The desire to see his wife become a teacher pushed a tribal man from Jharkhand to ride his ramshackle scooter for over 1,200 km from Jharkhand to Madhya Pradesh.
Dhananjay Hansda, with his wife Sony Hembram on his scooter pillion, began his journey on August 28 from Godda in Jharkhand over potholes, humps and nearly non-existent roads even as it rained non-stop for hours.
Mr. Hansda said he could not afford to see his wife, who is six months pregnant, miss out the Diploma in Elementary Education (DEE) examination that would make her eligible for the position of a teacher in Jharkhand.
They covered the distance on the road passing through Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh and reached Gwalior, where the examination is currently being held, on August 30.
As the public transport system was not yet open, the couple neither found train nor bus to travel from Godda to Gwalior.
Also read: A mother drives 1,400 km to get her stranded son back
“The examination was important for us. I have not studied beyond Class X. I did not want my wife to lose out the opportunity to achieve the educational feat she wanted. It made both of us decide to undertake the audacious journey keeping all our heath issues aside,” he said.
The couple was living in their aunt’s house in Godda. Mr. Hansda had lost the job of a cook in a catering agency in Gujarat in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdown. Since their return from Gujarat, they had exhausted all their savings over the past four months.
“I had appeared in my first year DEE examination in July 2019. The second year examination was scheduled in July 2020. However, there was uncertainty prevailing over the scheduling of the examinations due to pandemic,” said Ms. Hembram.
The examination dates were declared from September 1 to 11 all of sudden, leaving little time for the couple to arrange money for travelling to Gwalior. They weighed the option of travelling by bus from Bhagalpur in Bihar, but the schedule of the buses was doubtful. The only option left with them was to reach Gwalior by road but they could not afford the journey by taxi. So the couple trusted their scooter to reach the examination centre. “Even for a scooter journey and stay at Gwalior, I had to sell my ornament,” Ms. Hembram said.
“The road was extremely bad. On the first day, we could cover a distance up to Muzzaffarpur, where we were put up in a lodge. Despite feeling uneasy, I agreed to start the journey towards Lucknow, where we would have taken night halt on August 29. Due to high lodge charge, we spent the night under a tree,” narrated Ms. Hembram.
They took brief stops for rest along the lonely road, sipped tea at tea stalls, and talked to each other non-stop during their journey. The flood situation in Bihar also made the trip risky.
They reached Gwalior on the afternoon of August 30, 36 hours before the examination. Upon reaching Gwalior, they bargained with a house owner to stay for 15 days by paying ₹1,500. As their epic scooter ride made it to local media, the Gwalior district administration arranged accommodation for them.
