Nayantara Bibi, 16, packed a jar of pickled dried fish, a few rotis, and dry torkari for her husband, Abbasuddin Sheikh, 21. The rotis and vegetable were intended to last him during his train ride from Kolkata to Chennai, and the pickled dried fish, for a couple of months of his stay there. Leaving behind his family of four — his wife, 5-month-old child, ageing mother, and 21-year-old brother who lived with autism — Abbasuddin prepared to leave his village Chousutti Para for Chennai, recalls his wife. Joining seven others from his village in Kakdwip, a town in South 24 Parganas, he boarded a toto for ‘5 number bajaar’ from where they would take a bus to Dharmatala and another bus to reach Shalimar Station in Kolkata. The train would head to Chennai Central, in a journey lasting 26.5 hours, covering 1,659 km.
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Like many before him, Abbasuddin left with the promise of returning after six months and sending money every month, with an extra ₹1,000 for his wife and new mother, Ms. Bibi. Two of the seven who left, came back to the village in an ambulance from Balasore, the site of the accident. They were the survivors of the Coromandel Express train tragedy that killed 288 people and injured over 1,000. Five, who boarded the general compartment of the train, went missing. One was Abbasuddin. He did not have a reservation on a train, the general compartment of which is meant to carry about 100 people but actually holds about 400, cramped onto the berths, standing or sitting on the floor. Undocumented, his name does not feature on the list of people — dead or alive — who could be identified. His brother-in-law spent over a week in Balasore, but could not identify his body. “We went to the morgues and hospitals, but could not find him anywhere,” says Rahul Sheikh.
