When he was seven or eight years old, his parents died. Saleem doesn’t remember how. All that his faint recollection allows him is that they were well-off; his father worked in a bank, and owned a house and some land. He was enrolled in a government school. Saleem had a sister, “four or five years” elder to him.

“Soon after their death, one of my buas took me to her home. But within a few months, I was sent off to one of my mamajis in Shamli. My sister was also passed around like this, but we never stayed together,” recalls Saleem.

Saleem says his father was the only son of his parents and had two sisters.

His schooling had come to an abrupt halt but no relative bothered to resume it, he says.

One day, he ran away.

Within months of being rendered an orphan, Susheel was out in the streets, left to fend for himself.

“I could not take the constant taunts and humiliations anymore. I just left his [maternal uncle’s] house,” he says. “Nobody came after me. They were perhaps happy to get rid of me. I wasn’t even far. I was right here in Shamli, loitering in the streets.”

“They probably sold off our house and property as well,” he says. “They are not poor folks. They are lawyers and police officers.”

A truck owner, Mohammad Sabdar, took him in as a conductor. Sadbar did not pay him but provided him food and clothes. “The truck was my workplace and my bedroom. I spend every single day and night inside it,” he recalls.

Sabdar called him Saleem. He taught Saleem how to drive.

Saleem came to know his sister was being married off, but no relative invited him. His sister died within a few years of her marriage, says Saleem. “I don’t know how. I came to know about her death much later.”

When Saleem turned 15, Sabdar arranged his marriage with Wajida who hails from Jharkhand. “My nikahnama was the first piece of document in many years. It bore my name as Saleem and it became my official identity,” he says.