They walked, the parents, wife and children, while he wheeled a cycle with jerry cans and bundles loaded on – and his 12-year-old differently-abled daughter cradled in a cloth sack tied to the side.
Earlier this week, as the lockdown was extended for the fourth time, Mukesh Kumar decided Delhi was no longer the place for him or his family and they would head to their village in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, even if it meant walking every step of the 500 km distance.
It was a precarious existence — dependent on his livelihood repairing tin trunks and iron buckets — to begin with. And with no work coming his way, starvation lay ahead.
So, the family of nine, Mukesh, his parents, wife and five children, the youngest less than a year old, set out from their ‘home’ under a flyover in Palam in southwest Delhi on the long walk to their village. While he pushed the cycle, the others walked alongside, some holding bags, others unwieldy bundles on their heads, some barefoot as they walked on the hot tarred road under a scorching sun and others wearing flimsy footwear.
Komal, his physically challenged daughter, could not walk or sit so she was put into a cloth sack strapped to the cycle.
And that’s when PTI photojournalist Arun Sharma captured them, his lens mirroring both their determination to forge on ahead and their desperate situation.
But their journey was cut short at Ghazipur near the Uttar Pradesh border and the family was sent back.
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