An app cab driver now sells fish to run his family because he doesn’t know when and if cabs would return to roads.

Balaram Nag used to set out early in the morning till March 22 with a Tata Zest while his smartphone would locate a passenger. He still sets out early; but on a cycle to earn a living.

He cycles to the wholesale fish market in Sodepur and buys fish at the morning auction “at a reasonable rate”. He then crisscrosses the streets of Belghoria on the city’s northern outskirts while hawking the fish.

“I have taken the cycle from a friend on rent,” Nag, a resident of Kabi Chandi Charan Mitra Street in Belghoria, said.

The car he used to drive is gathering dust in the owner’s garage along Tobin Road off BT Road.

“I was on the Ola app cab platform for the past four years. My monthly income was around Rs 15,000. But the lockdown has struck me hard, turning me into a fishmonger,” he said.

“I am earning less than a fourth of what I used to earn on the Ola platform. Had the system remained active, we might have got calls. The number of rides has dropped drastically, though, and I don’t think it would have been enough,” he said.

The wholesale fish market close to his home is shut and he has to go to Sodepur, 3km away. Nag said he felt scared that police would catch him and send him back home. “We have to survive. My wife is a homemaker. Or else, we will starve to death. Now, I earn barely Rs 100 a day.”

The app cab rides started dropping from the middle of March and stopped entirely from March 22.

“People are buying less. Prices, too, have skyrocketed…. When I had started in April, my daily income ranged between Rs 200 and Rs 250. Now, it is down to Rs 100,” he said.

A fall in income means he cannot go to the wholesale market daily to buy fish, he said.

He is not alone to witness this reversal of fortune. He has a business partner, Shambhu Mandal, who used to ply an e-rickshaw (toto) in Belghoria before the travel restrictions were enforced.

Mandal’s wife works as a domestic help as he joins Nag in hawking fish. “But that doesn’t help… many houses have barred help from entering homes on grounds of health hazard,” Mandal said.