Night Train at Deoli by Ruskin Bond (1990) (India)

The university student narrator tells of his train ride every summer to visit his grandmother.
In the early pre-dawn hours, the train stops at Deoli where “nothing ever happens.” This sets
up the encounter between the boy and the young girl selling baskets. She is poor, barefoot,
thinly clothed, but “then those eyes, searching and eloquent, met mine.” (2) He jumps off the
train to get closer and buys a basket. The train whistle brings him back. On his return trip to
Delhi, he sees her at the station again, and this time, he meets her and talks to her briefly.

The third time he vows to be bolder in expressing his feelings, but she is not there and no one
at the station can tell him where she is. His true feelings come out:
What could I do about finding a girl I had seen only twice, who had hardly spoken
to me, and about whom I knew nothing-absolutely nothing-but for whom I felt a
tenderness and responsibility that I had never felt before? (5)
The student fantasizes stopping at Deoli, getting off the train and looking for her, but he never
does. The final paragraph is written years later, in retrospect, “I never break my journey to
Deoli, but I pass through as often as I can” (6).