The train hissed, easing out of the station like a ravenous reptile. She sat by the window, in a pink chintz salwar-kameez, her cloth bag clutched tight, ribboned pigtails brushing her shoulders. Soon the open landscape outside blurred under fading twilight. At seventeen it was the first time she'd left home.

The bag held her world: seven-hundred-forty-two-rupees, two rotis with pickle and a bindi-pack with an address scrawled at its back. The city waited. Somewhere at the end of the line was freedom, or something which inside a borrowed mobile-phone, looked like it.

She turned her face to the wind unaware of a man stepping into the coach until he froze mid-step.

“Manjari?”

She looked up, and… time stood still. The racket of the wheels, the clanking of luggage trunks faded. Just a deafening thumping sound of her own heart remained.

Her father- Gopinath. Tired eyes. Shirt clinging to his back, one slipper torn, a plastic hospital bag hanging from his wrist.

They both stared at each other like they’ve seen a ghost!

“What are you doing here?” Gopinath asked. Manjari swallowed hard as blood drained from her face. Wanting to disappear into the vinyl seat, she whispered, “I… I was going to the city-Dilli”

Gopi buckled down opposite her, as if his knees had suddenly aged since morning. The train swayed gently. He looked at her, then at the bag, then out the window.

She’d expected shouting. Maybe a slap. But not silence. Or the way his eyes looked, not angry, but… broken.

She stared at the hospital bag.

"Cancer,” he said lightly. “Lungs. Doctor said it’s already too late." She caught her breath. He laughed, bitter and short.

“I was scared to come home wondering how to tell you or your mother, so, I boarded for Chintapurni Ma, and look what I found.”

She looked at his fingers- gnarled, stained from years in the field. They trembled now, like leaves.

“I wasn’t running,” she said softly.

“No?” he asked. “What do you call it, then?”

She didn’t answer.

Outside, the fields blurred past. Inside, the coach was still.

“I couldn’t live in the dread…of more hurt” she said. “Amma cries in kitchen, fields parched, you coughing blood, no one saying anything. We just wait for the next catastrophe.”

He looked at her closely, “Where would you have gone?”

“To Asha Didi. You remember her? She once invited me.”

Closing his eyes, he winced, “I know why she left. And what she became.”

She glared at him, suddenly angry. “And still I’d rather try another life than stay in one already decided for me, that too not by you or Amma, but by poverty.”

He didn’t flinch.

They sat like that for a long while. The farmer and his daughter, a dying man and a girl eager to learn life’s ways.

“Do you hate me?” he asked.

Bewildered, she blinked. “No!”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I knew you’d cry, and I wouldn’t be able to go.”

His shoulders shook. A sound escaped him, not quite a sob, not quite a breath. 

“I still don’t want you to go,” he said.

“I know.”

The train slowed. The sign outside read Manesar.

Gopinath stood. “Take care.” She looked up at him, eyes stinging, “You won’t stop me?”

He shook his head. “No. But I want you to stay. Just for a while.”

She tensed. “And then?”

“Then you decide. With clearer mind, not just frustration in your chest.”

Her voice was flat. “What if you’re gone by then?”

He met her gaze. “Then at least I’ll know you saw me off as you, and not some scared girl who left without goodbye.”

Silence roared between them. Gopi hesitated, then reached out- rough fingers caressing her hair.

“Leave the pigtails,” he said. “You don’t need to look like a little girl anymore.” With that he picked up his bag and stepped off.

She didn’t follow.

The train doors shut behind him. The engine growled. Manjari stared out the window as the platform slid past. Her father stood there, small and fading, one hand raised.

Absentmindedly, she freed her hair from ribbons…and, suddenly, pulled the emergency-chain. Once on the platform, she scanned the crowd, her heart pounding in her tiny chest.

There! Limping toward the exit!

“Baba!” she called.

Shocked, he turned. Manjari ran to him, throwing her arms around him without a word. He held her close, trembling.

The city lights glimmered… postponed.