Raman Pandit was around five when his father was whisked away to jail. He would probably have never met him had it not been for the persistent visits of some NGO workers to Raman’s boarding school on behalf of a pining Pandit. They finally arranged a meeting when the elder Pandit came out on parole eight years later.

To the young boy, this emaciated stranger — who embarrassed him with a hug and kept calling him ‘babu’— didn’t exactly fit the bill of a man who had set his mother ablaze in a fit of rage, and whom Raman grew up hating. Soon, a series of letters, money orders and warm meetings in Morshi open jail ensued.

Today, a year after Pandit’s release, father and son live together in a cement shanty built from Raman’s savings. After deftly rolling chapatis, the gaunt ex-lifer now entertains guests with jail stories involving contraband beedis while Raman — a wheatish third-year arts student —chuckles at Pandit’s habit of pulling the TV’s main wire to switch it off.