Dharmendra Kumar’s journey seems like a miracle to me. After waiting for his employer to pay him and depleting all his savings in the process, Dharmendra decided to leave Nellore, Andhra Pradesh for his village Khakhra in Jharkhand.
It had been one and a half months since work had stopped, so most of his savings were over. He sold a few of his belongings and decided to buy a cycle with the money. “We would be able to maintain distance on cycles, unlike in trains, where it won’t be possible,” he said.
He was extremely wary of the virus, having heard the extent it could often go to. Along with 13 others who belonged to villages in Jharkhand, he left Nellore on cycles on the 2nd of May.
“We chose to cycle at night and take rest during the day to avoid the heat,” Dharmendra said. As the group cycled on, they had various encounters with people; in Andhra Pradesh, the police stopped them and hearing their plight, asked them to go to a restaurant ten kilometres ahead and have food.
The policeman promised to call the restaurant and asked them not to charge the cyclists. After going two days without food, this was the best thing that could happen for Dharmendra.
“We had food and then as we started leaving the restaurant owner asked for money. We explained to him that the policeman had promised us free food. The owner denied having received any such call so we didn’t know what to do.” Dharmendra was stuck, he didn’t have any money to pay for the food he had finished eating so he offered to give the restaurant owner his cycle. “I asked him to take my cycle, I would somehow manage. But seeing our desperation and plight the restaurant owner let us go.”
The group cycled on and crossed over to Odisha where the police harassed them. “They called us closer saying they would give us food and as we were close enough they started beating us with lathis.” Dharmendra and his co-travellers somehow managed to run and they continued their journey. But it had more hardships ahead.
They stopped in a village in Jharkhand and sat under the shade of a tree to take rest but the villagers came with lathis. “They shouted, you are coming from far, you are bringing Corona. I tried to explain to them that Covid spreads through touch and by not maintaining distance, like if we travelled by bus or train, but we were cycling and maintaining distance, so the risk of us getting infected was low. But they didn’t want to listen, they threatened to beat us up so we left.”
Finally, 15 days and countless incidents later, Dharmendra reached his village and started searching for a quarantine centre because he didn’t want to risk his family and neighbours.
There was no quarantine centre in his village or the villages around. He quarantined in a separate room at home and came out fourteen days later. One might think that his journey is over, but this was only the beginning; his journey started with his employee not giving him what he deserved, as he went on he faced police brutality, stigma due to Covid, lack of a quarantine facility and now joblessness.