One night, when I was five years old, I was at home, tired from a day playing out in the streets, but excited that on this night almost the whole family was gathered for dinner. My mother was home from work and, more unusually, Guddu was there, too. Kallu was the only one missing.

That evening Guddu stayed for about an hour while the four of us ate together. As Guddu was the eldest, it was he that I looked up to the most. He hadn’t been home for some time, and I missed hanging out with him and Kallu as a gang.

I’d begun to feel I wasn’t a little boy anymore, to be left at home while they were out in the world.

After dinner, when our mother went out (perhaps to see if she could get us some more food), Guddu announced that he was leaving—going back to “Berampur.” The thought of once again be­ing left behind without my brother, a little kid stuck at home with nothing to do, was too much. I jumped up and said, “I’m coming with you!” It was early evening—if I went with him, there was little likelihood of him getting me back home that night. We’d have to stay together. He thought about it for a moment and then agreed. I was thrilled. We left Shekila sitting on the floor and were gone before my mother returned. She probably wouldn’t have been too worried, with me in my brother’s care.

Soon I was laughing as we sped through the night, Guddu dou­bling me on a bike through the quiet streets to the train station. A man who lived beyond the center of town hired out bicycles for less than one paisa, and sometimes Guddu rented one to get to and from his jobs more quickly.

I’d traveled with my brothers before, but that night was differ­ent. I was going off with Guddu without a plan for when we were coming home or where we might sleep, just like he did with Kallu.

I didn’t know how long he would let me stay with him, but as we raced through the streets, I didn’t care.

I still vividly remember the ride. I sat on the bar just behind the bike’s handlebars with my feet resting on either side of the front wheel axle. It was a bumpy trip, as there were potholes everywhere in the road, but I didn’t mind at all. There were a lot of glow bugs flying in the air, and we passed some kids chasing them. A boy yelled out, “Hey, Guddu!” but we rode on. I was proud that Guddu was known about town. I had even heard him mentioned once when I was on a train—I thought he was famous. We had to keep a good lookout for people walking on the street in the dark, especially when we went under the low railway bridge. Then Guddu said we’d walk the rest of the way; maybe he was tired with me on board. So I hopped off and he pushed the bike along the main street to the station, past the busy chai sellers. When we were near the station entrance, Guddu hid the hire bike behind some thick bushes, and we walked across the overpass to wait for the next train.

By the time the train noisily pulled in and we had scuttled aboard, I was already becoming sleepy. We got as comfortable as we could on the hard wooden seats, but the fun of the adventure was starting to wear off. I rested my head on Guddu’s shoulder as the train left the station. It was getting late, and we’d be on the train for about an hour. I don’t know if Guddu was having second thoughts about letting me come, but I was starting to feel a bit guilty, because my mother usually needed me to baby-sit Shekila while she was at work, and I didn’t know when I’d be back.

By the time we got off at “Berampur,” I was so exhausted that I slumped onto a wooden bench on the platform and said I couldn’t go on without a rest. Guddu said that was fine—there were a few things he needed to do anyway. “Just sit down and don’t move. I’ll come back in a little while and we can find somewhere to sleep the night.” I lay down, shut my eyes, and must have fallen asleep straightaway.

When I woke up, it was very quiet and the station was deserted. Bleary-eyed, I looked around for Guddu but couldn’t see him any­where. There was a train at the platform where we’d got off, with its carriage door open, but I didn’t know if it was the same one, or how long I’d been asleep.

I’ve often wondered exactly what I was thinking right then. I was still half-asleep and I remember being unnerved by finding myself at the station alone at night. My thoughts were muddled. Guddu wasn’t around, but he’d said he wasn’t going far—maybe he’d got back on the train? I shuffled over and climbed the board­ing stairs to have a look. I have a memory of seeing some people asleep on board and stepping back down from the carriage, worried that if they woke up, they would call the conductor. Guddu had said I should stay put, but he was probably on board in a different carriage, working, sweeping underneath the seats. What if I fell asleep on the dark platform again and the train pulled out and I was left alone?

I looked into a different carriage and found no one, but the empty wooden bench seats were more comfortable and felt safer than the quiet station—Guddu would come and get me soon, smiling, perhaps with a treat he’d found while cleaning. There was plenty of room to stretch out. In a few moments, I was sleeping peacefully again.

This time, I must have slept properly. When I awoke, it was broad daylight and the full sun was glaring straight into my eyes. And, I realized with a jolt, the train was moving—rattling steadily along on its tracks.

I jumped up. There was still no one in the carriage, and the landscape outside the barred windows was passing quickly. My brother was nowhere to be seen.

I had been left undisturbed, a small boy asleep, alone on a speeding train.

The low-class carriages weren’t connected to each other with internal doors. Travelers boarded and exited their carriage from doors on the outside at each end. I raced to one end of the carriage and tried the doors on either side—they were both locked, or wouldn’t budge. I ran down the other end—the doors there were locked, too.

I can still feel the icy chill of panic that hit me when I realized that I was trapped—at once a feeling of weakness, hyperactivity, and incredulity. I don’t recall exactly what I did in that moment—screamed, banged the windows, cried, cursed. I was frantic, my heart beating triple time. I couldn’t read any of the signs in the carriage. I ran up and down and looked beneath all the benches, in case someone else was asleep somewhere. There was only me. But I kept running up and down, yelling out my brother’s name, begging him to come and get me. I called for my mother, and my brother Kallu, too, but all in vain. No one answered and the train didn’t stop.

I was lost.

Slowly, I found myself shrinking from the enormity of what confronted me, hunching up into a protective ball. For long hours, I either cried or sat in a quiet daze.

After hurtling along in the empty carriage for a long time, I roused myself to look out the window to see if I could recognize some landmarks. The world outside looked similar to the outskirts of my village, but there were no distinguishing features. I didn’t know where I was headed, but I’d traveled much farther than ever before and was already far away from home.

I entered some kind of hibernating state—my system shut down, I suppose, exhausted at trying to deal with what was happening. I wept and slept, and occasionally looked out the window. There was nothing to eat, but there was water to drink from the tap in the filthy toilet cubicles at the rear, with their pit holes open to the tracks below.

Once, I woke up to realize that we’d stopped—we’d pulled into a station. My spirits soared, as I thought I could catch someone’s attention on the platform. But there wasn’t a soul to be seen in the gloom. I still couldn’t budge the exit doors. I beat them with my fists and screamed and screamed as the train gave a lurch and started moving again.

Eventually, I was spent.

You can’t remain in a state of sheer panic and terror indefinitely, and both had run their course. Ever since, I’ve thought that must be why we cry: our bodies are coping with something our minds and hearts can’t absorb by themselves.

I suppose all of that crying had served its purpose—I’d let my body work through my feelings, and now, surprisingly, my mind began to feel a little better. I was exhausted by the experience and fell in and out of sleep. When I think back now and relive the full horror of being trapped alone, with no idea where I was or where I was heading, it’s like a nightmare. I remember it in snapshots—awake at the windows, terrified; curled up and drifting in and out of sleep. Where did Guddu go? Why did he leave me? Why isn’t he on this train? Where is it taking me? I want to be with my mother! Where is my sister, where is my brother—where is my home? I think the train pulled into some more stations, but the doors never opened, and no one ever saw me.

But as time passed—perhaps even twelve hours—some of the resilience I’d built up when exploring my own town started to reassert itself. I began to think, If I can’t get out by myself, then I’ ll just have to wait until someone lets me out, and then work out how to get home. I would behave like my brothers would behave. They were away for days at a time; I could do that, too. They had shown me how to find a place to sleep, and I had looked after myself before, finding things and begging. And maybe if this train took me away from home, it could take me back there.

Gradually, over what might have been six or more hours, the coun­tryside became greener than I’d ever seen it before. There were lush fields and tall trees with no branches but great shaggy bunches of fronds at their tops. When the sun came out from behind clouds, everything exploded into bright green light. I saw monkeys run­ning through the tangled undergrowth by the sides of the tracks and amazing brightly colored birds. There was water everywhere, in rivers, lakes, ponds, and fields. It was a new world to me. Even the people looked a little different: sharper, taller, and lighter in complexion.

After a while, the train began to pass through small towns, and I saw kids playing by the tracks while their mothers cooked or did the laundry on the back stoop. No one seemed to notice a lone child at the window of the passing train. The towns got bigger and closer together, and then there were no more fields, no more open country, just more and more houses—streets and streets of them­ roads and cars and rickshaws. There were big buildings, too, many more of them than at home, and buses and trucks and tracks with other trains running along them. Everywhere there were people and more people—more than I had ever seen, more than I could ever have imagined in one place.

Eventually, the train slowed, and I knew it must be approaching another station. Was my journey at an end this time? The train coasted until it was hardly moving at all, then gave a sudden lurch and stopped altogether. Wide-eyed, staring from behind the bars of the window, I saw crowds of people swarming on the platform, hefting luggage as they strode about. People were rushing everywhere, in the hundreds, perhaps thousands, and suddenly someone opened one of the doors to my carriage. Without a moment’s thought, I ran down the aisle as fast as I could and leaped out onto the platform. At last I was free.

Only later, from the safety of my bedroom in Hobart, when my parents pointed it out on the wall map, did I find out the name of the city I’d traveled to. Not that it would have meant anything to me at the time.

But I had arrived in what was then known as Calcutta, the sprawling megacity famous for its overpopulation, pollution, and crushing poverty—one of the most dangerous cities in the world.

I stepped off the train truly with nothing but the clothes I was wearing, barefoot, in a grimy pair of black shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt with several buttons missing. I had no money, no food, and no identification of any sort. I was hungry, but I was used to that, so it wasn’t too much of a problem yet. What I really hungered for was help.

I was thrilled to be free of my carriage prison but frightened out of my wits by the huge station with its pressing crowds. Frantically, I looked around in the hope of seeing Guddu pushing past all the people to come and rescue me, as if he might have been stuck on the train, too. But there were no familiar faces. I was paralyzed. I had no idea where to go or what to do. I instinctively stepped out of people’s way. I called out, “Ginestlay? Berampur?” hoping that someone would tell me how to get there. But no one in the rushing mass paid me the slightest attention.

At some point, the train I’d arrived on must have pulled away again, but I don’t remember noticing. Even if I had, I doubt I would have been too keen to jump back aboard after being trapped for so long. I was scared into inaction, afraid that wandering off some­ where would make things worse. I kept to the platform, occasion­ally calling out, “Berampur?”

All around me was a confusion of noise, with people shouting and calling to one another or huddled in babbling conversation—I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying. Mostly they were just very busy, pushing on and off trains in the great crush, struggling to get to wherever they needed to be as quickly as possible.

A small handful of people stopped to listen to me, but all I could manage to say to them was something like “Train, Ginestlay?” Most just shook their head and walked on.

One man replied, “But Ginestlay is where?”

I didn’t know what he meant; it was just … home. How could I explain where it was? After a moment, he frowned and moved on. There were a lot of children begging or hanging around the station looking for whatever they could find, as my brothers did back home. I was just one more poor kid crying something out, too small and timid to make anyone stop and listen.

I steered clear of policemen out of habit. I was afraid they might lock me up, as they’d once done to Guddu. Conductors, police, anyone in uniform—we’d avoided them all. It didn’t occur to me that now they might be able to help.

I stayed on the platform even after everyone had left, having failed to get anyone’s attention, sleeping on and off, unable to move away or think of what to do next. Sometime the next day, tired and miserable, I gave up trying to find help. The people in the station weren’t people at all but a great solid mass I couldn’t make any impact on, like a river or the sky.

One thing I knew was that if a train had brought me to where I was, a train could take me back. I also knew that at home the trains on the track opposite the one you arrived on went back the other way. But I’d noticed that this station was the end of the line, where all the trains came in and stopped, and then chugged back the way they had come. If no one could tell me where the trains went, I would find out for myself.

So I boarded the next train that arrived at the platform. Could it be as simple as that?

As the train rumbled out, I got a better look at the station from which I had departed: it was a huge red building with many arches and towers, the biggest building I’d ever seen. I was in awe of its size but hoped I was leaving it and its great crush of people behind forever. However, after an hour or so, the train came to the end of its own line, somewhere on the outskirts of the city. Then it switched direction and went back to the enormous station.

I tried another train, but the same thing happened. Maybe the train I needed left from another platform? There were many more platforms here than at the station near home, and each seemed to have several different kinds of trains—some had lots of compart­ments with porters helping people on, while others had carriage after carriage filled with people on bench seats, like the one that had brought me here. The sheer number of them was frightening, but one of them must go back to where I’d come from—I just had to keep trying.

And so that’s what I did.

Every day—day after day—I caught a different train out of the city.

To avoid being locked in a carriage again, I only traveled during the day. At the beginning of each trip I would watch the passing scenery with hopeful optimism, thinking, Yes, yes, this feels like the one that will get me home, I’ve seen that building or those trees before. … Sometimes the train would reach the end of its journey and then head back again. Other times it simply stopped at the final station on the line, and I’d be stuck in that unfamiliar, empty place until the next day, when the train began the return leg. The only times I got off a train before it reached the end of its journey was when night was falling. Then I’d crawl under the seats inside the station so that I couldn’t be easily seen and curl up tightly for warmth. Luckily, the weather was never very cold.

I survived by eating scraps of food I found on the ground, like peanuts travelers had dropped or corn cobs not completely eaten. Sometimes I dove for food that had just been dropped, but then I was risking a kick in the head from the other kids who were hanging around. Fortunately, it wasn’t hard to f ind taps for a drink. This wasn’t too different from the way I’d lived before, so although I was often scared and miserable, at least I knew how to get by, and I suppose my system was used to the lack of nourishing food. I was learning how to live on my own.

And so I shuttled back and forth, trying different platforms, traveling different routes—sometimes seeing something I recognized and realizing I’d accidentally caught a train I’d tried before—and in the end not getting any where at all.

On each of those journeys not one person ever asked me for a ticket.

Of course, I avoided trains when I could see they had conductors on them, just like we did at home, but once I was on, I was never questioned. If an official had stopped me, I might have summoned the courage to try to ask for help, but none ever did. Once, a porter appeared to understand that I was lost, but when I couldn’t immediately make myself understood, he made it clear I wasn’t to bother him anymore. The world of adults was closed to me, so I continued to try to solve my problem by myself.

After a while, though—perhaps even a couple of weeks—I began to lose heart. Often I thought about my family, especially my brother. Sometimes at night when I was trying to get comfortable on a hard bench, feeling afraid to fall asleep, I would cry to myself, “Where are you, Guddu? Please help me. Take me away from this place. I want to be with you and everyone else.” My home was out there somewhere, but maybe no train from here went there. Or maybe there was some sort of complication I couldn’t work out. All I knew about the city outside of the station was what I’d seen from train windows, arriving or leaving. Maybe out there was someone who could help me, give me directions to get home, or even just give me some food.

But by now I was growing more and more familiar with the sprawling red station. It felt like my only real connection with where I’d come from, whereas the masses of people coming and going outside frightened me. Each time I went on a trip to a new and strange place, I was glad to get back to the big station, where I knew my way around and knew where to sleep, or where I was most likely to find food. Of course, more than anything I still wanted to find my mother, but I was slowly adjusting to life at the station.

I had noticed a group of children who seemed to always be at the end of a particular platform, where they’d huddle together in some old blankets at night. They seemed to be like me, with no­ where to go, but they didn’t try to hide under seats or on trains. I’d watched them, and they had probably seen me, but they had shown no interest in my presence. I hadn’t been confident enough to ap­proach them, but my lack of trust was worn down by my failure to find home. Adults had proven to be of no assistance, but maybe other children would help? At least they might let me stay near them, and perhaps I’d be safer with more kids around.

The children weren’t welcoming, but they didn’t chase me off, either, as I lay on a hard wooden seat close to them and rested my head on my hands. Kids on their own were not an uncommon sight here, and one more addition to their ranks didn’t surprise anyone.

Exhausted from the day’s train travels but a little relieved with my decision to not start all over again the next day and more secure with the others nearby, I quickly fell asleep.

Before long, though, I was disturbed by what at first I thought was a bad dream. I heard young voices screaming out, “Go away, let me go!” More shouting followed, in both young and older voices, and in the dim light from the station I thought I could make out a man yelling something like “You are coming with me!”

Then a child unmistakably screamed out, “RUUUNN!” and I leaped to my feet, knowing that this was no dream.

In the confusion, I saw children being lifted by adult hands and carried off, and a small girl struggling with a man by the edge of a platform. I ran for my life, sprinting away down a darkened platform and leaping off the end of it, down onto the tracks, before charging into the darkness.

Running virtually blind alongside a large wall, I kept looking over my shoulder to see if I was being chased but didn’t slow down even when I thought there was no one behind me. I didn’t know what had happened back at the station, why the men were grabbing the kids. All I knew was there was no way I was going to get caught myself.

But there was danger ahead as well as behind.

As the track turned to the right, I found myself face-to-face with the blinding lights of a train coming straight at me. I jumped to one side as it hurtled by with a deafening roar, terrifyingly close to my body. I had to press myself as hard as I could against the wall for what felt like an eternity as the train kept passing, with my face shoved sideways to keep clear of anything that might be sticking out from a carriage.

Once the train had passed, I had the chance to recover. Al­ though I was terrified at the dangers in this new city, I’d lived by my wits for long enough not to lose them now. I suppose the advan­tage of being a naive five was that I didn’t think too much about what had happened to the other children, or what it meant, other than that I wanted to avoid it. What choice did I have but to keep going?

I continued to follow the tracks but more cautiously. When they came to a road, I left them—and the station—for the first time on foot since I’d arrived. The road was busy, which felt safer than be­ing somewhere out of sight, and soon led to the bank of a huge river over which stretched a massive bridge, dark against the gray sky. I remember distinctly the overwhelming impression the sight made on me. I’d seen a few bridges from the windows of trains, bigger than the only one I knew from home, which crossed the little river I played in with my brothers.

In the gaps between the shop stalls huddled along the top of the riverbank, I could see the wide expanse of water, busy with boats. The bridge loomed over it, an immense structure, with people teeming along its walkway, and a slow but noisy mass of bicycles, motorbikes, cars, and trucks on its road. It was an astonishing sight for a little boy from a small village. How many people were here?

Was this the biggest place in the world?

The opening up of the city beyond the station made me feel more lost than ever.

I stayed on the street for some time, stunned by the scale of the scene before me. While I seemed invisible, I worried that I could come to the attention of people like the men I’d just escaped—or even the very same men, who might still be chasing me. Those thoughts gave me the courage to walk past the shop stalls and between some larger buildings, toward the riverbank. The steep grassy slopes, shaded by big leafy trees, quickly gave way to the muddy river’s edge, and the whole area was full of activity—there were people bathing as others nearby washed cooking pots and bowls in the shallows, some tending small open fires, and porters ferried all manner of things up the banks from long, low boats.

Back at home, I had been a very curious child—once I’d become old enough to be allowed away from the house on my own, I’d never liked to stay in one place much. I was always keen to see what was around the next corner, which is why I’d been so eager to start living the life of my brothers, on the move and independent, and why I’d quickly chosen to leave the house with Guddu that night. But being lost in the big train station in this unsettlingly huge city had stifled that instinct—I ached for the familiar streets of home. It had made me think better of straying too far from the small area I already knew. I was torn between going back to the station and the close, confusing streets, and exploring the more open but unfamiliar territory of the riverbank. There was more and more of this city as far as I could see in every direction. Exhausted from the day’s trials and lack of proper food and sleep, I kept out of people’s way but had no idea what to do next. I tried hanging around some of the food stalls to see if anyone might give me something to eat, but everyone shooed me away like a stray dog. Back home I was used to being chased off when I was begging, but then I had some­where to go at night and a family to protect me. I had never felt so alone in my whole life.

Eventually, I walked along the riverbank and came upon a group of sleeping people that I recognized as holy men. I’d seen men like these back at home. They were not like Baba at his mosque. Baba wore a long white shirt and pants, like many men in my neighbor­ hood. These men were barefoot and wore saffron robes and beads, and some of them were quite scary looking, with wild clumps of dirty long hair wound on their heads and red and white paint on their faces. They were grubby (as I was, no doubt) from living out­ doors on the streets. I had been keeping away from adults as best I could, but surely no one bad would find me here, among holy peo­ple? I lay down near the men, curled up into a ball, and joined my hands to pillow my head.

Before I knew it, morning had come and I was once again alone. The holy men had left, but the sun was up and there were people walking about.

I had survived my first night on the streets of Calcutta.