BALASORE: It is celebration time for Sabita Behera, a widow of Aruhabruti (Santoshpur) village under Bhogarai block of Balasore district. Her 29-year-old son Chandan who was presumed dead eight years ago, has returned home.
Touching scenes unfolded when he reached home on Friday evening. It brought back the memories when he had left for Mumbai at the age of 21 to eke out a living. He was spotted by his sister and brother-in-law while begging in the attire of a saint in a market place in Kolkata a couple of days back.
“My son-in-law first recognised him and told my daughter. They found out his name tattooed on the right hand. Though initially Chandan couldn’t acknowledge, he recognised them later. He agreed to come back,” said Sabita.
Along with some relatives Chandan, newly married then, had gone to Mumbai to work in a hotel in 2003. A couple of months later, the relatives informed his mother that he was run over by a speeding train while crossing a railway track in Mumbai.
“They said that bringing his body to Bhogarai from Mumbai was not possible and they would dispose of the body there. We even performed his last rites. While his ailing father died of shock after a few months, his wife was married off,” Sabita said.
Recounting the horrifying days he had passed through, Chandan said, a saint had rescued him while he was lying in a pool of blood along a railway track in Mumbai. “He took me to the nearby hospital and treated me. He kept me along with him for several years in an ashram. We used to visit different pilgrim centres every year and recently had come to Kolkata,” he said, adding that he had forgotten about his family after the incident.