Jyoti Kumari holds a photo of her dad, Mohan Paswan. She became a global celebrity after news spread of her 700-mile bicycle ride, carrying her injured father on her bicycle, to get him to their village. Promises were made to reward her heroic feat. Were they kept?

Deepak Paswan

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Deepak Paswan

Fame is a strange beast. It brings applause, attention and promises of a better life. But when the spotlight moves on, those promises are often forgotten. No one knows this better than 22-year-old Jyoti Kumari.

When she was 15 years old, during the peak of India’s COVID shutdown, she shot to international fame for cycling over 700 miles, from northern India to her village in the eastern state of Bihar, with her injured father riding on the back of the hot pink bike she’d bought for $20.

Her dad, Mohan Paswan, drove an autorickshaw for 20 years in Gurugram, a city near Delhi, sending money to his wife and five children in the village of Sirhulli. After he suffered a debilitating road accident in January 2020, Kumari and her mom took the train to Gurugram to care for him.

Five months later, he still hadn’t made a full recovery and his family was running out of money for food and rent. The family decided they would all be better off at home. But at the time, authorities had shut down public transportation for the pandemic lockdown. No one knew how Mohan Paswan could make the journey. That’s when Kumari insisted she would bring him back home, riding on a pad attached to the main seat of her bicycle.

She cycled for seven consecutive days on a relatively empty stomach at the height of the lockdown to get him to safety. Even though it was a test of sheer endurance, Kumari discovered that she loved cycling — it came naturally to her.

Her epic ride grabbed headlines around the world. NPR’s previous reporting noted promises of cash rewards, training for a career as a cyclist, even a movie deal.

Six years later

That was in 2020. “Now — life is hard,” Kumari told NPR in a phone call from her home in Bihar.

What happened to all the promises made — for financial support, especially to support cycling as a competitive sport?

Many promises were not kept, she says.

“The politicians who made promises, saying they would give money for my sports or education — nobody actually gave anything,” she says. “Whatever reward money we collected back then [from individuals who extended help and a government award that came with a cash prize], we put it all into our house, rebuilding it. We had a brick house before, but it only had bare walls. Now we have completed it, added a toilet, a bathroom, and a running water connection. By doing all that, the house has finally become livable,” she says.