Homebound

Meher is a young girl growing up in Dharavi, the Mumbai slum where she sees plenty of room for her future to open up. Her family is getting by, and then India's government announces the largest Covid-19 lockdown in the world. Almost overnight her parents lose their work, and with it the means to keep their home and hold their lives together. As infections spread through the crowded streets of Dharavi, staying put stops being an option. The family decides to return to their village in Rajasthan. With public movement banned, the only way is on foot, a walk of about 900 kilometres. The road ahead holds brutal treatment from police, punishing heat, dangerous animals, and a sense that the gods are not watching over them. Homebound follows one family's long march through a crisis that left many people with nowhere to turn. It is a moving novel about the bonds that hold a family together, the struggle to survive, and the hope that keeps them walking. It gives space to the people whose stories have too rarely been heard.