675km... 1 man, 3 wheels, infinite grit

Asansol: He doesn’t remember when he started out, saying rather vaguely that it’s been “several days” now. There’s just one idea fixed in his head: home. It doesn’t matter that this “idea” — in

Bally

, Howrah — is a staggering 675 kilometres away from Varanasi, where he works. As long as he has his cycle

rickshaw

, it seems within reach.

Having travelled more than 450km on his rickshaw, Kishor Shaw is now within striking distance of his dream. Now at the Jharkhand-Bengal border, he has to just paddle another 200km. The distance left, he says, seems almost nothing because he’ll get to see his kids — a son and a daughter — sometime next week.

For the last three decades, Shaw (48) has been ferrying pilgrims from one temple to another in Varanasi. It had been enough to eke out a modest living. But his life, like that of countless other migrant workers, was thrown into disarray with the advent of the novel coronavirus, and the lockdown.

He managed to survive the first phase of the lockdown, but decided to start his odyssey once it got extended, realising that he had no money left. “People told me the lockdown may continue for several more days, and even after the lockdown is lifted, tourists would be few,” he told TOI. “I heard stories about people who had walked their way back home from one state to another. I still have a rickshaw. So, one evening, I packed all that I had into it and started out on the journey back home.”

A Class VII dropout from a Hindi-medium school in Bally, Shaw says he packed some flour, rice, water and a portable stove and started paddling along NH-19. “I generally ride through the morning and take rest in the afternoon. I cook my own food and start paddling again in the evening. At night, I sleep under my rickshaw, propping my body against one of the wheels to make sure it doesn’t get stolen,” he says through an improvised mask fashioned out of an old bed sheet.

Most of his journey has been surprisingly smooth: he had no problems exiting UP and passing on to Bihar, and again at the Bihar-Jharkhand border. But he has been stuck for a few days at the Jharkhand-Bengal border. “He had no e-pass or any documentation. So, our officials stopped him at the border,” said a senior officer of the Asansol-Durgapur police commissionerate. “He remained there for several days, pleading with us every now and then to let him pass. Finally, seeing his condition and after conducting medical tests and thermal screening, we allowed him to pass on Wednesday. We have advised him to stay in home quarantine for 14 days once he reaches home.”

Once home, apart from catching up with his family, he’ll go back to eking out a living by plying his rickshaw, as usual, Shaw says. But he’ll stick to his hometown, at least initially. “I have realised that making a living in Varanasi will not be easy like before. Hence, I will try to do something near home for the time being. If I stay alive, and if the situation gets better, I may go back to Varanasi again, but for the time being, I am looking forward to a few days of sleep at home,” he says, getting ready to start out again.