   
 | From the Editor's Desk
'I am so afraid': India's poor face world's largest lockdown A skinny, soft-spoken 30-year-old with a carefully trimmed beard, Mohammed Arif was working as a guard at a Mumbai apartment building when he got a call on April 1. His 60-year-old father had suffered a brain hemorrhage, and was battling for his life in a hospital in Rajouri, a small town in the Himalayan foothills of Kashmir.
By then the lockdown had begun. Buses and trains sat idle. Flights had been cancelled, though he couldn't have afforded a ticket anyway.
So Arif bought a Hero Ranger bicycle with fading purple paint from a fellow guard for about $8, and set off the next morning with the equivalent of $12 in his pocket and a small rucksack with clothes, a loaf of bread and a water bottle.
His destination was 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) away.
"What choice do I have?" Arif said in a phone call at the end of his first day, when he still had more than 2,000 kilometers to go. "He has no one else."
"Poor people suffer always and face tribulations. There's no escape," he said. "But at least my conscience is clear."
Repeatedly, Arif stumbled onto people who helped him. In one town, a man running a tiny tire-repair shop offered him chicken and rice. A couple days later, a truck driver shared his lunch.
One of the biggest surprises: the police. The Indian poor often fear the police, who regularly demand bribes and beat people with their bamboo staffs. But while police stopped Arif a few times, they always let him pass once he told his story.
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