‘Lionhearted’ girl bikes dad across India, inspiring nation

NEW DELHI — She was a 15-year-old with a simple mission: Bring papa home.

Jyoti Kumari and her dad had nearly no money, no transport and their village was halfway across India. And her dad, an out-of-work migrant laborer, was injured and could barely walk.

So Jyoti told her dad: Let me take you home. He thought the idea was crazy but went along with it. She then jumped on a $20 purple bike bought with the last of their savings.

With her dad perched on the back, she pedaled from the outskirts of New Delhi to their home village, 700 miles away.

“Don’t worry, mummy,” she reassured her mother along the way, using borrowed cellphones. “I will get Papa home good.”

During the past two months under India’s coronavirus lockdown, millions of migrant laborers and their families have poured out of India’s cities, desperate and penniless, as they try to get back to their native villages where they can rely on family networks to survive.

Many haven’t made it. Some have been crushed by trains; others run over by trucks. A few have simply collapsed while trudging down a long, hot highway, dead from exhaustion.

But amid all this pain and sadness emerges a tale of devotion and grit. The Indian press has gushed about Jyoti the “lionhearted.”

And a few days ago, the story got even better.

While resting up in her village, Jyoti received a call from the Cycling Federation of India. Onkar Singh, the federation’s chairman, invited her to New Delhi for a tryout with the national team.

“She has great talent,” Singh said.

When it becomes a matter of survival, said Priya Deshingkar, a professor of migration and development at the University of Sussex, migrant laborers “will try to go home, because that is where their real social safety net lies.”

That’s why Jyoti hit the road. Her father, Mohan Paswan, a rickshaw driver from a lower rung of India’s caste system, was injured in a traffic accident in January and was running out of money even before the lockdown. He was among the legions of migrant workers performing menial jobs in the shadows of Gurugram, a satellite city of New Delhi and home to many millionaires.

Jyoti came out from their village in Bihar to care for Paswan. She had dropped out of school a year ago because the family didn’t have enough money. Things got even worse after the lockdown, with their landlord threatening to kick them out and then cutting off their electricity.

When Jyoti came up with the escape plan, her father shook his head.

On May 8, they set off. Many days they had little food. They slept at gas stations. They lived off the generosity of strangers. Jyoti said that except for a short lift on a truck, she pedaled nearly 100 miles a day. It wasn’t easy. Her father is big, and he was carrying a bag.

They made it last weekend. Her dad is now in quarantine.