Green Slips
Every night before closing, a green slip lay on the counter of the Lost Property office at Howrah station, and Subir Dutta had never once seen who put it there.
He had been the clerk for thirty-one years. Each slip was filled in by the owner of something, in the owner's own handwriting. Item: black umbrella. Owner: P. Sen. Item: brown wallet. Owner: A. Rahman.
Mr Bose, the clerk before him, had explained the job on his last evening. “Stamp the slip,” he said, “and by midnight the owner loses what is written on it. Never refuse. If you refuse, the stamp comes down by itself at midnight, and it comes down on the clerk.”
Subir had stamped eleven thousand slips since then. Umbrellas, wallets, a child's shoe. He told himself it was only things.
Things were never really lost. By morning each one sat on the long shelf at the back of the office. A thing went home only if its owner walked in and wrote the claim again in their own hand. Almost nobody found the office.
Mr Bose had refused a slip on his last night. The next morning his brown cardigan was on the shelf, with a tag in Subir's handwriting: Bose. Claim in own hand. Thirty-one years later, it was still there.