Searching for lost time: Story of a boy who ran away from home and got back

Two days later, Mohit Singh was back at Jaipur railway station, collecting plastic bottles from the tracks for the woman who was his captor. Hunger had bested him. At least she gave him food.

In September 2009, Mohit and Javed, another boy from their locality, boarded a train to run away from their fathers. Javed was older, the mentor in this escapade. Nine years old, Mohit thought it would be a great adventure. “Our fathers had scolded us for watching a movie at the kirana store, and he said we would go to Mumbai to be film stars. We sat on the first train we saw, and it started moving. Three stations later, Javed said he was going to the toilet. I waited for him to return. He never came back,” says Mohit.

The last station was Jaipur, and Mohit was forced to get off by the railway staff. “I kept crying for two days, at the same spot on the platform. I thought that if I waited there, my grandmother would come to rescue me,” he says.

Home is where the heart is: Since his return, Mohit hasn’t left home (Source: Gajendra Yadav)

Then, he met Salma. She was older to him. “Some of her hair was white,” he says, recounting her from recent memory. And she brought food. One roti and leftover sabzi from the railway canteen. He ate hungrily. The next day, for everyone at the Jaipur railway station, he became Javed Khan, younger brother to Salma. A beggar and a ragpicker.

He used to go to school in Ghaziabad. But at the station, he was introduced to a new teacher: fear. “From the bottles that I would collect and sell, and from begging, I had to collect Rs 400 a day. When I first started, I didn’t even know how to count to 400. But Salma taught me. The day I fell short, there would be no food. She would hit me with a broom. We used to sleep on the ground under a flyover near the station. My punishment for being lazy would be to sleep on the stones,” says Mohit.

There was one other boy that worked and lived with him. She called him Ismail. Mohit never found out if that was his real name. “One day, she hit him so hard, he was taken to the hospital. He never came back. That was the time I tried to run away and come back home to Ghaziabad. But I had to return to Jaipur because I didn’t know where my house was and nobody helped. For three days, I was given no food and water. She told me I would stay with her forever,” he says.

Slowly, Mohit was becoming Javed. Until suddenly, 11 days ago, he heard a man in khaki mention Ghaziabad. They had come looking for another child; Mohit tried to go up to them. “But Salma became frantic, and hit me. They saw the commotion and asked her what the problem was.

She told them that my name was Javed and I was her younger brother, and that I was misbehaving. They left, and I thought I would never see them again,” says Mohit.

But to sub-inspector Manikchand, looking for missing children under a Ghaziabad police operation entitled Smile, something seemed amiss. “He jumped when he heard Ghaziabad. So the next day, on October 5, I went back in plainclothes. I pulled him to the side, and asked him where he was from. By the time Salma realised I was a policeman, he had already told me his story. And we brought him home,” says Manikchand.

This time, when he alighted at the Ghaziabad station, Mohit was 14 and had three policemen by his side. This time, the search for home would not be futile. He told them that his grandmother earned money by doing “jhaad phuk (exorcism)”. Over the next six hours, he was taken to every “bypass” on National Highway 24. Till they found one with a “jhaad phuk vaali amma”.

In the five years that had passed, his father Raajkishore, earning little as a labourer at Rathi Steel, had turned alcoholic. His mother Reena Devi had lost her mental stability, and forgotten how to smile. His grandmother Sandhya Devi had spent all her money looking for him.

At 4 pm on Eid, when the creaky door of their house swung open, the three of them were sitting in silence. They were almost afraid to recognise him. He was five inches taller, and life had hardened him. They cried and laughed in equal measure. His mother beamed with joy, his father no longer needed drink, and his grandmother prayed. Since then, he has not left home. Constantly, even if he is just outside, they look for him. “Mohit, vapas aa ja,” they call out, worried.

He smiles at his name. Javed is already fading away.