Nageswar Kumar and Kailash Kumar are farmers and friends. Today, there is one more thing that binds them together: the grief of losing a child.
On June 2, an accident involving three trains took place in Balasore district of Odisha. Their sons — 18-year-old Ghanshyam and 22-year-old Hardev — had boarded the 12841 Howrah-Chennai Coromandel Express, one of the three trains. Nageswar and Kailash had rushed to Balasore, located 400 kilometres from their home in Dumka district in Jharkhand. “I visited hospitals in Balasore, Soro, and Cuttack,” said Nageswar. “I lifted the white sheets off 107 bodies. But there was no sign of him.”
Two days later, they made a final attempt to search for their sons, who were travelling to Chennai to work for a construction company. At the site of one of the deadliest train crashes of India in two decades, near the Bahanaga Bazar railway station, they walked past large cranes lifting damaged coaches from the railway tracks. Rescue personnel and anguished family members milled around the site. The two fathers were finally turned away by Railway Protection Force personnel. They stood under the sun, eyes brimming with tears, unsure of what to do next.
