Anais Josemon receiving the PM book from Railway Minister Piyush Goyal. (Twitter)
Four marks short of clearing her Class IX math examination and convinced that her father would be disappointed, 14-year-old Anais Josemon ran away from her Mahipalpur home and boarded a Chennai-bound train on Thursday.
Reunited with her family two days on, her mother said “the entire thing seems like a dream, an adventure the family is trying to forget”.
On Saturday, Anais was given a copy of Exam Warriors, a book penned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, by Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal. He also encouraged Anais to be a ‘warrior’ and not a ‘worrier’.
Speaking to The Indian Express, her mother, Ivona Peter, said, “She thought papa would be sad… My husband is a heart patient and has been at home since a surgery. She told me she left home as she couldn’t bear to see him sad.”
The girl, who studies at Holy Child Auxilium, told her mother she was going for tuition. “Once my daughter left, I realised the money for school fees, kept in my bag, was missing. I wanted to ask my daughter if she knew where it was, so I went to the tuition centre,” Peter said.
The girl was not at the Centre, and her phone was switched off. That’s when Peter, who works as a nanny for a Delhi-based advocate’s son, realised “something was wrong”. “I had doubts. She looked very sad when she left, she was very silent,” Peter said.
The girl later told her mother that she had taken an auto to Nizamuddin Railway Station, where she bought a second-class AC ticket to Chennai on the Tamil Nadu Express from an ‘agent’ who charged Rs 1,000 extra so she could travel without documents.
She waited for the train for 12 hours, buying an ice cream and a bottle of water in the meantime. “I cried most of the night, I was very sad. I couldn’t think of anything else,” the girl said.
She left on the train at 10 pm. “In the meantime, we complained to the police, looked everywhere, went to the Metro station and asked for CCTV footage. We couldn’t find her,” her mother said.
Around 11 pm, police got information about the girl passing through Faridabad area. “They told me the next day that they would be able to help me,” Peter said. At 4.30 am, the girl sent a message to her mother: “Mama, don’t worry about me. I am in a safe place.” “We replied saying we will pick you up. We kept sending messages, but she didn’t reply. Police then had an idea to tell her that her father was very unwell,” Peter said.
Meanwhile, Peter’s employer had got in touch with the Railways Minister. “She was finally traced to Bhopal. Police took a photo of her and sent it to us. When we identified her, police said we could come to pick her up, or they would bring her by train. My employer paid for air tickets so we could get her home,” she said.
Now united with her family, Anais is trying not to stress about exams. “I went off in a train, and I came back in a plane,” she jokingly told her mother.
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