India, Feb. 17 -- This time, the Delhi winter passed in a jiffy - and Jaisul is quite relieved.

He's a rickshaw puller, he explains, and his business always plummets during the winter. Even so, he made good use of the cold weeks, he says. He did so by boarding the Seemanchal Express for his village in janpad Araria, Bihar. He returned a week ago.

"I hadn't visited my family for almost a year," he says after dropping off a customer one late night in a central Delhi neighbourhood. "Two months ago, when my eldest son called me on mobile, saying, 'Papa, ab aa jao,' I went back home the next day."

Jaisul is in his sixties and has been a rickshaw puller in Delhi for 35 years. Not even once has any member of his family visited him in the city...