So near, and yet so far for Asarul Sheikh, a 32-year-old migrant labourer who went to Uttar Pradesh four years ago in search of livelihood.

After covering around 1,100km on foot or by trucks, the homeward-bound man is stuck 112km away from his village in Mushidabad’s Beldanaga. Sheikh started his journey from Partawal Bazar in UP on Friday night, along with four others who belong to the same village near Beldanaga.

After the nationwide lockdown had been announced to stem the spread of Covid-19, the five were staring at starvation in UP and wanted to reach home somehow.

On his way back, Sheikh, who used to hawk plastic items in Gorakhpur and earn around Rs 10,000 a month, had to change four vehicles and walk for around 120km in the past 60 hours.

However, police stopped Sheikh and his fellow travellers in Bolpur and sent them to a local quarantine centre set up by the Bengal government for migrant workers returning home.

Sheikh — his wife and one-year-old son stays at the Beldanaga village — narrated his homeward-bound journey.

Night journey

It was around 10pm on Friday that I and four of my friends finally decided to set out from our rented accommodation at Partawal Bazar. After walking around 30 minutes, we found a mini truck going to Jharkhand and the driver was kind enough to give us a ride. After a two-hour ride, police stopped us. I can’t name the area, but it was somewhere in UP.

The police forced us to get off the vehicle, but before that, the driver had taken Rs 1,500 from us. With our backpacks, we started walking along the national highway. After an hour, we found another truck, which was heading towards Madanpur in Bihar, and we decided to hitch a ride.

Nearing Bengal

We had thought that on our way to Madanpur in Bihar (Madanpur is around 329km from Gorakhpur) through state highway 1, we would get some food, but we didn’t. We had our last full meal on Friday night, but we were looking forward to reach Madanpur as the driver had assured us that we would get some vehicle to reach Bengal from Madanpur. We reached Madanpur around 2pm on Saturday and got off by paying him Rs 500. Then we started walking towards Jharkhand along NH19.

We were extremely tired and could not walk as we were so hungry. However, we were lucky enough to get another mini truck which was heading towards Jamtara in Jharkhand. We reached Jamtara, where we spent Saturday night on road and had some rotis that we had packed while leaving our home.

Stuck for a day

Sunday was very bad for us as we did not get any vehicle to hitch a ride. We were so tired because of hunger that we could walk very little. We spent almost the entire day in Jamtara and moved little towards Asansol through Niyamatpur-Chittaranjan road. There was no food available on our way.

Finally, we got a truck on Sunday night and started our journey back home. The driver assured us of taking us to Beldanga if we could pay him Rs 4,000 and we agreed.

Final hurdle

We were proceeding, but the driver of the truck dropped us near Bhedia in East Burdwan (near Bolpur) early on Monday morning after he found police checkpost where the cops were checking the vehicles. We got off, crossed the road and met some local people who advised us to go to a local Trinamul office in Bolpur.

Finally, we reached Bolpur police station, located adjacent to the party office. The police gave us bread and bananas. But they told us we couldn’t move forward and took us to a quarantine centre at a private college at Bahiri village. The best thing there was that we got some proper food after 48 hours as they served us lunch.

Last word

We have to spend the next 14 days here. It’s sad because we all wanted to go home and our village is barely 112km away. But it’s also good that we will get food and shelter, which we didn’t have in UP. We had to spend Rs 6,000 on our way and we were uncertain of what to do after reaching home. It seems we would be taken care of in the quarantine. We thank the police for helping us as we would have probably died of starvation had we stayed on in UP.