Snapshot of migrant tragedy: Citizen Rampukar back in Bihar, waiting to meet his family

Rampukar Pandit, who became a snapshot of India's migrant tragedy with his photograph speaking on the phone on a Delhi roadside, is back in Bihar, broken at not being able to meet his son before he died and despairing about the future.

"We labourers have no life, we are just a cog in the wheel, spinning continuously until we run out of life, said the man, his name unknown but his face by now familiar to many thousands of people across the nation.

The construction labourer, who worked at a cinema hall site in Delhi, was spotted weeping uncontrollably as he talked on the phone by the side of the Nizamuddin Bridge in Delhi by PTI photographer Atul Yadav earlier this week.

The powerful image of the distraught man, struggling to reach home in Begusarai, almost 1,200 km away during the nationwide lockdown, was widely shared across all media, becoming a defining image of the trauma of lakhs of migrant labourers stranded away from home. The photograph resulted in help being provided to him to reach his home in Bihar.

When the photograph was taken, the 38-year-old, who is now at a quarantine centre in a village school on the outskirts of Begusarai, said he was anguished at the thought he might not get home on time to see his baby.

Shortly after the photograph taken on Monday, his son died.

"My son, who had not even turned one-year-old, died and a bolt of lightning hit me. I pleaded to police authorities to let me go to my home but none helped," he told PTI over the phone.

"One policeman even said, Will your son become alive if you go back home. This is lockdown, you cannot move.' This is the kind of reply I got from them."
"We labourers don't belong to any country ('hum mazdooron ka koi desh nahin hota')."
Will a father not want to go home and even mourn the death of his son, with his family?"