A Class X student of Chachand High School in Murshidabad’s Samserganj has been forced to turn into a hawker to keep his family running as illness and lockdown have robbed his parents of their jobs.

Unlike others of his age, a normal day for 15-year-old Jittu Saha doesn’t begin with picking up books to sit down for studies.

Instead of books, the boy picks up several packets of biscuits, snacks, puffed rice and bottles of pickles to lay them out on a rickshaw van. Jittu then sets out from Joykrishnapur to hawk his wares from one village to another.

Lockdown has changed the lives of the three-member family. Jittu’s father Phulchand Saha used to work as a mason in Kerala, while his mother Puspa Saha worked for a local bidi factory. A few days before the lockdown was imposed, Phulchand, who used to earn enough to keep the family going, had to return home from Kerala.

“My father was a labourer in Kerala. He was earning enough and I could keep myself busy with school, private tuitions and friends. Though we are a poor family, my mother’s earning gave us a sense of comfort,” Jittu said as he took a short break from hawking at the nearby Chachand village.

“My father developed respiratory disease and had to return home. If this wasn’t enough, the lockdown took away my mother’s job at a bidi factory near our village. All of a sudden, we were left with no livelihood.”

“At the end of the month, I can give my mother around Rs 7,000 and that is helping us stay afloat,” he said.

Jittu, the youngest of six brothers, stays with his parents as his siblings are married and live separately.

Five months into the hawking, the boy said the lockdown had helped him as he didn’t have to attend school.

“How else could I have managed both? As the school is shut, I can sell my wares during the day,” says Jittu. The teenager is helping the family keep it going as Jittu doesn’t want his father to spend the little that he has been able to save by working away from home.

Before returning home after the sunset after making tours of his own village, Chachand, and Dhulauri, Jittu’s last stop is always Basudevpur. This helps him as the local wholesale market is at Basudevpur, where he replenishes his stocks every evening and loads them onto the van.

“To survive, the family needed to earn and as my father fell ill, the onus was on me. I decided to ferry wares that would not require much investment. So, we decided to sell biscuits, snacks and pickles. To move from one village to another, I need a cycle van. My mother bought me a second-hand van for Rs 2,000,” Jittu said.

Puspa, however, regrets that his son has to skip tuition classes and studies because he has been compelled to adopt the life of a hawker.

“I used to earn Rs 150-200 every day from the bidi factory I worked till the lockdown took away my job. I hardly get orders from the factory. The little that I still earn is not enough to make ends meet as my husband is seriously ill and cannot work anymore,” Puspa said.

Jittu is not the only student in the area who has taken up odd jobs to run the family, said Nejaur Rahaman, headmaster of Chachand High School.

“The pressure to run the family has led to several students at our school to drop out. Most of these students are from classes VIII-X. They have taken up odd jobs to support the family who are facing the adversities that lockdown has thrust on their lives,” said Rahaman.

Jittu, however, is determined not to be counted among the drop-outs in his school. Once school reopens, Jittu hopes to attend school and also find time for vending.

“For me, both are equally important. I want to clear Madhyamik and also ensure that my family is able to survive the adversities. I am confident of joining school once the lockdown ends,” says Jittu as he gets busy attending to customers at the corner of a village road that leads to the highway.

Even as he serves pickles to a customer, Jittu eyes are set on the highway that like his hope has an endless run.