Arjun sat on the step beside him — not to be polite, but because, for the first time, he wanted to.