India, Aug. 25 -- This unusual story began a decade ago, when a part of it appeared in a different version in HT's Mint Lounge. Last week, the story met its climax.

In 2014, this reporter purchased from a vendor at Delhi's Sunday Book Bazar a crumpled polybag filled with envelopes addressed to cities like New York, Geneva, Dar es Salaam, Paris, Belgrade, Moscow and Delhi. Spanning over 40 years, these were letters exchanged between a husband and wife. The handwritten correspondence began in the 1940s, when he was her suitor. The bag had passed to the vendor from a "raddiwalla," who had sourced it from a "raddiwalla" in an upscale Delhi neighbourhood.

Without doubt, this lifetime's worth of letters must have been discarded mistakenly. (E...