NEW DELHI – From her village in eastern India, 15-year-old Jyoti Kumari reflected on her desperate 1,200-kilometer (945-mile) bicycle journey home with her disabled father that has drawn international praise. “I had no other option," she said Sunday. “We wouldn’t have survived if I hadn’t cycled to my village.” Kumari said that she and her father risked starvation had they stayed in Gurugram, a suburb of New Delhi, with no income amid India's coronavirus lockdown.
Her father, whose injury in an accident left him unable to walk, had earned a living by driving an auto rickshaw. But with all nonessential travel banned, he found himself among millions of newly unemployed.