A tailor’s long journey from Jaipur to Farrukhabad to be with family

A tailor’s long journey from Jaipur to Farrukhabad to be with family

The sudden lockdown announcement, an uncertain future, concern for family pushed him to walk to his hometown in Uttar Pradesh hundreds of kilometres away

10/05/2020, ROHINI SOMANATHAN,BHAVISHYA MEHTA

The following narrative is based on an interview conducted on April 15 with a tailor who walked most of the way from Jaipur to his home in Farrukhabad district of Uttar Pradesh after the announcement of the nationwide lockdown. In 2018, he moved to east Delhi with his wife and three children. Initially they were quite happy in Delhi and found the schools relatively good. When communal tensions rose in 2019, the family moved back to the safety of their home. He started work again in his father’s shop but there was not enough work to meet school and household expenses. His sister invited him to come to Jaipur where there was more work. The lockdown was announced after he had been in Jaipur for three months. His story illustrates that there are no stereotypical migrants — they come from many different walks of life. Their shared experience is their loss of livelihood and the traumatic separation from their family during a life-threatening crisis.

Setting out

I saw the news of the lockdown on my mobile phone on the night of March 24. I had been staying with my sister in the Idgah neighbourhood of Jaipur for over three months and working in a tailoring shop in the area. Four of my relatives also worked in the same shop. My wife and three boys were at our home in Farrukhabad.

I spent the first day of the lockdown indoors. The following evening, a van came to the road crossing near us with packets of food from a local NGO. A group stood with large sticks and took control over the food packets. Some claimed they were policemen, but no one was in uniform. The next morning, we saw some of those packets (empty or half-eaten) strewn by the rubbish dump and in the drains.

I was well-provided for at my sister’s house but my co-workers were hungry. I carried food for them and we decided we should somehow leave for home. While there was no dearth of necessities at my sister’s house for now, there was no telling what would happen if the lockdown continued and my nephews lost their tailoring jobs. I could not bear to burden my sister’s family or beg from others. My employer owed me ₹3,000 but he said he could not pay me until the situation improved.

We set out after nightfall on April 27. My sister handed me a packet of food and ₹1,000, adding to the ₹500 of my own. We started walking, three or four metres apart, afraid to be recognised as a single group. We saw others coming in from all directions, and by the time we reached the police barricade, about 3 km away, we were a large number, too many to control or hold back. There were all sorts of people in the crowd. They let us pass.

We must have walked 50 km towards Agra before we lay down by the side of the road, and slept fitfully for a couple of hours. We got to our feet as the sun rose. The eldest among us turned back saying, “It is a long road, I will not manage it.” The rest of us continued. We felt death at our heels and had to somehow get home.

There were villages along the way. At the first village, there was a religious reading going on in a tent. They let us in to rest, brought us buttermilk. We kept receiving bits of food. In the small towns, there were sometimes food packets, chips and bottles of water. Neither the travellers nor the villagers cared about class or religion. They wished us well, took video clips of us on their phones and gave us faith in humanity and confidence that we would reach our destination. We finally reached Bharatpur and found a tractor that gave us a ride for about 30 km. Then we walked again until we reached the Agra bus station later that night. At a police outpost, 25 km from Agra, we were told we would be quarantined in schools if we went ahead, but we kept moving. In Agra, I called a relative who said we were welcome if we could make our way there. They had omelettes waiting for us and we stayed the night.

The curfew-like conditions in Agra were much worse than Jaipur. We left at 8 the next morning when people were allowed out of their houses for essentials. We walked to Tundla, where an autorickshaw driver took us 50 km for ₹1,500. From there we walked to Etah. Luckily, we found a matador van carrying vegetables and scrambled in the back until its destination in Aliganj and another tractor carrying wheat harvest to Karimganj. I then called my sister who sent an e-rickshaw to take us the remaining 10 km. We reached home on April 29 night, a little over two days after leaving Jaipur.

Waiting to exhale

It has been over two weeks but still feels as if I have just entered my house and sat down with my family. When I see news of crowds of workers at bus stations, I feel their pain — our story is one. Stuck far away, one does not think of food or belongings, just a desperate longing to reach their family and a place they belong. I am not quite sure what the future holds. The police are taking bribes from labourers wanting to work and from grocery shops, which are supposed to be open. My father’s tailoring shop is closed for now. My wife usually works from home on embroidery and stitching accessories on fashion garments for city shops. There is no work these days because the sequins and other accessories are mostly from China and there are also no customers. We will manage something provided the lockdown ends soon.

(Rohini Somanathan is professor of economics at the Delhi School of Economics and Bhavishya Mehta a student in his final semester of the M.A. Economics programme.)