As I came to my senses all I could see were large stretches of railway tracks. I was covered in blood, some of it was oozing out of my veins but it was all mine. My body didn’t comply with me as I tried to get up. After an hour or two I gathered enough strength to get up from the side of tracks and made my way to the nearest road. I tried to stop a few people in cars but I think they were not able to notice me, after a while a man on his bicycle stopped in front of me and asked “Kya hua bhayya?, aao baitho mai aspatal chod dun” (What happened brother? Come let me drop you to the hospital.)

I sat on his bicycle’s carrier and asked him to take me to the police station. After a while, I was sitting in front of the local police inspector, who was interrogating me while he was handling his daily chores but he was kind enough to look at me and ask a question once in a while. He asked “Do you remember their faces?”, “I don’t think so” I replied. “You don’t know their names nor their faces, now tell me how are we supposed to help you.” Said the inspector with an irritated voice.

“But they were all strangers, I never met them in my life, how can I know them.” I was surprised and irritated at the same time. “It was a crowd sir; we can’t do anything here.” Said the constable standing by the desk. “And how did you get on the tracks if you were inside the moving train and don’t tell me that you survived the fall from a moving train.” asked the inspector in disbelief. “I told you my son pulled the emergency chain; the train was not moving’’ I said.

“Anyways we can’t help you; sorry”

I got out of the police station disappointed, now I wanted to go home and wash out that blood. So I took a bus to my city.

It has been a year I still can’t sleep, still can’t wash the shirt that I wore that day, it is all covered in my blood some of it came from my own body but most of it was from my son's wounds, whom I have been searching for a year now.

 ~~~~~Micro fiction