“My sister was to get married this month but things got postponed because of the coronavirus situation. I thought that’s a good thing as I could earn and save even more money until her marriage and send her off with a little money for herself. But the pandemic has turned everything upside down--where I had dreams to save money for her, it has become harder for me and my family to just sustain ourselves with our daily expenses,” said Shaad Qureshi, a delivery boy working with a food delivery app in NOIDA. 

“Initially, they asked us to follow all the protocols while delivering the items. But then, as the online food orders were at a halt during the nationwide lockdown, things became really difficult. I had chosen the daily payscale remuneration model at my company because that made sense to me to be able to pay off all my expenses. But as the restaurants had closed off, there was no work for me. We were scraping through whatever little savings I had. 

Now that the unlock phase has started, my company is working on a mass layoff process to maximize their costs of the delivery boys. I am worried that someday I might get a call saying that my services are no longer needed. 

I LIVE IN CONSTANT FEAR OF THAT CALL. I CHECK MY PHONE EVERY HALF A MINUTE TO ENSURE THERE ARE NO MISSED CALLS FROM THE ADMIN OFFICE.

I have a loan to pay off to money lender...I got fooled into thinking that this guy will be more cost effective than the banks..the way he is charging interest, I will have to sell myself one day to pay all that loan and interest off.

How am I going to do this all alone? That too with a constant fear of being jobless or infected while doing my job. Who would then look after my family? 

MY LIFE IS A CONTINUOUS CYCLE OF DREAD AND ANXIETY...I FEEL I HAVE NO CONTROL OVER IT AND SOMEONE ELSE IS CHOOSING HOW I WILL LIVE OR DIE.

I am scared of going out for deliveries as there is always this thought of ‘who have I taken the bag from and what if that person might be infected?’ I skip a heartbeat whenever I see a call coming from my operator, thinking that ‘this is it, they going to ask me to quit today’, and I am tired of avoiding Balaji Bhaiyya, the man who’d helped me in the time of my urgency but where do I pay him back from? All of the troubles seem to have just gathered around me with a huge ‘IF and BUT’... I don’t know how to face this anymore…”