When the old post office at Kishanpur was finally demolished, they found a letter behind a cupboard that had not been moved since it was installed.
It was postmarked 1971. The address was four lines, the last of which no longer existed, because the lane had been renamed twice.
Ramprasad, who had delivered post in that area for thirty-eight years and had retired the previous spring, was asked whether he could make anything of it. He turned it over twice.
The house is still there, he said. Only the name of the lane changed.
He was sixty-three and had every reason to hand it to someone employed. Instead he put it in his shirt pocket, and the following morning he walked it over.
The woman who opened the door was in her seventies. He explained. She took the envelope and looked at the handwriting for a long time without opening it.
My brother, she said. He wrote before he went. We were told there was no letter.
Ramprasad waited on the step, because it seemed wrong to leave and wrong to come in.
She did not open it. She held it against her chest with both hands, the way people hold things they have been waiting for without knowing.
Forty years, she said, not as a complaint.
It was late, Ramprasad agreed. But it was not lost.
He walked home the long way, past the demolished post office, and found that he was not at all sorry to have retired, only glad to have been asked once more.
