This is a story of an incident which even after the passage of more than four decades of time has not faded even a little from my memory. I am going back to the mid-seventies when I was pursuing my engineering degree. My house was about ten minutes of walking distance from a small suburban railway station south of Kolkata. The railway line used cut across our locality and for almost every daily need we had to cross it. The station was almost like a thoroughfare. People used the railway platforms as a short cut to reach the main road.

It was a Sunday morning. Mother asked me to visit my uncle’s place to collect some article. My uncle stayed near a junction station few railway stops further south. I thought of visiting a friend staying in that locality after finishing the assignment.

I left for the station. When I reached, the train was just arriving. Probably I was little lazy in walking to the ticket counter which was on the other platform. I would have to use the foot over bridge, walk considerably, stand in a queue, purchase the ticket and rush back all the way to board the train. It was a next to impossible task if I had to catch this train. The next train will be no sooner than an hour. In a blink of a moment I decided to board the train without purchasing the ticket which was not usual for me. It was a quite a common practice there as traveling without ticket was so rampant. As a matter of fact if you had some money in your pocket, it would have acted as an insurance against the very unlikely event of getting caught by the way of paying the small penalty to the railway.

But, something else was in store for me. Neither luck nor could my purse save me that day when I was caught for ticketless traveling as soon as I alighted at the destination. I soon realized that a special drive was going on and I was not alone, there were many. I tried in vain to explain the situation. I could not pay the penalty as I had little money. The railway persons herded the group of about twenty people and pushed inside a small room and locked from outside. I could make out from the little conversations with the other offenders that we all will be taken to police custody and some legal process will be there. It was a frightening situation.

Many thoughts crowded my mind. I belonged to a respected family. My parents have silently taught us conducting the life with dignity. My father fought for freedom of the country and was jailed by the British rulers. Now I am destined to go in police custody for the crime of ticketless traveling. What a shame. I was totally clueless about getting out of the situation.

Except me rest in the group appeared to be from poor background, certainly did not have enough money to pay the penalty. They did not show any desperation. Possibly, most of them had previous experiences.

In those days, telephone was a luxury. Our family did not have any telephone. The nearest telephone was at my friend’s place. But there was absolute no chance of calling my friend on the telephone and convey the emergency to my mother. I could not imagine of any means to somehow get in touch with somebody who could rescue me by paying the penalty.

The room where we were all locked up had a door of old design and the bottom half had openings for ventilation. Some curious fleeting faces were trying to get sneak view of the unfortunate souls confined inside. I was sticking to the door and looking helplessly outside for any development. I noticed a boy of about ten years of age took a permanent position in front of the door, curiously peeping inside. He may be a destitute boy who made the station his home. What prompted me I do not know, I signaled the boy to come close to the opening and he promptly obliged. I asked him to help me by going to my friends place in that place and explain him the situation and ask him to come to the station. I tried to explain him where he should go, how he should reach there and what he should tell to my friend. He did not speak a single word, only listened. After a while he disappeared from my view. I never expected that the kid will really understand the gravity of the situation and my helplessness. My friend was staying quite far from the station and for that kid it was not an easy task to reach him.

Not knowing what to do I simply resigned to the situation. The authorities were also not in hurry. Time passed, I lost whatever little hope I pegged on the kid. After considerable time I noticed the kid again in front of opening of the door. He pointed his finger to someone at little distance. To my utter disbelief, he was my friend. The boy signaled my friend to that opening. I told him the story. He was amused to see me in that condition. He spoke to the railway people and got me released after paying the fine.

I was totally overwhelmed by the turn of the events. I never ever thought that one day I will be caught for such a silly crime of ticketless traveling and that too without some decent amount of money in my pocket. What was the height of my amazement was that there will be a friend staying nearby and out of nowhere a small kid appear and rescue me. The kid did not speak a single word throughout but had a constant smile of an angel on his face. Once I recovered from the bewilderment I tried to look for the kid and wanted to thank him and give some reward. But he was nowhere. Along with my friend I scanned the entire platform. The kid looked like a destitute who made the railway station his home. I expected he will  be a familiar face to the regulars in the station. So we enquired with the vendors and hawkers in case they have known such a boy and seen him sometime back. To my disbelief nobody knew of him and have not seen any such face of my description. I was feeling very sorry to have not kept an eye over him while we were dealing with the railway officials.

Even today whenever I remember the incident I feel sad that I could not at least express my gratitude to him for the great help he rendered and saved me from disgrace.

Certainly he was Godsend.