A train pulls away, and inside it sits a boy who has just lost everything.

It's the 1970s. Shekhar is alone, uncertain, and too young to know that this journey will become the first page of a much bigger life. What follows is a collection of true, interconnected stories — of strangers who taught him without meaning to, of small kindnesses that changed his course, of a childhood in an India many will remember, and few have captured quite like this.

Shekhar Da traces one boy's path from a train seat with nothing to an officer's uniform in the sky — Part One of a series for readers who believe even the smallest moment can redirect a life.

Walking the Way Forward begins here.