An 11-year-old boy, Tabaarak, pedalled a tricycle cart for nine consecutive days to transport his parents from Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi to their village in Bihar’s Araria, a distance of around 600 kilometres, amidst the lockdown. A video of the same spread taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ (self-reliant India) catchphrase.
Israfil and Tabaarak at the quarantine centre and Sogra at home. Photos: Tanzil Asif
Tabaarak is the fifth of six children. His elder brother is stranded in Tamil Nadu. He has three sisters, one of whom is married. The family is landless and lives in a hut on land owned by someone else in a village under Araria’s Jokihat block. His mother, Sogra, had been blinded in an injury while cutting paddy crop. His father Israfil, who used to work in a marble shop in Varanasi for 20 years, had met with an accident which left him with a fractured leg.
“A stone fell on my foot on the fourth day of work, and the owner of the shop got me medical treatment. My wife and son had visited me just before lockdown. We ran out of food. I have a tricycle cart, so we started the journey thinking that we are dying here (in Varanasi) anyway. But, god and the people we met on the way helped us reach home safely,” said 55-year-old Israfil.
In the initial days of the suddenly announced lockdown, with no option but to walk or cycle to their native places from the cities where they worked, several migrants battled extreme fatigue and hunger.
— source thewire.in | 25/May/2020