THERE was no drama about the appearance of Syed Saleem Jafar, a resident of Poonch - which is more than 300 km away from Srinagar. Sitting in the police station he talks wryly about his life. His story, however, unfolds in the sly expressions of his captors. Jafar, 18, had been given up for dead by his parents for the past four years before being traced to a houseboat by the police on Thursday.

In police custody, he is in no mood to return to his home. "I do not want to go home," Jafar said. "I want to stay back and pursue my business here. I want to go home only after making it big. I want to prove to my parents that I achieved something in my life".

It was in March 2003 that Jafar Saleem inspired by a Bollywood movie fled his home in Poonch towards Srinagar. With Rs 1,000 in his pocket, he boarded a morning bus in Jammu and landed late in the evening in Srinagar. "I spend the first night in a mosque and walked the streets on the following day. Later I met a man in Lal Chowk who lived in a houseboat. He took me home for the night".

Jafar says he told his entire story "truthfully to the man". "He took me to a houseboat owner in the Dal lake who employed me," says Jafar, identifying his benefactor as Abdul Gafar Tunda. All these years, Jafar stayed with Tunda.

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