Pranit Biswas Chapter 1: The train to Shimla groaned like an old man remembering youth, dragging itself along curved mountain tracks as fog pressed against its windows. Dr. Amit Roy sat alone near the back, a well-worn leather satchel tucked beside him and a battered paperback of The Old Man and the Sea unopened in his lap. The book had been his travel companion through many stations of life—marriage, fatherhood, heartbreak—but today he couldn’t bring himself to read. His fingers traced the creases on its cover absently as snow flurried outside in brief gusts. After eighteen years of teaching literature…