Not without my father

A Father-daughter relationship is one of the most beautiful relationships in the world and when there is a bicycle thrown into the equation; you can be sure that it only provides further impetus to keep the wheels of this relationship turning even more smoothly and securely.  By May 2020, 15-year-old, Jyoti Kumari, had realized that her father, Mohan Paswan, who was recuperating from a knee surgery, performed at Delhi’s Safdarjung hospital, after a road accident, was in no position to travel back home to Bihar either by bus or by truck which thousands of migrant laborers, across the country, were boarding in order to get ‘home.’ That is when, perhaps unknown to her, her teen instinct kicked in. She did what most teens her age do – nag – until she got what she wanted. She started beseeching her father to leave Gurugram and head back to their village, Siruhully, in Bihar’s Darbhanga district, on a bicycle! Paswan, a daily wage earner, who sold samosas and bread pakoras before becoming an e-rickshaw driver, was in no mood to relent. Ride pillion for a distance of around 1200 kms and that too on a bicycle that his daughter would pedal on a national highway, all the way from