A nasty quirk of fate

Thirty years ago, I was travelling by train from Chandigarh to Delhi with my wife and one-year-old daughter when I woke up at 4 am to find that we were at Ambala station and the train wasn’t moving. When I stepped out onto the platform, a coolie told me our train wouldn’t move for two hours, due to an accident ahead. I told my wife I’d step out to get milk for our daughter. I was unable to find milk at the station, so I walked out and got the milk from a bustling bazaar outside. When I returned, my train was slowly disappearing before my eyes, its tail-lights receding into the dark. I dashed after it, but soon gave up, panting. I was dishevelled, my kurta-pyjama was crumpled, I had a bottle of milk and Rs 4.50 in my pocket.

Disoriented and demoralised, I lay down on a bench and dozed off. A little later, I woke up to see a tall uniformed policeman looming over me: “Botal kiski hai?” he asked in Hindi with a Haryana accent.

“Meri ladki ki hai,” I replied.

“Aur teri ladki kahaan hai?” he asked.

“Woh gaadi mein Dilli chali gayee.”

My answers must have sounded suspicious, because the cop said, “Chal thane.”

Clutching the bottle of milk, I reached the police station where I told a suspicious sub-inspector that I was a management professor stranded in Ambala by a quirk of fate. “Do you know anyone here who can vouch for your identity?” asked the sub-inspector. I remembered an IAS officer who I knew well. The sub-inspector let me go.

I was free but my nightmare didn’t end. I needed money to reach Delhi and had no clue how I’d get it. I couldn’t contact my wife or friends in Delhi and I knew nobody in Ambala. Then I had an idea. My father-in-law was a doctor in the railways, so I took a gamble. Boarding a cycle-rickshaw, I went to the railway hospital, a kilometre away. There, I walked into Dr S.K. Srivastava’s surgery and asked him if he knew my father-in-law. He didn’t. Despite that, I burst out with my story and he lent me Rs 40 — enough to get to Delhi. I have a piece of advice for all train travellers: never stray more than five metres from your train.

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