Citizen Jaisul

Glimpsing into a man's life

- Mayank Austen Soofi

This time, the Delhi winter passed in a jiffy—and Jaisul is quite relieved. He's a rickshaw puller, he explains, and his business always plummets during the winter. Even so, he made good use of the cold weeks, he says. He did so by boarding the Seemanchal Express for his village in Janpad Araria, Bihar. He returned a week ago.

"I hadn't visited my family for almost a year," he says after dropping off a customer one late night in a central Delhi neighbourhood. "Two months ago, when my eldest son called me on mobile, saying, 'Papa, ab aa jao,' I went back home the next day."