Bicycle girl wants to study
Fifteen-year-old Jyoti Kumari earned global fame after recently carrying her injured father, Mohan Paswan, on a bicycle from Gurugram, Haryana, to Darbhanga, Bihar, a nearly 1,200km trip over seven days, in the lockdown. “If I hadn’t, my father would have died of hunger,” she says.
Paswan, a rickshaw driver, had an accident which affected his legs, hence his livelihood. “Problems increased after the lockdown. Our landlord wanted to throw us out. He cut the power twice as we couldn’t pay the rent. Since my father had no income, we thought of returning home somehow.”
But her father was sceptical if she’d be able to make it. “He repeatedly told me I won’t be able to manage it. I withdrew ₹1,000 from the bank and collected ₹500 for a secondhand cycle. I would ride the bike for more than 50-60km every day. We’d stop at a petrol pump, spend the night there. People offered us food. Whenever we could, we would hitch rides,” she explains.
Jyoti’s act got the attention of many, including Ivanka Trump, daughter of US President Donald Trump. She also received a training offer from the Cycling Federation of India. The district magistrate of Darbhanga has enrolled her in class nine in a school there. “I want to study so my father doesn’t have to migrate for work again,” she adds.