The train screeched into the city station with a thunder that shook Ravi's bones. As he stepped down onto the crowded platform, the air hit him like a wall—thick with smoke, sweat, spices, and noise. Dharampur had been noisy, yes, but this was a different kind of chaos. Here, thousands of voices overlapped, porters shouted, whistles shrieked, and vendors pushed steaming tea in his face before he could take a breath.
Ravi clutched his cloth bag tighter, his entire life knotted inside. He had imagined this moment as freedom—his escape from Dharampur, from Arjun's mockery, from Chhotelal's suffocating debts. But standing here now, he felt impossibly small, a single drop swallowed by an ocean.
"Coolie! Coolie! Where to?" a wiry man with a red turban rushed up, trying to grab his bag. Ravi shook his head, mumbling, "No… I'm fine." The man cursed under his breath and vanished into the crowd.
Ravi walked out of the station gates and froze. The city unfurled before him—skyscrapers of glass catching the early sun, rickshaws honking madly, posters peeling from walls, children darting between cars to sell cheap toys. He had never seen buildings so tall, or roads so wide, or faces so indifferent.
A boy about his age, barefoot and sharp-eyed, noticed his confusion. "First time?" he asked with a grin.
Ravi nodded.
"Then learn quick," the boy said. "In this city, you stop moving, you starve." With that, he melted into the crowd like smoke.
---
By midday, Ravi had walked until his legs felt carved from stone. His coins had vanished into two cups of tea and a stale bread roll. He had no place to sleep, nowhere to leave his bag.
At one corner, he saw men hauling bricks at a construction site. Their shirts clung dark with sweat, muscles straining under the weight. He thought of joining them, but the foreman barked at him, "We've got enough hands! Move!"
He drifted back to the station as evening settled, hunger gnawing his stomach. A group of beggar children circled him, asking for coins, then laughing when they saw he had none. He sat down on a cold slab near the platform, clutching his knees, watching trains come and go—each one full of passengers with somewhere to be.
For the first time since leaving Dharampur, fear gripped him. What if his mother was right? What if the city chewed him up before he could even start?
As the station lights flickered on, Ravi lay down with his bag under his head. The concrete was hard, the night colder than he expected. But he forced his eyes shut. Tomorrow would be different. It had to be.
"This is not the end," he whispered again, the words tasting weaker now but still alive. "It's the beginning."
And with that, Ravi's first night in the city passed—hungry, restless, but unbroken.