Wife and kid on a cycle, he sets out for home 650km away

Noida: Hunger stared Faujdar Verma in the face, but he had no money to buy food even for his wife and their six-year-old son. Home was 650km away, and walking was not an option with a little child. But the family had a cycle.
Around 10am on Wednesday, Faujdar set out for home in UP’s Bahraich district from Delhi. His wife and son sat on the carrier as Faujdar pedalled his way on to the Noida-Greater Noida Expressway. As the sun blazed over the head, a tree here and there became their shade. They took turns to walk when the incline was too steep and Faujdar could no longer pull the load.
The family was joined by a group of 11 other migrant workers — some travelling on cycle rickshaws, others on carts. Their stories were similar — about hunger, poverty and being abandoned by their employers after the lockdown.
These workers would undertake painting contracts at different wedding venues in Najafgarh, but had been left jobless and penniless after the lockdown. On Thursday morning, the group had reached Noida’s Sector 61.
Faujdar (30), his wife Geeta Devi (25) and their six-year-old son Shivam were exhausted. They said they had reached Noida by dodging the cops, cycling through villages and surviving on food given by social groups active on the way.
But the group was stopped by cops twice — first near the elevated road and later near Pari Chowk.
“We were not sure about our future in Delhi. So we decided to return home where at least, we would not have to worry about food and shelter. The cops stopped us near the elevated road and told us not to travel in such harsh weather,” Faujdar told TOI. However, they were let off later.
And as they halted to rest on the Yamuna Expressway before the Jewar toll, his wife said they were surviving on the food that they had prepared in Delhi and storing most of what they got from the organisations in Noida.
“People gave us packets of poori-sabzi, bananas and water bottles. We have stored the food as we will hungry on the way,” she said.
After halting for about half an hour, they decided to continue on their journey even as little Shivam was still asleep on the cart.
Some distance behind them, at the Noida-Greater Noida Expressway, TOI spotted another group of more than 25 labourers riding cycles with two children. They had been travelling from Sector Jhundpura near the Noida-Delhi border.
Shivram, one of the labourers travelling towards Bihar with his family, had seated his two children— Krishna Kumar (7) and Mohit Kumar (6) — on the front seat of a cycle. “We want to go to Bihar’s Rohtas. We don’t know when and how we will reach. Let us hope that we get something,” Shivram said.
“The cops were not allowing us to cross the Delhi-Noida border but we managed to do so somehow using an area passing through the jungle,” he said.
While a few trains are set to leave for Bihar from Uttar Pradesh soon, the labourers said that they had no clue about any such facility.