A bowl of rice in the afternoon and another before going to bed at night. A little salt to taste to go with it, if lucky.

That is the lockdown diet for a 45-year-old man who used to travel to Calcutta for work every day from Canning, in South 24-Parganas, till not so long ago.

Few would have known Ajoy Pal but many have benefited from what he did for a living. He was a bookbinder in Calcutta’s boi para, in the College Street area.

Pal has a congenital defect in his left leg and can only walk with support of his left arm. Yet he travelled 45km by train from Amraberiya village in Canning to the city every day.

He would bind 25 to 50 books and earn Rs 100 to 200 daily. A meagre income but that helped him manage three meals a day for himself, his wife and their two sons, one of them mentally challenged.

Pal's travails began after the book market was shut down because of the lockdown on March 22 and his income dropped to zero overnight.

“When I used to earn, we would usually have a cup of tea in the morning with biscuits and another round of tea with muri for breakfast. We have not drunk tea or eaten breakfast for many days,” Pal told Metro.

“The only food I can manage for myself and my family is some boiled rice which we eat with little salt…. First in the afternoon and then again at night before going to bed…. We eat nothing else throughout the day,” said Pal.

Pal, who lives in a tin-roof house with two 10ftx10ft rooms, is not the only bookbinder in the College Street hub who is going through this plight.

The bookbinders are mostly daily wage workers who come from nearby districts. Their income depended on the number of books they would bind in a day.

For some books, they would be paid as little as Rs 2 a piece. The maximum was Rs 5 a book.

Bookbinders are staring at an uncertain future because many bulk buyers who had placed orders with publishers are now reluctant to make the purchase.

The bookbinding job comes in the last part of the book production process. Once editing, composing and printing of the content are complete, the binders are engaged to finish the product.

Pal said his income stopped completely from the very next day the lockdown began.

“I had somehow managed to buy some food for me and my family till March-end with whatever little money I had saved. Our struggle started from the beginning of April. I have no money now,” said Pal.

There is hardly any job available in the village for a disabled person, he said. “Many poor people like me who have lost their jobs in the lockdown are trying to earn some money by selling vegetables. Some are doing agricultural jobs. But I can’t do that… I don't have money… I can’t walk properly.”

Pal had studied till Class VIII and joined the book binding profession in his teens because his father, who was a bookbinder, too, wanted him to follow in his footsteps.

Sometimes, when there was no work in publishing houses on College Street, Pal would earn some money by binding documents for Chittaranjan College, located near the book hub.

About three weeks ago Pal had received some rice and wheat from the government. But that was too little to sustain his family of four, he said.

Pal had called up his friends and the organisations he worked for on College Street seeking some monetary help or relief.

Shyamalendu Chatterjee, the principal of Chittaranjan College, contacted an NGO and arranged for some food items for them.

Like any other person, Pal is waiting for the lockdown to get lifted.

But he wonders whether his plight would improve because he has been told by most publishers that their businesses have suffered a setback because of the lockdown and chances of his being hired on a daily basis are slim.

Now that the publishers are reluctant to employ him, Pal has made up his mind to take up any job which he can manage with his physical disability and limited educational qualifications.