‘I tell my kids there’s no corona here’ Indal Kumar Mandal, 38, who has worked as a salesman in one of the stalls for the past 20 years, didn’t take the Shramik Special back to his village in Bihar, where he has many mouths to feed. Dealing with calls from his children is the toughest. “I tell my children that there is no corona here and I am safe in Mumbai. How can I go back empty handed?” Shetty says Fashion Street’s complete shutdown has left over a thousand families penniless. “Every stall owner has two employees, that’s three families per stall.” Fifty percent of the salesmen hail from Uttar Pradesh, while 20 per cent are from South India. “Every day I get calls from men from villages asking if they can return, some have turned into vegetable vendors, a life they had escaped from.” He added that there have been at least five robberies which started just 20 days after the lockdown. “Rs 1.5 lakh worth … [Read more...] about Fashion Street is empty and shopkeepers have to do odd jobs to make a living
