Ramesh worked in a small accounts office near Dadar station. Every morning at eight, his wife Sunita packed his tiffin — the old steel one with a dent on the lid, wrapped twice in cotton cloth so it would stay warm on the train.

He never thought much about it. Roti, sabzi, a little pickle, sometimes a piece of jaggery tucked in the corner. He ate it at his desk at one o’clock, scrolling through his phone, barely looking down.

One Thursday, the office closed early. A pipe had burst on the third floor, and everyone was sent home before lunch.

Ramesh let himself into the flat without calling out first, expecting to surprise Sunita. Instead, she was the one who looked caught — sitting on the kitchen floor, a small steel plate in front of her.

On it was plain rice. A spoon of yesterday’s dal, thinned with water. No sabzi. No roti.

“You haven’t eaten?” he asked, though the plate was clearly not new.

She pulled her dupatta straight, the way she did when she wanted a conversation to end quickly. “I ate,” she said. “This is just… a little more.”

He sat down across from her, his legs going still on their own.

“Sunita. Where is the sabzi?”

She looked at the plate, not at him. “It finished,” she said. “There was only enough for one tiffin today.”

He thought of every lunch he had eaten that year without looking down — the roti always warm, the sabzi always generous, the jaggery always there in the corner like a small promise. He had never once wondered if there was enough for two.

That evening, he watched her cook — one pot, then a smaller one, tucked behind it, half-hidden. He had walked past that second pot a hundred times and never asked what was in it.

The next morning, he took the tiffin from her hands before she could close the lid.

“Pack it in one dabba,” he said. “One for both of us. I’ll eat here, at home, tonight instead.”

She looked at him for a long moment, the dent on the tiffin catching the light between them.

“It’s a small tiffin, Ramesh,” she said.

“Then we’ll eat slowly,” he said, and closed the lid himself, the way she always had.