Title - No cash, ticket but home-bound

Barely a fortnight after he landed in Chennai, 18-year-old Numol had to cut short his stay and board the special train to Guwahati without a penny in his pocket as his parents in Ass-m’s Lakshmipur wanted him back home.Numol and his 19-year-old friend, Ratul Boro, were among the nearly 2,000  crowd of migrant workers at platform No 11 of the Chennai Central station, waiting for the train to come from Bengaluru in the early hours of Friday.Fear and anxiety were writ large on the faces of the predominantly young crowd, which included women and children, even as they jostled with each other as though it was one last chance to live.Among the waiting passengers were some who had fled from Bangalore and Hyderabad. A worker in a factory in Hyderabad, 22-year-old Pergu, reached Chennai in the afternoon and was waiting for the train that will take him to his village in Assam after a 72-hour journey.“Bengaluru railway station was packed with more than 10,-000 migrants waiting to board the train so we came to Chennai...,” said 35-year-old Dharam Singh from Darjeeling. Dharam Singh, a manager in a hotel in Bengaluru, was in a hurry to take his two daughters and wife safely home.  “I am scared after hearing rumours going around in Bengaluru. The city has been my second home for the last 14 years. I will come back after leaving the children at home,” he said “Even a Muslim colleague advised me to go home and return to Bengaluru after Eid when things would have cooled down,” Singh said.

The people knew that the 72-hour journey would be tiring but they had no alternative. Boro and Numol were fascinated by the beach as they hail for a land locked state. “People in Chennai are nice and the beach is beautiful,” says Boro, a seventh standard dropout and a son of tea estate labourer. He came three months back and was working in a paint company near Poonamalee. He would like to come back and work in the same company. His friend Numol, son of a farm worker, joined him 15 days ago. “Our parents are worried and want us back after Assam Chief Minister warned that the migrants from the state should return before August 20,” said Boro, who had received only two months’ salary of Rs 13,000.

Numol, on the other hand, has not received his first salary of Rs 6,000 a month and was hence penniless.

Both of them planned to board the train without buying tickets and use the Rs 150 that Boro had for the food expenses during the journey.