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.

It was in a few months that he won his employer's trust and rose through the ranks to take control of the arrangements on the Tunda's four houseboats. He also doubled as a guide to the tourists, learning in the process a good smattering of English as well. "I worked day and night on my job and looked forward to strike it big," Jafar says.

Only thing he didn't remember, however, was his home. The memory of his parents and siblings, he says, hardly crossed his mind. Despite having a phone at his home, Jafar never called. This led to his distraught parents, who were desperately searching for him, give him up for dead. They had filed an FIR in the police station, Poonch but failed to trace him.

The family also went through tragedies. His grandfather passed away as a result of the shock. But Jafar does not know this. "I am not aware that my grandfather has passed away. I learnt it only today," he said. However, with police set to send him back to his home and even getting his relatives over to Srinagar to take him back, Jafar is not happy. "I have yet to fulfil my dream. And now police is sending me back," he says. Even talking to his mother on home doesn't seem to have melted him. "I talked to my mother today. She cried inconsolably. I felt it too".