The evening sun cast long, weary shadows across the rusted tracks of the old railway station. Seventy-year-old Rahmat Ali sat on a splintered wooden bench, his hands trembling as he leaned on his bamboo cane. Every time a train arrived, his heart raced. He would stand up, scanning the faces of every passenger with eyes clouded by time but bright with hope
Ten years ago, his son Ayon had left for the city. "Wait for me here, Baba," he had said. "I will come back to take you once I am successful."
Ayon became successful. He became rich. But the train never brought him back. Money arrived occasionally, but the son who made the promise never did.
Why do you still wait, Chacha?" a young porter asked him one day. "He is not coming back."
Rahmat Ali smiled sadly, looking at the two parallel tracks that never meet. "We are like these tracks," he whispered. "Traveling side by side, yet worlds apart."