UNTITLED

Chapter 6

Shlok and Ridhwan walked with Khadre to their pick up destination. A lorry was awaiting them. Both carried a bag with two apples, two mangoes and some cashew nuts. After a three hours journey they reached an old post office. It was dark with a pinch of light coming from somewhere behind the hutment, visible from a distance of twenty metres, through the slight opening made by the coconut trees.

When they reached there, there were less than half a dozen carriages parked and around half a hundred people gathered, some empty handed, some with satchels like Shlok and Ridhwan. Most of them were quite older than the two boys.

At around midnight the first carriage left. The following carriages left twenty minutes after the previous one to avoid suspicion. Ridhwan and Shlok boarded the third carriage, with nine other brave men. One of them seemed more younger than them. Two of them seemed men in their fifties, the rest were young men with pumped up spirits.

After a five hours journey, and when most of the men in the carriage had fallen asleep, the vehicle came to a sudden hault. A few heads waved in the air like dead coconut trees. There was a sharp bang on the side of the carriage "Come on girls. We have a train to catch."

In another ten minutes, the half a hundred men boarded two bogies of the train hauled at the station. It whistled and the train began to shake. The smoke from the engine bogie hovered in the night air like a lather, a blanket over the red train. Ridhwan sat at the window seat, above him was Shlok trying to sleep; in front of him was a boy of their age, probably younger and above him slept a man in his forties.

"Rudra" the boy said, bringing his right hand forward.

Ridhwan clenched his hand and remembered what the baron had taught - A handshake not too firm, not too loose. "Ridhwan"

"Nice to meet you." The boy said. Ridhwan nodded.

In a few minutes it was morning. It was the first time Ridhwan had seen the sun rise in his fifteen years of existence. And for the first time in his life he felt free and responsible, like there was a reason for this existence of his. A sudden glimpse of Zareen flashed before his eyes and he thought of why she married the Britisher.

Rudra took out a harmonica from his bag pack and began to play. "This was my grandfather's. A gift" he said. Ridhwan kept looking out at the hills, the bushes, the forests, the birds and in a moment he fell asleep to the tune of 'So jaa Raj Kumari' from the movie 'Zindagi'. Shlok had already slept after a hard time of adjusting to the rough badly finished bed. How he missed his lavish king size cushioned bed.

When the sun lit the whole train quite well, a man in a green uniform with badges and stripes pinned to it, went around the beds, hammering his baton, which he carried in his huge, firm right hand. And for those who didn't wake up, he signaled the old impoverished man behind him, who carried a large bucket on his shoulders, who would pour a bucket of chilled water on the sleeping lads.

"Wakie... Wakie... sleeping beauties. Wash. Bathe. Your uniforms are on the bed. Wear and report outside in thirty minutes for briefing." The man in the green uniform said. He wore a small cap on his head. He covered his one eye with a black round cloth piece tied around his head.