So I boarded the next train that arrived at the platform. Could it be as simple as that?
As the train rumbled out, I got a better look at the station from which I had departed: it was a huge red building with many arches and towers, the biggest building I’d ever seen. I was in awe of its size but hoped I was leaving it and its great crush of people behind forever. However, after an hour or so, the train came to the end of its own line, somewhere on the outskirts of the city. Then it switched direction and went back to the enormous station.
I tried another train, but the same thing happened. Maybe the train I needed left from another platform? There were many more platforms here than at the station near home, and each seemed to have several different kinds of trains—some had lots of compartments with porters helping people on, while others had carriage after carriage filled with people on bench seats, like the one that had brought me here. The sheer number of them was frightening, but one of them must go back to where I’d come from—I just had to keep trying.
And so that’s what I did. Every day—day after day—I caught a different train out of the city.
To avoid being locked in a carriage again, I only traveled during the day. At the beginning of each trip I would watch the passing scenery with hopeful optimism, thinking, Yes, yes, this feels like the one that will get me home, I’ve seen that building or those trees before. . . . Sometimes the train would reach the end of its journey and then head back again. Other times it simply stopped at the final station on the line, and I’d be stuck in that unfamiliar, empty place until the next day, when the train began the return leg. The only times I got off a train before it reached the end of its journey was when night was falling. Then I’d crawl under the seats inside the station so that I couldn’t be easily seen and curl up tightly for warmth. Luckily, the weather was never very cold.
I survived by eating scraps of food I found on the ground, like peanuts travelers had dropped or corn cobs not completely eaten. Sometimes I dove for food that had just been dropped, but then I was risking a kick in the head from the other kids who were hanging around. Fortunately, it wasn’t hard to find taps for a drink. This wasn’t too different from the way I’d lived before, so although I was often scared and miserable, at least I knew how to get by, and I suppose my system was used to the lack of nourishing food. I was learning how to live on my own.
And so I shuttled back and forth, trying different platforms, traveling different routes—sometimes seeing something I recognized and realizing I’d accidentally caught a train I’d tried before—and in the end not getting anywhere at all.
On each of those journeys not one person ever asked me for a ticket. Of course, I avoided trains when I could see they had conductors on them, just like we did at home, but once I was on, I was never questioned. If an official had stopped me, I might have summoned the courage to try to ask for help, but none ever did. Once, a porter appeared to understand that I was lost, but when I couldn’t immediately make myself understood, he made it clear I wasn’t to bother him anymore. The world of adults was closed to me, so I continued to try to solve my problem by myself.
After a while, though—perhaps even a couple of weeks—I began to lose heart. Often I thought about my family, especially my brother. Sometimes at night when I was trying to get comfortable on a hard bench, feeling afraid to fall asleep, I would cry to myself, “Where are you, Guddu? Please help me. Take me away from this place. I want to be with you and everyone else.” My home was out there somewhere, but maybe no train from here went there. Or maybe there was some sort of complication I couldn’t work out. All I knew about the city outside of the station was what I’d seen from train windows, arriving or leaving. Maybe out there was someone who could help me, give me directions to get home, or even just give me some food.
But by now I was growing more and more familiar with the sprawling red station. It felt like my only real connection with where I’d come from, whereas the masses of people coming and going outside frightened me. Each time I went on a trip to a new and strange place, I was glad to get back to the big station, where I knew my way around and knew where to sleep, or where I was most likely to find food. Of course, more than anything I still wanted to find my mother, but I was slowly adjusting to life at the station.
I had noticed a group of children who seemed to always be at the end of a particular platform, where they’d huddle together in some old blankets at night. They seemed to be like me, with nowhere to go, but they didn’t try to hide under seats or on trains. I’d watched them, and they had probably seen me, but they had shown no interest in my presence. I hadn’t been confident enough to approach them, but my lack of trust was worn down by my failure to find home. Adults had proven to be of no assistance, but maybe other children would help? At least they might let me stay near them, and perhaps I’d be safer with more kids around.
The children weren’t welcoming, but they didn’t chase me off, either, as I lay on a hard wooden seat close to them and rested my head on my hands. Kids on their own were not an uncommon sight here, and one more addition to their ranks didn’t surprise anyone. Exhausted from the day’s train travels but a little relieved with my decision to not start all over again the next day and more secure with the others nearby, I quickly fell asleep.
Before long, though, I was disturbed by what at first I thought was a bad dream. I heard young voices screaming out, “Go away, let me go!” More shouting followed, in both young and older voices, and in the dim light from the station I thought I could make out a man yelling something like “You are coming with me!” Then a child unmistakably screamed out, “RUUUNN!” and I leaped to my feet, knowing that this was no dream.
In the confusion, I saw children being lifted by adult hands and carried off, and a small girl struggling with a man by the edge of a platform. I ran for my life, sprinting away down a darkened platform and leaping off the end of it, down onto the tracks, before charging into the darkness.
Running virtually blind alongside a large wall, I kept looking over my shoulder to see if I was being chased but didn’t slow down even when I thought there was no one behind me. I didn’t know what had happened back at the station, why the men were grabbing the kids. All I knew was there was no way I was going to get caught myself.
But there was danger ahead as well as behind.
As the track turned to the right, I found myself face-to-face with the blinding lights of a train coming straight at me. I jumped to one side as it hurtled by with a deafening roar, terrifyingly close to my body. I had to press myself as hard as I could against the wall for what felt like an eternity as the train kept passing, with my face shoved sideways to keep clear of anything that might be sticking out from a carriage.
Once the train had passed, I had the chance to recover. Although I was terrified at the dangers in this new city, I’d lived by my wits for long enough not to lose them now. I suppose the advantage of being a naïve five was that I didn’t think too much about what had happened to the other children, or what it meant, other than that I wanted to avoid it. What choice did I have but to keep going?
I continued to follow the tracks but more cautiously. When they came to a road, I left them—and the station—for the first time on foot since I’d arrived. The road was busy, which felt safer than being somewhere out of sight, and soon led to the bank of a huge river over which stretched a massive bridge, dark against the gray sky. I remember distinctly the overwhelming impression the sight made on me. I’d seen a few bridges from the windows of trains, bigger than the only one I knew from home, which crossed the little river I played in with my brothers.
In the gaps between the shop stalls huddled along the top of the riverbank, I could see the wide expanse of water, busy with boats. The bridge loomed over it, an immense structure, with people teeming along its walkway, and a slow but noisy mass of bicycles, motorbikes, cars, and trucks on its road. It was an astonishing sight fo
r a little boy from a small village. How many people were here? Was this the biggest place in the world? The opening up of the city beyond the station made me feel more lost than ever.
I stayed on the street for some time, stunned by the scale of the scene before me. While I seemed invisible, I worried that I could come to the attention of people like the men I’d just escaped—or even the very same men, who might still be chasing me. Those thoughts gave me the courage to walk past the shop stalls and between some larger buildings, toward the riverbank. The steep grassy slopes, shaded by big leafy trees, quickly gave way to the muddy river’s edge, and the whole area was full of activity—there were people bathing as others nearby washed cooking pots and bowls in the shallows, some tending small open fires, and porters ferried all manner of things up the banks from long, low boats.
Back at home, I had been a very curious child—once I’d become old enough to be allowed away from the house on my own, I’d never liked to stay in one place much. I was always keen to see what was around the next corner, which is why I’d been so eager to start living the life of my brothers, on the move and independent, and why I’d quickly chosen to leave the house with Guddu that night. But being lost in the big train station in this unsettlingly huge city had stifled that instinct—I ached for the familiar streets of home. It had made me think better of straying too far from the small area I already knew. I was torn between going back to the station and the close, confusing streets, and exploring the more open but unfamiliar territory of the riverbank. There was more and more of this city as far as I could see in every direction. Exhausted from the day’s trials and lack of proper food and sleep, I kept out of people’s way but had no idea what to do next. I tried hanging around some of the food stalls to see if anyone might give me something to eat, but everyone shooed me away like a stray dog. Back home I was used to being chased off when I was begging, but then I had somewhere to go at night and a family to protect me. I had never felt so alone in my whole life.
Eventually, I walked along the riverbank and came upon a group of sleeping people that I recognized as holy men. I’d seen men like these back at home. They were not like Baba at his mosque. Baba wore a long white shirt and pants, like many men in my neighborhood. These men were barefoot and wore saffron robes and beads, and some of them were quite scary looking, with wild clumps of dirty long hair wound on their heads and red and white paint on their faces. They were grubby (as I was, no doubt) from living outdoors on the streets. I had been keeping away from adults as best I could, but surely no one bad would find me here, among holy people? I lay down near the men, curled up into a ball, and joined my hands to pillow my head.
Before I knew it, morning had come and I was once again alone. The holy men had left, but the sun was up and there were people walking about.
I had survived my first night on the streets of Calcutta.
3.
Survival
Hungry, as usual, I found that at least there were more possibilities for food along the wide river than inside the big red train station to which I’d been transported days earlier.
As the stall holders had seemed indifferent to begging children, I went along the water’s edge, thinking I might find people cooking there. Daylight confirmed that this was the biggest river I’d ever seen, but it was also fouler and smellier, lined with dead animals, human excrement, and other kinds of filth. As I picked my way along its edge, I was horrified to see two dead people lying among the piles of rubbish: one with his throat cut, the other with his ears chopped off. I’d seen dead bodies before at home, but they were always treated respectfully. And I hadn’t come across any just lying outside. Here no one seemed to pay any more attention to dead people than to dead animals, even if they seemed to have been violently attacked. These bodies lay in the open, under a hot sun, covered with flies and—it appeared—gnawed by rats.
The sight made me feel sick, but what struck me most powerfully was that it confirmed what I’d already begun to feel—that every day in this city was a matter of life and death. There was danger everywhere and in everyone—there were robbers and people who took children, and I assumed even killers, based on seeing these mangled bodies. It opened up all sorts of fears. Was this the world that my brothers lived in when they went away, and the reason they never let me leave the stations when I traveled with them? What had happened to Guddu at the train station? Where had he got to, and why hadn’t he been there when I woke up? Was he somewhere like this, looking for me? And what did my family think had happened to me? Were they looking, or did they think I was dead, gone, lost forever? Was I? I fell to the ground and cried wrenching tears until no more tears came out. Why had this happened to me?
More than anything I wanted to get back home to my family, to be protected and cared for. Finally I stopped crying and sat up. No one was coming for me; I was all alone. I realized that to have any hope of returning home, I would have to be as strong as I could be. Otherwise, I would disappear, or even die, here on the bank of the wide, murky river. I understood that I had to rely on myself. In that moment, at five years old, I made a conscious decision to pull myself together and do my best to survive.
I turned back toward the bridge and came to the river, where people were bathing, and a set of stone steps, where people were doing laundry. There was a wide stone drain next to the steps, which brought water and waste down into the river from the street. Kids were playing, splashing, and fooling about in the water, so I went over to join in. Now it strikes me—just as it strikes many visitors to India—as incredible that anyone would wash or bathe in a river that was also a sewer and mortuary, but at the time I didn’t give it a second thought. It was a river—rivers were for all of those things. They were also sites of extraordinary acts of kindness, as I was to discover.
The other children seemed to accept me joining in and we played about in the water, a respite from the heat of the day. While some of the kids were very confident, leaping off the side of the steps out into the river, I wasn’t. I only walked down them far enough to be up to my knees—although my brothers had tried to teach me to swim in the dammed river near our town, I hadn’t caught on yet. At home, other than in the monsoon, the river was just a gentle stream to splash in. But I loved just standing in the water. And never more than on this day—it felt wonderful to simply be a child again, playing with other kids.
Later in the afternoon, the other children went home. I stayed on the steps, not wanting the day to end. But the river was full of surprises. I hadn’t noticed, but the water level must have been rising through the day, and when I jumped in to what had been a safe spot earlier on, I suddenly found myself in much deeper water—over my head. There was a strong current, too, which was carrying me farther from the steps. Splashing and flailing desperately, I pushed off from the river bottom and struggled back to the surface to gasp a breath of air, but the water dragged me down and out again. This time I was too far out to reach the bottom. I was drowning.
Then I heard a splash nearby and found myself wrenched upward, pulled to the surface and onto the steps, where I sat spluttering and coughing up murky water. I had been saved by an old man who had jumped in off the stone drain just in time to pluck me from the water. Then he silently made his way back up the steps. His clothes were filthy and his teeth were red from chewing betel nut, so I supposed he lived there on the riverbank.
Perhaps the kindness of that stranger lowered my guard, or perhaps I was just too young to know better, but when I went back to swim in the river the next day, I foolishly let the rising tide and strong current surprise me again, and once more got into trouble. Amazingly, the same man rescued me—perhaps he’d kept an eye out when he saw me come back.
This time, other people noticed what had happened, seeing the man helping me up onto the steps, where I hacked up more water. A crowd formed around us, and I understood enough to realize they were declaring that the gods had spared me, that it had not
yet been my time to die.
Maybe I felt overwhelmed by all the people pushing up close to stare at me, or just humiliated or annoyed with myself for having almost drowned a second time, but I leaped to my feet and ran away as fast as I could. I went far along the bank until I couldn’t run anymore, vowing to keep out of the river.
I don’t think I ever thanked the homeless man, my guardian angel, really, for rescuing me not once but twice.
To escape the crowd, I had run away from the area I had come to know, and night was falling. It was too late to try to get back to my part of the riverbank before dark, so I had to quickly find a new place to sleep. I came upon what looked like a disused factory, with a large pile of rubbish in the shadows at the back. Exhausted, I found a piece of cardboard and lay down on it behind the rubbish heap. The place had a bad smell, but I was becoming used to that by now, and at least it was out of sight from passersby.
That night I was awakened by a pack of scary-looking mangy dogs barking under a nearby streetlight. I kept a rock in my hand and a pile of others within easy reach in order to scare them away if they came any closer. I must have fallen asleep like that, because when I woke with the hot sun full in my face, the rocks were still there but the dogs were nowhere to be seen.
• • •
Over the next little while, I came to know the neighborhood around the station, including the shops and stalls where I foraged for food. The smells coming from those shops were irresistible: mangoes and watermelons so ripe they were almost bursting; and from the sweets stalls, jalebis made with rosewater syrup; gulab jamuns, which were fried cheese savories served with cream; laddus, or fried sweetened dough balls; and cold lassi buttermilk. And then all I could see was people eating: a group of men cracking peanuts and chatting, some others having chai and sharing a bunch of grapes. Hunger gnawed at me then with its familiar sharp teeth, and I would go to every shopkeeper and beg desperately. They always chased me away, along with the half-dozen or so other children hanging around—there were simply too many of us to take pity on. I was so focused on just surviving day to day that I had no time to feel sorry for myself. Self-pity was a deep well that if I once fell into, I might never get out.
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