Asho: Missing mom

Siliguri, Dec. 7: Asho did not meet Aunt Lajo, but he is happy that he is going back home after almost over a month.

“I was missing my mother,” said the nine-year-old shyly as he stood beside his father Jaglal Yadav, who had come to take him away.

The Class II student walked out of his house in Alapur in Uttar Pradesh on November 6, bid his mother goodbye and jumped on to a train with Rs 50 to meet Aunt Lajo, the mousi who lived in Calcutta. Little realising what Asho was up to, his mother had jokingly wished him a happy journey.

“Since then, she has been inconsolable. We had almost given up hope of ever getting him back when the local police station informed me three days ago that my son was in Siliguri. They also gave me a number. I called up and asked for Asho. When he answered I could not believe my ears,” said Yadav, who owns a small sweet shop in Daragan.

For a boy who had never travelled outside his hometown, Asho’s first journey was a big adventure on board five trains that covered more than 2,000km.

On November 7, when Asho arrived at Sealdah station, the crowd unnerved him. He realised that he should have at least brought Aunt Lajo’s phone number. The GRP spotted him wandering about and after grilling him, put him on a train to Lucknow. When the train left Sealdah, Asho felt hungry and got down at the next station — the name of which he could not recollect. He had his food, but the train had by then left the station. Asho with the help of passengers boarded another train back to Sealdah. On his return, the GRP tried to help him again, but something went wrong and Asho found himself on the Darjeeling Mail.

Yadav recalled that when his son did not return home in the evening, he had gone to his school to enquire. “They told me that he had not turned up that day. I then went to police. Somebody told us that he had seen my son boarding a train to Lucknow.” Alapur is almost 15km from Lucknow.

The number that Yadav had been given was that of Conc’rn (Care of Needy Children Rightfully Nurtured), an NGO that looks after platform children.

Asho had been spotted by a multi-purpose worker of Concr’n on Platform 1A of New Jalpaiguri station on November 13, when the Darjeeling Mail trundled in. He was about to board a train to Guwahati. A lot of questions in Aasho’s story are unanswered and police are still trying to verify his version of the story.

The programme officer of the NGO, M.K. Moitra, said both the RPF and the GRP at NJP station had helped locate the family.