A boy escaped from his home as he could not bear the suffering of his brothers and sisters from starvation. He boarded a train to Delhi without a ticket in search of a job but he had to get off at Allahabad for the frequent encounter with the travelling ticket examiner. A meagre amount of around twenty rupees with which he left home, was soon exhausted. He had neither food nor shelter. However, the compassionate caretaker of the Ananda Bhavan of the Nehru family allowed him to sleep at the portico of the building. He sold his mother's finger-ring which he used to wear at a cost of twenty-four rupees but there was no hope of any job at Allahabad. He boarded a train to Bengal and got off at Burdwan. He thought that the district of Burdwan being the granary of Bengal would provide him enough rice to eat. But having no money, he had to starve. One night he fell asleep in front of a garage and a Muslim man who hired the garage as a living space, saw him the next morning. He took pity on him, gave him a soap to take bath and a dry lungi to put on. He also took him to a fixed- price hotel and paid ten annas for his lunch. The hungry boy ate voraciously and that put him in trouble. He went to the same hotel of Pandeji at night with the same ten annas for dinner but he was refused food for eating a lot. Later at the intervention of his host, the cost of his meal was fixed at a price of fourteen annas. But he was taking less henceforth as he was scared that the price might be further raised. Later Pandeji reduced his rate to ten annas because the boy was incurring a loss.

It is no story written by Atin Bandyopadhyay but a glimpse of his childhood. He was born in Rainadi in the district of Dhaka in 1930. After the partition, the whole family shifted to Berhampur in the district of Murshidabad. The family was surviving from the meagre income of priesthood.