Darshan by Amrit Chima

on the boy’s shoulder and pointing to the train station platform behind them. “Nalin was delivering his package and found him up there with your sisters.”
    “My sisters?” Baba Singh asked, relieved that Ranjit had been right.
    Dr. Bansal nodded. “Yes, they are there. But, Baba, your father is not well, and the girls would not come with us. We were hoping they would listen to you or Desa or Ranjit.”
    The train’s whistle pierced the air, and the train began to move slowly along the platform. The click clack along the tracks quickened, and they could smell black coal smoke.
    Behind them, at the end of the road, a man stumbled down the station’s platform staircase. “Bapu?” Baba Singh called, sprinting past the doctor and Yashbir who quickly followed. Lal was a disheveled and forlorn mess of hair and wilted limbs. “Bapu, where are Kiran and Avani?”
    “They had more courage than I,” Lal replied. “The conductor told me to go home. Get on or go home.”
    “We just saw them,” the doctor said. “They were up there.”
    “Get on or go home,” Lal said again. “They made their choice. Brave girls. They are brave girls.”
    Lal stumbled and Yashbir caught him by the shoulder, twisted him around. “Ji, did you send them away?”
    “No,” Dr. Bansal said. “Not possible. The station master would never allow it.”
    “Unless he did not see,” Yashbir replied. He looked at Lal. “Tell us what happened?”
    Baba Singh stared in sudden horror at the departing train receding in the distance. “What did you do?” he asked, his voice rising.
    “I do not have to explain myself,” Lal said, shrugging Yashbir off and standing unsteadily.
    “Ji,” Yashbir said firmly. “Where are they?”
    Lal began to sob. He sank to his knees. “They are gone. I kept thinking that I should go away, too, that it was too much to look at you all every day, that it was too much to think of it all the time. But when the train finally stopped I could not get up. I just watched it. Where would I go? What would I do?” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, squinting beseechingly upward.
    Baba Singh gaped at the train, now a dot on the horizon, a pencil prick. He launched up the stairs three at a time, crying out, running, waving his arms in vain.
     
    ~   ~   ~
     
    Yashbir tore away toward the telegraph office, Baba Singh close behind, shouting for help. The blacksmith burst through the door, startling the operator. “We need to send an urgent message,” he said, “to the Amritsar train station.”
    Two young girls. Stop , the old man dictated. Unattended, coming from Amarpur. Stop. Please hold them. Stop. We are coming. Stop.
    Minutes later the operator read the grim return message: The train station serves thousands of passengers in one day. Stop. We will try, but there is very little possibility of locating them. Stop.
    “Get your brothers and sister,” the blacksmith told Baba Singh, tossing aside the message and shoving the boy outside. “Bring them here. Quickly.”
    Wasting no time, Yashbir had a tonga waiting for them outside the telegraph office when Baba Singh returned with the others. “Up, up,” he said, already prodding the horse forward as they scrambled to get on.
    They crossed the train tracks and Baba Singh saw his father, still weeping, leaning heavily on Dr. Bansal, who escorted him toward the hotel.
    “I knew,” Desa said. “As soon as I found the elephant.”
    Khushwant held her hand.
    “They will search for her,” she mumbled. “They will search for Bebe everywhere.”
    Ranjit had a haunted look about him and did not speak.
    The afternoon was hot as they plodded through the open plains toward Amritsar. They moved too slowly. The light was already changing, their shadows moving position. Baba Singh slumped. His eyes were open, but he could not focus on his surroundings. He pictured his father stepping up to the train station platform, Kiran and Avani following closely. The