Chapter 1: The Vanishing

The year my daughter went missing, she was only five years old.

That year, my hands always smelled of Dettol and worry. The mango trees outside our building were just beginning to flower, and the hot wind carried the scent of frying pakoras from a neighbour's kitchen window. My daughter, Ananya, ever restless and bright-eyed, would call out for me every now and then—her voice echoing up the staircase. That day, she went downstairs alone to find me.

But somewhere along the long, slightly musty staircase—the kind with flickering tube lights and chalk marks from old Holi games—she simply vanished.

Even after all the running about, after filing missing persons reports at the thana and pleading with the local police, Ananya was never found. Her story became another unsolved case, another whisper in the colony’s evening gossip by the chai stall: a lost girl, a ruined family.

Not long after, weighed down by our grief, we left that sorrowful place with our son, Kabir. We never returned. The neighbours looked away as we packed; some pressed our hands in silent sympathy, but no one spoke. It was as if the building itself wished to forget.

Many years later, one night, I happened to see a photo posted by an old neighbour.

On the peeling wall at the corner of the stairwell, a human face had appeared.

It looked exactly like my five-year-old daughter.