For children: Everyone in the neighbourhood is suspicious in the eyes of two young detectives

One of the daily chores that Innocent Baby Chandy, all of eleven years, enjoyed was vegetable shopping every evening at 5.30, that she carried out for her mother, Radha Mercy. She would wait for Khan-chacha, the vegetable vendor, who would come from Badshahpur to Sector 41 every evening and park his covered autorickshaw loaded with potatoes, onions, peas, apples, and bananas. Around that time, Innocent usually cycled around the neighbourhood on her new sky-blue mountain bike which her father, Bijou Jolly Chandy, had bought for her from the Decathlon outlet at Millennium City Centre Metro Station, the last time he was back home from Dubai. It was a tough, rough and ready bike ideally suited for Innocent B Chandy’s temperament.

Within a week she had become an accomplished biker, and now in the evenings from 4.30 to 5.30 pm, could be seen zipping around the neighbourhood in gay abandon. Sometimes her good friend, Mata Rani Tomar, who was seven years old and the granddaughter of Mrs Tomar, the landlady, accompanied Innocent Baby on her daily adventures. Mata Rani rode a pink BSA bike which Innocent had outgrown and had now lent to her young friend. The pink bike still had its...

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