Ushnish Roy, 22, was a fourth-year student at the Kharkiv National Medical Institute in Ukraine when war broke out on February 24.

Then a tenant in an apartment along with five other youths from Bengal, Ushnish who is now at home in Siliguri says things for him and his friends could have been very different if not for their landlord, “uncle Dennis”.

Speaking to this reporter, Ushnish said he was glad to be back but worried about his landlord. “I have not been able to reach uncle Dennis ever since I came home on March 5. I have no idea how he and his wife are doing.”

“If it wasn’t for him, I would not be home today.”

Ushnish, as part of a contingent of 300 repatriated medical students, will meet chief minister Mamata Banerjee in Calcutta on Wednesday reportedly as an endeavour to figure out the future of these students.

Ushnish, however, has a different take: “I need to tell the chief minister about how helpful my landlord was.”

Uncle Dennis, as he was affectionately called, was the landlord to the six youths, including Ushnish, at a Kharkiv apartment for two years. They didn’t know his surname, he was just “uncle Dennis”.

“Since mid-February, he became our saviour because his translations were the key to understanding (announcements for) when to go to the bunker or when to conduct errands,” said Ushnish. He added he and his friends got the “timely and useful advice” from Dennis on March 1 to set out for Poland border, when shelling in Kharkiv became severe.

“Uncle Dennis offered me his own money when we set out for Kharkiv station on foot, as all the ATMs were not working,” said the youth.

The youths left on foot for Kharkiv station that night, and were able to make it by train to Lyiv the next night notwithstanding overcrowded trains and priority to Ukrainian natives for boarding them.

The youths had their brushes with death on the way. “At one point, we had to stop short during our walk to railway station in an area that was being bombarded, but we made our way to the Poland border within two days,” said Ushnish, who was repatriated with his friends to India from Poland on March 5.

Ushnish’s mother Sarmistha says she is “extremely grateful” to her son's Ukranian landlord.

“He is the only reason that my son is sitting before me today... I have no other words to say,” she said.