How the pandemic shut down business for this bookseller on local trains in Bengal
Dipankar Kundu would make Rs 15,000 a month selling books to suburban rail passengers.
Dipankar Kundu in a train, where he sells books.
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Joydip Mishra
“During the lockdown I realised, for the first time, that my books are heavy.”
Sitting cross-legged on a concrete slab on Platform Number 1 in a deserted Shyamnagar Railway Station, Dipankar Kundu, 44, tells me of this and other realisations from the Covid 19-induced lockdown in March 2020. The lockdown stopped suburban trains from running between Sealdah and Ranaghat, and put an end to Kundu’s livelihood as well.