"May I Come With You?"

I was just nineteen when I boarded the Mumbai-bound Konark Express, all alone, from Warangal, AP, one cold January morning many years ago. On the train, I got chatting with a woman with two beautiful little girls seated near me. Her name was Jyoti and her journey seemed just the opposite of mine—she was returning to her husband and I was leaving mine. Since it wasn’t easy for me to tell a stranger about my plight, I lied to Jyoti, saying I was going to visit my pregnant sister in Mumbai.

Jyoti shared her supper with me, after her daughters fell asleep, and we stayed awake for the train’s 2am halt at Pune. As we pulled into Pune station and Jyoti began getting  her luggage together, I mustered  enough  courage to ask her, “May I come with you?”
Surprised, Jyoti sat down and gazed at me enquiringly.

“I’m actually running away from home,” I blurted, my voice breaking. “My husband beats me. My parents won’t take me back and I really have nobody in Bombay.”

The train halted and Jyoti and her older daughter went to the door. I watched through my window as Jyoti walked to her waiting husband and whispered something. She then turned around and beckoned me. 
I picked up her sleeping younger daughter and followed. Soon the five of us were seated silently in a taxi.

At their two-bedroom flat, Jyoti let me have one room, telling me we’d talk the next morning. I slept peacefully that night. In the morning, over a cup of coffee, I told Jyoti how I’d married much against my parents’ wishes, a year ago. To cut my long story short, my parents were right. I managed to escape  from the abuse and the beating, when I got the chance. I had `400, out of which I’d spent `75 on the train ticket to Mumbai.

Jyoti heard me out. “Ramalaxmi,” she said sadly, “you’re here, but we can’t support you for too long. My husband’s business has collapsed and it’s difficult for us too. You should contact your parents.” My folks had been so upset with me, I didn’t dare contact them.
“Please let me stay for a week,” 
I pleaded. “I’ll find a job and then move out.”

I spent the week looking for work, even as a maidservant, but nobody would give an educated girl like me such a job. At the end of the week I wrote to an uncle who lived in Maharashtra. He came to fetch me. 
I thanked Jyoti for her generosity and left with my uncle.
It’s been 27 years since the incident. I returned to college, graduated, got an MBA. Today, I hold a senior position with a leading state-owned bank. In the meanwhile, I remarried and now have a loving husband and three children. A few years ago, on a business trip to Pune, my efforts to trace Jyoti’s family proved futile. They’d obviously