When the Katha team visited a school in Maharashtra during a survey, the members found that there was a soap stuck on the wall, on which children would rub their hands, before washing it off. The soap turned black over time, but the kids still kept using it. That instance stayed with me," says Geeta Dharmarajan, founder and president of the publishing house, adding that when COVID-19 struck, it worried her that so many kids do not have access to something as basic as soap. This was what prompted Dharmarajan to bring back some of her old characters — Tamasha, the big elephant; Jayant, the kind sarpanch; and Tobakachi, the evil Asura — to create The Mystery of the Missing Soap, in collaboration with visual artists Charbak Dipta and Suddhasattwa Basu.