For those who are used to gigs referring to pop-up music shows or sudden stage performances, the subtitle of the book, The Gig Workers of India, may take some figuring out. As a term relating to the ever-present Blinkit and Amazon delivery boys, it seems unfamiliar because surely deliveries cannot be a gig of the entertainment kind – though yes, delivery boys deliver for the pleasure and convenience of those who order in the deliveries, especially those who live in multi-storeyed complexes with no use or wish to go to the local market. Gig working also applies to Rapido riders who are on app call as well. Ashoke Mukhopadhyay in his latest novel No. 1 Akashganga Lane has chosen to hold up the desperate lives of those who deliver for a living between dawn and dusk, and in the case of the commodities, the more deliveries the better.

Through their experiences — long hours, algorithm-driven pressure, precarious earnings and the constant negotiation of traffic and time — the novel quietly registers the realities of gig work. These riders, often unnamed and transient in the eyes of their customers, become reminders of a different kind of struggle: mobility without security, speed without stability. Their livelihoods are at the risk of accidents, bad health and customers determined on almost instant deliveries, uncaring of the risks involved. Readers would recognise the kinds of customers involved in the stories, a so-called TV star who insists that she is so well known that everyone will direct Sriman to her flat, regardless of the fact that time is ticking. Mrittika the lady Rapido rider is constantly at risk from male harassment, though the fact that she knows karate helps.

Translated from the Bengali by Zenith Roy, Mukhopadhyay's novel may well be called cross-genre, a blend of fact and fiction, since he combines his experiences with gig workers with his story of Sriman, who is trying to make enough money to own his delivery bike. His mentor is Bishan Da, who allows Sriman and his parents to live in his big house in Akashganga Lane and gives him lessons in stargazing. The result is a feet-on-the-ground and head-filled-with-dreams story situated in true Calcutta style, since it is located in the streets and alleyways of the city where events that people from other cities will be able to relate to. The researcher Juiphool provides facts and figures on the delivery scenario and insights into their backgrounds, along with Marxist insights which Calcuttans of the intellectual Bishan Da background will appreciate. There are touches of romance that might have been descriptions of raucous conversations and women in on-street and off-street attire – the men however don't get a look in, barring their delivery uniforms.

Covid brought the gig workers into prominence since that was the time most people were housebound and deliveries were the only way that they could access staples like food and medicine – even though Amazon deliveries were suspect at the time. Possibly because of Covid, contact with gig workers was restricted to opening the door a chink, receiving a packet and shutting it immediately without a word of thanks. That treatment continues. The app people have their own ways of life, their own food habits and get together to compare notes when they have a breathing space. Some of them – though not all – form a help network for each other so that they have a fall-back.

There have been changes in a system that needs constant speed – for the sake of safety, delivery time is being re-looked at. What the book does is bring together Kolkata in its layering of past and present, tradition and modernity, and suggests that there may be other ways for the city's systems to grow and its young folk to survive. A new kind of Saratchandra Chatterjee narrative perhaps, for a new world order.