Fifteen-year-old in India cycles 745 miles home with disabled father on bike
From her village in east India, 15-yearold Jyoti Kumari reflected on her desperate 745-mile cycle home with her disabled father, a journey that has drawn international praise.
“I had no other option,” she said on Sunday. “We wouldn’t have survived if I hadn’t cycled to my village.”
Kumari said that she and her father might have starved if they had stayed in Gurugram, a suburb of New Delhi, with no income amid India’s coronavirus lockdown.
Her father, unable to walk after an accident, had earned a living by driving an auto rickshaw. But with all nonessential travel banned, he found himself among the millions of newly unemployed people. Their landlord demanded rent, which they could not pay, and threatened to evict them, Kumari said.
So she decided to buy a bicycle and, as thousands of other Indian migrant workers have done since March, make her way home.
Kumari pedalled for 10 days, her father riding on the back of the bike. The temperature climbed, and they survived on food and water given by strangers. Only once did Kumari give her legs a break, accepting a short lift on a truck.
The pair arrived in Darbhanga, their village in Bihar state, just over a week ago, reuniting with Kumari’s mother and brother-in-law, who had left the capital region after the lockdown was imposed on 25 March.
Kumari, an eighth-grade student, who moved from the village to Gurugram in January to take care of her dad, stayed on. She said on Sunday that she was still exhausted from the trip.
“It was a difficult journey,” she said.
“The weather was too hot, but we had no choice. I had only one aim in my mind, and that was to reach home.”
Upon their arrival, village officials placed Kumari’s father in a quarantine centre, a policy many state and local governments in India have implemented to try to keep returning migrants from spreading the coronavirus. They are now all quarantining at home.
India’s lockdown, which has lasted two months so far, appears to have staved off an immediate spike in coronavirus cases, buying the country time to build up reserves of medical supplies and expand its intensive care unit capacity. India has confirmed 125,102 cases, and 3,867 deaths.
The lockdown also triggered a humanitarian crisis as thousands of poor people try to get back to distant villages on foot, carrying the elderly on their shoulders and with small children slumped over rolling suitcases. Dozens of people have died on the way, struck by trains or trucks, from hunger or suicide.
India’s expansive railway system, the country’s lifeline, was closed for passenger services as part of the lockdown. Buses, planes and taxis were also grounded. But earlier in May, the government resumed limited train travel for migrants wishing to return home.
For India’s economy, mostly composed of informal-sector jobs, the lockdown has been crippling. The government has been easing restrictions in recent weeks to allow more people to return to work.
Kumari’s journey caught the attention of the Cycling Federation of India. The racing body, which sends teams to the Olympics, has offered to bring her back to New Delhi by train for a “tryout” next month. The trip also resonated in Washington; Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka called it “a beautiful feat of endurance and love” on Twitter.
Kumari said that while she was happy with the recognition, she had not cycled her father home in pursuit of fame. “It was a decision taken in desperation,” she said.